The ''Song of the Precious Mirror Samadhi'' (; ; also translated as ''Song of the Jeweled Mirror Samadhi'' and ''Sacred Mirror Samadhi'') is a
Zen
Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...
poem in
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...
that appeared during the
Song dynasty
The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Fiv ...
. The work is often attributed to
Dongshan Liangjie (Japanese: Tōzan Ryōkai), the co-founder of the
Caodong/
Sōtō
Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai school, Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Caodong school, Cáodòng school, which was founded during the ...
branch of Zen Buddhism, although modern research suggests this is unlikely.
Dating and attribution
The poem is first mentioned in Juefan Huihong's biographical compilation of 1119, the ''Chanlin sengbao zhuan'' (''Chronicle of the
Sangha
Sangha or saṃgha () is a term meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community". In a political context, it was historically used to denote a governing assembly in a republic or a kingdom, and for a long time, it has been used b ...
Treasure in the Groves of Chan''), written over 200 years after Dongshan Liangjie's death. Huihong, however, does not attribute the poem to Dongshan. He writes instead that the poem was given to Dongshan by his teacher,
Yunyan Tansheng. Huihong further speculates that Yunyan's teacher,
Yaoshan Weiyan, probably entrusted it to him in turn. Huihong relates that he came upon the poem in 1108, when it was given to a scholar Zhu Yan by a monk, whom he does not identify.
The scholar Morten Schlütter notes that the poem's provenance is doubtful given the way it came to Huihong, and furthermore the style differs substantially from works of the era that Huihong attributes it to. Most later historical sources, such as the ''Zengaku daijiten'', the ''Bussho kaisetsu daijiten'', and ''Shinsan zenseki mokuroku'', attribute the poem to Dongshan Liangjie rather than Yunyan, although again, neither is likely to be the true author.
According to Schlütter "the text is very different in style and character from the early Caodong records, and it clearly cannot be taken as evidence for the presence of a silent illumination approach in the early Caodong tradition. the inclusion of the “Baojing sanmei” in the Sengbao zhuan together with Huihong's attached remarks, however, does indicate that the “Baojing sanmei” circulated as a work of the early Caodong tradition by the beginning of the twelfth century."
See also
*
Five Ranks
*
Sandokai
References
External links
Lecture on The Most Excellent Mirror—Samadhi Columbia Zen Buddhist Priory
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110926065937/http://www.deepspringzen.org/classes/JewelMirrorTranslationStudyFeb-March05.pdf ''Jewel Mirror Samadhi'' translation study
{{Buddhism topics
Zen texts
Buddhist poetry