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本来無一物 honrai muichimotsu By Nature, Having Nothing

本来無一物 (honrai muichimotsu), from the beginning, not one thing, is the line that in Chan legend won Huineng the patriarch's robe. It is absent from the oldest surviving text of the story and quoted in a master's record prefaced 857. This study follows it into the verse by 952, through Japan and into English.

Japanese Scroll of By Nature, Having Nothing (honrai muichimotsu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
By Nature, Having Nothing本来無一物honrai muichimotsu

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

本来無一物, honrai muichimotsu, from the beginning, not one thing, is the third line of the verse that, in Chan legend, won the illiterate Huineng 惠能 the Sixth Patriarch's robe over the head monk Shenxiu 神秀's poem on polishing a mirror free of dust. The line is absent from the oldest surviving text of the story, a Dunhuang manuscript copied in the ninth century; it is quoted in the recorded teaching of Ōbaku 黄檗, whose compiler dated his preface 857 and which survives in Song and Ming prints, first stands in the verse in a Chan history of 952, and has been in the sutra's received text since 1291. In Japan a primer of 1268 set it first among the marks of the Zen school, teachers used it to warn against empty repetition, and in a Noh play attributed to Kan'ami a beggar-woman finishes the verse's lines against a priest while the chorus sings its third in Japanese.

Overview

The sense. The third line of the verse became its name, and every reader has had to say what it does not mean. Ōbaku, asked whether not one thing means that nothing exists, answers that nothing is just as wrong. Tōzan Ryōkai 洞山良价 (Dongshan Liangjie, 807–869) warns that saying it outright has not yet earned the robe. The 禪林類聚's master says do not misunderstand to the monk who bows. Dōgen reads it as the bright mirror shown, not a denial that there is one. Gyōnen 凝然 sets it first among the marks of the Zen school. In a play attributed to Kan'ami 観阿弥, a beggar-woman finishes the verse's lines against a priest, the chorus sings its third in Japanese, and she keeps her seat. The dictionaries end on nothing to cling to. And Japanese speech, meanwhile, kept the plain sense of 無一物, not a thing to one's name, so that the phrase could describe a gambler as well as a patriarch. What no Japanese witness read here does is read 本来 as from nothing: the line is about how things have always stood, not where they came from.

The words. Five characters, two words. 本来, honrai, is from the beginning, originally: 精選版日本国語大辞典, はじめからその状態であること。もとからずっと。もともと。元来. It is not from nothing and not quite by nature; it says how things have stood all along. 無一物, muichimotsu, is not one thing: 何も持っていないこと。何ひとつ無いこと; the dictionary's earliest example is a 1477 commentary on the Book of Changes, 太極は无極ぢゃ程に无一物なぞ, the Great Ultimate is the Ultimateless, so there is not one thing in it [1]. The word has two lives in Japanese. In daily speech it means destitute, cleaned out; the dictionary's other example is 志賀直哉's burglary victim, 泥棒に入られて今は殆ど無一物になっちまった, and a Meiji novel of 1886 uses the whole five-character phrase for a gambler who has lost everything. In the verse it means what it says: there is not one thing. The five characters together are a dictionary headword. デジタル大辞泉: 仏語。事物はすべて本来空であるから、執着すべきものは何一つないということ。禅宗でいう, a Buddhist term: since all things are empty from the beginning, there is not one thing to be attached to; said in Zen. 精選版日本国語大辞典: 存在する物は、本来すべて空であるから、わが物として執着すべきものは一つもないこと。一切のものから自由自在になった心境, adding the state of mind that is free of everything, and citing Dōgen as its first Japanese instance [2]. Both glosses end where a Japanese reader's ear does: not on absence but on nothing to cling to.

The text in English. In the sources read, the earliest known English rendering is in the Shanghai North-China Herald of 1854, in a passage Joseph Edkins printed word for word in his Chinese Buddhism of 1880; the next distinct rendering is D. T. Suzuki's of 1906, and the sutra's translators came after. The English-language Japanese dictionary JMdict carries the phrase.

The historical record

830 to 860, in a manuscript from Dunhuang. The 壇經, the Platform Sutra, in its oldest surviving text. The manuscript is undated; Philip Yampolsky puts its copying between 830 and 860 by its hand, from an earlier text some of whose material goes back to about 780 [3]. The verse that the line belongs to is Huineng's answer, in the sutra's own story of itself, to the head monk Shenxiu's 身是菩提樹，心如明鏡臺，時時勤拂拭，莫使有塵埃, the body is the tree of awakening, the mind a bright mirror's stand; polish it always, let no dust settle. In this oldest text Huineng's reply reads 菩提本無樹，明鏡亦無臺，佛性常清淨，何處有塵埃, awakening has no tree, the bright mirror no stand; the Buddha-nature is always pure, where could dust settle?, and he is given a second verse besides. The line 本來無一物 is not here [4]. Yampolsky notes that the Tangut translation of 1071 keeps the same third line [3].

848 to 857. Ōbaku Kiun 黄檗希運 (Huangbo Xiyun, d. between 847 and 860), in the record the minister Pei Xiu 裴休 made of his teaching. Pei Xiu heard him at Wanling in 848, wrote down what he could, and dated his preface 857; the preface names those sittings, 大中二年廉于宛陵…旦夕受法。退而紀之, in 848 I governed Wanling … morning and evening I received the teaching, and withdrew and wrote it down. In the part called the 宛陵錄 the master closes an answer with four lines, the first two the verse's own: 本來無一物。何處有塵埃。若得此中意。逍遙何所論, from the beginning not one thing; where could there be dust? Whoever grasps what this means is at ease; what is left to argue? A monk at once asks the question the line invites: 問。本來無一物。無物便是否。師云。無亦不是, "From the beginning not one thing": does that mean there is nothing? The master said: "nothing" is not it either [5]. Yampolsky calls this probably the first instance of the phrase, and adds the caution that the records of the Tang masters were printed only from the Song on, edited as the sutra was [3]; the text read here is a Ming print. The Song anthology 古尊宿語錄 carries a longer text of the same record, in which the master opens an empty hand and cites the two lines as a saying: 皆見掌中都無一物。所以道：本來無一物，何處有塵埃？, all see that there is not one thing in the palm. So it is said: from the beginning not one thing; where could there be dust? [6]

952. The 祖堂集, a history of the Chan patriarchs compiled at a monastery in Quanzhou. The oldest dated text to give the whole verse with this line. Huineng, illiterate, has a passer-by write his verse beside Shenxiu's: 其張日用與他書偈曰：「身非菩提樹，心鏡亦非臺。本來無一物，何處有塵埃？」, the body is no tree of awakening, the mind-mirror no stand; from the beginning not one thing, where could dust be? The master wipes it off the wall, smiles, praises nothing, and knows who has won. The book was compiled in 952 and survives through blocks carved in Korea in 1245, at 海印寺, from which it was first printed in the twentieth century [7].

961. Yōmyō Enju 永明延寿 (Yongming Yanshou, 904–975), 宗鏡錄, a compendium of the teachings in a hundred fascicles. It quotes the verse as the Sixth Patriarch's, with a fourth reading of the last line: 如六祖偈云。菩提亦非樹。明鏡亦非臺。本來無一物。何用拂塵埃, as the Sixth Patriarch's verse says: awakening is no tree either, the bright mirror no stand; from the beginning not one thing, what use is brushing the dust away? [8]

967, in a print of 1153. The recension of the monk Huixin 惠昕. His preface is dated to a year 丁卯, and the text survives through a print of 1153 that reached Japan and was recut at the temple 興聖寺. Here the line is in the sutra itself: 惠能偈云。菩提本無樹。明鏡亦非臺。本來無一物。何處有塵埃, still with the older 有 [9]. Yampolsky dates the recension 967 from that preface [3].

Ninth century, recorded 1004. Tōzan Ryōkai, founder of the Sōtō line, in the 景德傳燈錄. 師有時垂語曰。直道本來無一物。猶未消得他鉢袋子, the master once said: even if you can say "from the beginning not one thing," you have not yet earned his bowl-bag. A monk asks who has; the one who does not enter the gate. Here the line is words a monk might say outright (直道), in the mouth of a master who died in 869 as the book of 1004 reports him, and the same book gives the verse itself in its chapter on the Fifth Patriarch with yet another fourth line: 菩提本非樹 心鏡亦非臺 本來無一物 何假拂塵埃, what need to brush the dust away? [10] The same saying stands in Tōzan's own record [11] and in the 傳燈玉英集 of 1034 [12].

Thirteenth century. Xisou Shaotan 紹曇's 五家正宗贊, a hymnal of the five Chan houses. 菩提本無樹，明鏡亦非臺。本來無一物，何處惹塵埃, with the fourth line as it is read today, where could dust be drawn? [13] The wording was older than the hymnal: Engo Kokugon 圜悟克勤 (Yuanwu Keqin, 1063–1135) quotes the verse with 惹 in his recorded sayings [14], and the Song lamp history 聯燈會要 tells the contest with it [15].

1240s. Dōgen 道元, 正法眼蔵, the fascicle 古鏡, The Old Mirror. 第三十三祖大鑑禪師カツテ黃梅山ノ法席ニ功夫セシトキ壁書シテ祖師ニ呈スル偈ニイハク菩提本無樹明鏡亦非臺本來無一物何處有塵埃 シカアレハコノ道取ヲ學取スヘシ, the thirty-third patriarch, when he was practicing in the assembly on Yellow Plum Mountain, wrote on the wall and presented to the patriarch this verse: … Therefore study this saying [16]. Dōgen keeps the older 有, and a few lines on says what the verse is: シカアレハシルヘシ大鑑高祖ノ明鏡ヲシメス本來無一物何處有塵埃ナリ, know, then: the bright mirror the high patriarch Daikan shows is "from the beginning not one thing, where could there be dust" [16]. The verse is the mirror shown, not a denial of the mirror; a commentary of 1891 makes it a way of polishing, 神秀ハ時々勤拂拭セヨト磨キ、六祖ハ本來無一物ト磨ク, 神秀 polishes by "polish it always," the Sixth Patriarch polishes by "from the beginning not one thing" [17]. This is the first Japanese instance the dictionaries give.

1268. Gyōnen, 八宗綱要, the primer on the eight schools that the dictionaries call Buddhism's beginner's book since of old. In its short appendix on Zen, the phrase stands first among the school's marks: 彼禪宗者、佛法玄底、甚深微妙。本來無一物、本無煩惱。元是菩提。達磨西來、不立文字。直指人心。見性成佛, that Zen school: the hidden floor of the Buddha's teaching, deep and subtle. From the beginning not one thing; from the beginning no defilements; awakening from the start. Bodhidharma came from the west and set up no words; point straight at the mind, see your nature, become Buddha [18]. A Meiji commentary traces the words to a text attributed to Bodhidharma himself [19].

1291. The 宗寶 edition of the Platform Sutra, the received text. 菩提本無樹，明鏡亦非臺；本來無一物，何處惹塵埃 [20]. From here on this is the sutra's own wording, and it is the design's.

1307, printed in Japan in 1367 and again in the seventeenth century. The 禪林類聚, a Yuan anthology of Chan sayings. 清凉復禪師云本來無一物何處有塵埃 僧禮拜 師云莫錯會, a master of 清涼 said: from the beginning not one thing, where could dust be? A monk bowed. The master said: do not misunderstand [21]. The verse as a teacher's line, with the older 有, and a warning attached.

Fourteenth century, by attribution. 卒都婆小町, a Noh play the dictionaries give to Kan'ami. A priest scolds an old beggar-woman for sitting on a stupa; she answers him line for line, and the exchange ends by reciting the Sixth Patriarch's verse between them [22]: ワキツレ「菩提もと、シテ「植木にあらず。ワキ「明鏡また、シテ「臺に無し。上歌地「げに本來一物なき時は、佛も衆生も隔なし, the priest's companion — awakening, from the beginning; the woman — is no planted tree; the priest — the bright mirror, likewise; the woman — has no stand; the chorus — truly, when from the beginning there is not one thing, there is no barrier between Buddha and beings. The priest bows three times, and the woman is Ono no Komachi 小野小町. The Japanese line is the chorus's, and it is 本來一物なき, a paraphrase rather than the five characters; the commentary of 1595 names them.

1595. The 謡抄, a commentary on the Noh plays. It glosses the line with the verse by name [23]: 是モサキノ六祖ノ頌ノ末ニ本來無一物ト作レル道理ヲ參得シタル眼カラハ佛モ衆生モ隔テハ有ベカラスト也, this too: to an eye that has grasped the principle written as 本來無一物 at the end of the Sixth Patriarch's verse, there can be no barrier between Buddha and beings.

1876 to 1887, Meiji Japan. Gyōnen's sentence is reprinted in three editions of his primer with commentaries; the sectarian handbooks of 1886 and 1887 tell the contest of verses; 井上円了, founding a philosophy of Buddhism, defines Zen's awakening by the phrase, 其悟道ノ如キハ本來無一物ト立テヽ所有ル有物有象ノ見ヲ遣破シテ心中本具ノ自性ヲ開現スルニアリ, its awakening consists in setting up "from the beginning not one thing," sweeping away every view of things and forms, and opening the nature the mind has always had. And the five characters go into comic speech: a book of mock orations finished in 1881 opens up the hearts of the gentlemen of the day and finds 上等の官に就りたい金を儲けたい贅沢がしたいの外本來無一物, apart from wanting high office, wanting money and wanting luxury, from the beginning not one thing, and a novel of 1886 sends a man from gambling den to gambling den for half a year and leaves him 本來無一物, without a thing to his name [24].

1889 and 1894. The 禪林句集, the phrase book Japanese Zen students carried, in two Meiji printings. The five-character line is not an entry in the text layer of either printing, nor, by the apparatus cited below, in the phrase book of 1688. The compiler's own cut of the idea is the four-character 一物也無, not a single thing either, which he sources to Mazu 馬祖 in the 傳燈錄, and above it he sets two head notes: the Sixth Patriarch's verse, 又六祖頌云本來無一物, and a Song anecdote of a notice pinned to a bath-house door, 一物也無，洗箇甚麼？, if there is not one thing, what is there to wash? [25] It became a phrase-book entry later: Victor Sōgen Hori's apparatus gives it no number in the phrase book of 1688 and finds it in Shibayama Zenkei's 禅林句集 of 1972, sourcing it to the commentary on the verse of the 碧巖錄's case 94 [26].

What is not a source. The contest of verses is the sutra's story about its own origin, and the oldest texts disagree about what the winning verse said: the texts read here give its last line four ways, 何處有, 何用拂, 何假拂 and 何處惹. No witness dates the event. The Huixin recension shows the line in the sutra by 967 only as far as a print of 1153 can show a text two centuries older; a Chan history had it in 952 and a compendium in 961, and Ōbaku's record, as it survives in later prints, before that. Shenxiu's verse, 時時勤拂拭, is the other half of the story and is not this text. The 禪林句集's 一物也無 is a Japanese Zen hand's own cut of the idea, sourced to Mazu, and the bath-house notice is a Song joke on the verse; both are pairings the phrase book sets beside it [25]. A text attributed to Bodhidharma that a Meiji commentary names as the words' source carries no address here either [19].

The phrase in English

1854. The North-China Herald, Shanghai, 16 December. There is no such thing as a knowledge tree. There is no such thing as a mirror-stand. There is nothing that has a real existence. Then how can dust be attracted? The issue is read here only in the excerpts of the Internet Archive's full-text index, which do not show who wrote it; the prose they show around the verse is the prose Edkins printed in 1880, word for word, so the two are one passage printed twice [27].

1880. Joseph Edkins, Chinese Buddhism, Trübner, page 162. The same rendering, word for word, with Shenxiu's verse before it and a gloss after: in Huineng's lines appears the system's speculative tendency — denying everything external to the mind [28].

1906. D. T. Suzuki, "The Zen Sect of Buddhism," Journal of the Pali Text Society, pages 14–15. The Bodhi is not like the tree; / The mirror bright is nowhere shining: / As there is nothing from the first, / Where can the dust itself collect? [29] He printed it again unchanged in Essays in Zen Buddhism, 1927, page 206 [30].

1930. Wong Mou-lam, the first English Platform Sutra. Named as a step in the lineage, not read here.

1942. R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido, page 320. Salvation is nothing like a tree, / Nor a clear mirror; / Essentially, not a "thing" exists; / What is there, then, for the dust to fall on? The quotation marks around thing are the translator's own gloss on 無一物 [31].

1958. John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, pages 77 and 109. Ōbaku's two lines and the monk's question in English: There's never been a single thing; / Then where's defiling dust to cling? and Q: If 'there's never been a single thing', can we speak of phenomena as non-existent? A: 'Non-existent' is just as wrong as its opposite; and, on page 109, the open hand of the longer text: Therefore is it written: There's never been a single thing [32].

1960. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume 1, Hokuseido, page 115. The 1942 rendering, unchanged, and his reading of the two verses: Shenxiu's is the Dhammapada in four lines. It is the essence of morality and the good life; Huineng's is a pert composition that knocks the whole thing to smithereens. … However, this apparent nihilism had two thousand years of spiritual endeavour behind it [33].

1967. Philip Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, the Dunhuang text in English. Buddha nature is always clean and pure for the Dunhuang fourth-line reading, and, in a note, from the first not a thing is for the line the later texts carry [3].

2000. John McRae, the 宗寶 text in English, page 22. Fundamentally there is not a single thing — / Where could any dust be attracted? [34]

Today. 本来無一物 stands as a dictionary headword: デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版日本国語大辞典 both end on nothing to cling to [2]. JMdict glosses it four ways, all things are essentially nothingness, all things come from nothingness, originally, there was nothing, and Zen reminder to free oneself from attachments [35]; the second reads 本来 as from nothing, which no Japanese witness above does. The National Diet Library's full-text index returns the five characters in 12,761 digitized items, 553 of them dated 1900 or earlier: a count of the items they occur in, not of uses [36].

A reading

The text is right for a scroll. 本来無一物 is the line the Japanese dictionaries head, the received text of the sutra since 1291, the third line of the verse in the Chan histories since 952, first among the Zen school's marks in a Japanese primer since 1268, and sung in Japanese paraphrase on the Noh stage. This is a story worth telling, not a defect: the line is not in the oldest copy of the sutra it comes from, which says instead that the Buddha-nature is always pure, and the version chanted today is the one the tradition settled on and kept.

My own reading is Tōzan's and the beggar-woman's together. The line is the easiest in Zen to say, and the tradition has warned against two misreadings of it for eleven centuries: the first record to quote it answers a monk who took it to mean that nothing exists, and Tōzan warns that saying it outright has not yet earned the robe. A Noh play still lets a beggar-woman win an argument by finishing the verse's lines. A scroll of these five characters hangs between those facts.

Notes

Sources not seen

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「本来」「無一物」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank.
  2. 「本来無一物」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank.
  3. Philip B. Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, Columbia University Press, 1967 (reissued 2012): the introduction on the Dunhuang manuscript (between 830 and 860; an earlier version around 780) and on the Huixin edition of 967; its note on the third line (Kōshōji and Daijōji texts; Huang-po, T48, p. 385b, probably the first instance); the translation, section 8; its note 38 (the Dunhuang reading of the third line kept in the Tangut translation of 1071).
  4. 『壇經』, Dunhuang manuscript, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2007, p. 337c02 and p. 338a07–11. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2007&juan=1
  5. 裴休集『黃檗斷際禪師宛陵錄』, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2012B, p. 385b11–14; the preface to the 傳心法要, dated 大中十一年, T48n2012A, p. 379c05–13. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2012B&juan=1 ; 「黄檗希運」, at kotobank (died in the years 847–860).
  6. 『古尊宿語錄』 juan 3, 黃檗斷際禪師宛陵錄, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 X68n1315, p. 20b16–18 (and p. 17c06–08, the passage of T48n2012B p. 385b). https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=X1315&juan=3
  7. 『祖堂集』卷2, 952, at CBETA. 大藏經補編 B25n0144, p. 341a03–04. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=B0144&juan=2 ; 「祖堂集」, 世界大百科事典, at kotobank.
  8. 延壽『宗鏡錄』 juan 31, 961, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2016, p. 594c09–10. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2016&juan=31 ; 「宗鏡録」 and 「永明延寿」, at kotobank.
  9. 惠昕『六祖壇經』(惠昕原本), at CBETA. 佛教大藏經 G86n2202, p. 653a01–15 (the prefaces) and p. 657a12. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=G2202&juan=1
  10. 『景德傳燈錄』, 1004, at CBETA. Taishō T51n2076, p. 322c09–13 (juan 15) and p. 223a06–07 (juan 3). https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=15
  11. 洞山良价's own record, at CBETA. Taishō T47n1986A, p. 510c11–16.
  12. 『傳燈玉英集』, 1034, at CBETA. 大藏經補編 B14n0082, juan 5, p. 236b12–15.
  13. 紹曇『五家正宗贊』, thirteenth century, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 X78n1554, p. 577a02–03.
  14. 『圓悟佛果禪師語錄』 juan 12, at CBETA. Taishō T47n1997, p. 770a27.
  15. 悟明『聯燈會要』 juan 2, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 X79n1557, p. 24b13.
  16. 道元『正法眼蔵』, fascicle 古鏡, 1240s. National Diet Library pid 823075, scans 110–111 (1885 typeset).
  17. 瑞方『正法眼蔵聞解』, 1891. National Diet Library pid 823127, scan 114.
  18. 凝然『八宗綱要』, 1268, at CBETA. 大藏經補編 B32n0171, p. 97a08–13; 「八宗綱要」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · 世界大百科事典, at kotobank.
  19. 福田義導『八宗綱要鈔講解』, 1878. National Diet Library pid 817017, scan 109.
  20. 『壇經』, 宗寶 edition, 1291, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2008, p. 349a07–08.
  21. 『禪林類聚』, compiled 1307. National Diet Library pid 2543652, scan 56 (the 臨川寺 print of 1367), and pid 2559889, scan 57 (a print with a colophon of 1649 and an afterword of 1675).
  22. 観阿弥『卒都婆小町』, fourteenth century. National Diet Library pid 1019634, scan 22 (1926 typeset); 「卒都婆小町」, at kotobank.
  23. 『謡抄』, compiled 1595 (NIJL 国書データベース, work 13387). National Diet Library pid 11606633, scan 34, the leaves of 卒都婆小町 numbered 12 and 13, in a movable-type print of the Genna–Kan'ei years.
  24. National Diet Library pids 817009, scan 59 (1876), 817017, scan 109 (1878), and 817001, scans 55–56 (1881), Gyōnen's primer with commentaries; 817189, scan 120 (1886), and 816673, scan 45 (1887), the handbooks; 817127, scan 160 (井上円了, 1887); 882408, scan 44 (総生寛『滑稽演説会』, 1878–81), and 881826, scan 34 (『野晒於墨花の曙』, 1886).
  25. 『禪林句集』, 1889 and 1894 printings. National Diet Library pid 899715, scan 32, and pid 875204, scan 21; the bath-house notice in the 羅湖野錄, at CBETA, 卍新纂續藏經 X83n1577, p. 376a15–16.
  26. Victor Sōgen Hori, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice, University of Hawai'i Press, 2003, phrase 5.351, and its key to ZRKS (the 禅林句集 of 1688) and Shiba (Shibayama 1972).
  27. The North-China Herald, Shanghai, 16 December 1854, vol. 5 no. 229, in the Internet Archive's full-text index. https://archive.org/details/per_north-china-herald_north-china-herald_1854-12-16_5_229
  28. Joseph Edkins, Chinese Buddhism, Trübner, 1880, p. 162. https://archive.org/details/chinesebuddhism00edkiuoft
  29. Daisetz T. Suzuki, "The Zen Sect of Buddhism," Journal of the Pali Text Society 1906–1907, pp. 14–15. https://archive.org/details/journal190700paliuoft
  30. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series, Luzac, 1927, p. 206.
  31. R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido, 1942, p. 320.
  32. John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, 1958, pp. 77 and 109, the Wan Ling Record.
  33. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume 1, Hokuseido, 1960, p. 115.
  34. John R. McRae, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, BDK English Tripiṭaka, 2000, p. 22.
  35. 「本来無一物」, JMdict, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/search/本来無一物
  36. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search, all access levels: 「本來無一物」, 12,761 items, 553 of them dated 1900 or earlier, as of 28 September 2026.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 本来無一物 (honrai muichimotsu)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/honrai-muichimotsu.