From the Patriarch's Hall Collection: The Legend and Recorded Conversations of Yàoshān Wéiyǎn

Abstract

This project presents an excerpted translation of the biography and recorded sayings of Y√†oshƒÅn W√©iy«én from the Z«ît√°ng jí (Á•ñ†ÇÈõÜ, Record of the Patriarchs' Hall), a tenth-century Chan Buddhist lamp record. The translation is accompanied by a theoretically informed introduction that frames the work through a literary and heuristic methodology, emphasizing what Paul Ric≈ìur calls a ‚Äúpost-critical, second naivet√©.‚Äù Rather than reducing the text's value to questions of historical veracity or sectarian propaganda, the project reinterprets Chan lineage discourse as a symbolic and pedagogical practice grounded in relationality and dialogical immediacy. By deploying reading strategies such as protreptic dilemmas, performative contradiction, and conversational implicature, the translator aims to reorient readers toward an ‚Äúintimate reading‚Äù of encounter dialogues‚Äîone that respects the form's rhetorical subtlety and soteriological function. In doing so, this project contributes to contemporary conversations about historicity, hermeneutics, and religious pedagogy in classical Chan, and offers new ways to listen deeply to the tradition's enduring conversations.