本来無一物 honrai muichimotsu By Nature, Having Nothing
This is a philological study of the Zen phrase 本来無一物 (honrai muichimotsu), from the beginning, not one thing, the line that in Chan legend won 惠能 the patriarch's robe. It follows the verse from the eighth-century Dunhuang manuscript, where the line is absent, through the Chan histories that first give it in 952, a Sōtō founder's warning against merely saying it, and a fourteenth-century Noh play where a beggar-woman wins an argument with it.
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, an eighth-century Dunhuang manuscript, and first appears in a Chan history of 952; by 1291 it was fixed in the sutra's received text, and it had already become a Japanese Zen creed, a warning against empty repetition, and — in a fourteenth-century Noh play — the line a starving old woman uses to win an argument with a priest.
Overview
The sense. The third line of the verse became its name, and every reader has had to say what it does not mean. Tōzan Ryōkai 洞山良价 (Dongshan Liangjie, 807–869), within a generation or two of the verse, warns that saying it earns nothing. The 禪林類聚's master says do not misunderstand to the monk who bows. Dōgen reads it as a way of polishing the mirror, not a denial that there is one. Gyōnen 凝然 makes it a creed. Kan'ami 観阿弥's beggar-woman makes it an argument for sitting where she likes, and wins. 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 witness 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, with a first attestation in 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 two Meiji novels use 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. No Japanese-English dictionary carries the phrase, and the two American proverb collections do not carry it. It entered English with the sutra's translators and the Zen writers of the 1930s and after.
The historical record
Eighth century, in a manuscript from Dunhuang. The 壇經, the Platform Sutra, in its oldest surviving text. 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 [3].
952. The 祖堂集, a history of the Chan patriarchs compiled at a monastery in Quanzhou. The oldest dated text to carry the five characters. 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 [4].
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. The line is already a saying to be seen through, in the mouth of a master who died in 869, 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? [5] The same saying stands in Tōzan's own record [6] and in the 傳燈玉英集 of 1034 [7].
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? [8] The wording the design and the dictionaries carry is fixed here.
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 [9]. Dōgen keeps the older 有 and treats the verse not as a denial of the mirror but as one way of handling it; a commentary of 1891 puts it in a sentence, 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" [10]. This is the first Japanese instance the dictionaries give.
1268. Gyōnen, 八宗綱要, the primer on the eight schools that Japanese Buddhist students read for six centuries. In its short appendix on Zen, the whole school is given in five characters: 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 [11]. A Meiji commentary traces the words to a text attributed to Bodhidharma himself [12].
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 [13]. From here on this is the sutra's own wording, and it is the design's.
1307, printed in Japan 1367 and 1675. 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 [14]. The verse as a teacher's line, with the older 有, and a warning attached.
Fourteenth century. Kan'ami, 卒都婆小町, a Noh play. 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 [15]: 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.
About 1600. The 謡抄, the first commentary on the Noh. It glosses the line with the verse by name [16]: 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 1893, 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 two popular novels of 1881 and 1886 use the five characters for a man cleaned out at the gambling table, the everyday 無一物 wearing the verse's clothes [17].
1889 and 1894. The 禪林句集, the phrase book Japanese Zen students carried. The five-character line is not an entry. The compiler's own cut of the idea is the four-character 一物也無, not a single thing either, sourced 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? [18] The line is for use, not for reverence.
What is not a source. The contest of verses is the sutra's story about its own origin, and the two oldest texts disagree about what the winning verse said; no witness dates the event. The Huixin 惠昕 recension of 967, which stands between the Dunhuang text and the received one, gives no address here, so when the line entered the sutra itself is left open; a Chan history had it in 952. 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 [17]. A text attributed to Bodhidharma that a Meiji commentary names as the words' source carries no address here either.
The phrase in English
1930. Wong Mou-lam, the first English Platform Sutra; 1967, Philip Yampolsky, the Dunhuang text in English, with its 佛性常清淨 reading: both named as the lineage's steps, neither 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 earliest English rendering read here, and the quotation marks around thing are the translator's own gloss on 無一物 [19].
1960. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume 1, Hokuseido, page 115. The same 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 [20].
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]. The National Diet Library's public-domain books carry the five characters in six hundred and forty books, and the fourth line 何處惹塵埃 in a hundred and twenty-two [21]. The house title, By Nature, Having Nothing, takes 無一物 in its everyday sense, possessions, and 本来 as by nature; the verse's sense is the dictionaries', from the beginning there is not a single thing. Among the house's own alternate glosses, everything comes from nothing is neither: 本来 is not from nothing, and the line asserts that there are no things, not that they have an origin; Actually, there is nothing comes nearest of the three. What a rendering must keep: 本来 as from the beginning, a matter of how things have always been; 無一物 as not one thing, not having nothing; and the fact that this is the third line of a verse and answers a line about dust.
A reading
The text is right for a scroll. 本来無一物 is the line every Japanese reader knows, the received text of the sutra since 1291, the third line of the verse in the Chan histories since 952, a Japanese Zen creed since 1268 and a Japanese sentence on the Noh stage since the fourteenth century. 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 Dongshan's and the beggar-woman's together. The line is the easiest in Zen to say and the tradition has spent eleven centuries warning that saying it is not the point; and a fourteenth-century playwright still thought a starving old woman could win an argument with it. A scroll of these five characters hangs between those two facts.
Notes
- 本来 / 本來. The brushed form writes 本来 with the modern 来; every witness writes 來. They are one word in two forms, and which form a piece carries is a question for the calligrapher, recorded and not yet put to her.
References
- 「本来」「無一物」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank.
- 「本来無一物」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank.
- 『壇經』, Dunhuang manuscript, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2007, p. 338a07–11. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2007&juan=1
- 『祖堂集』卷2, 952, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 B25n0144, p. 341a03–04. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=B0144&juan=2
- 『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
- 洞山良价's own record, at CBETA. Taishō T47n1986A, juan 1.
- 『傳燈玉英集』, 1034, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 B25n0082, juan 5.
- 紹曇『五家正宗贊』, thirteenth century, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 X78n1554, p. 577a02–03.
- 道元『正法眼蔵』, fascicle 古鏡, 1240s. National Diet Library pid 823075, scans 110–111 (1885 typeset).
- Meiji commentary on 古鏡, 1891. National Diet Library pid 823127, scan 114.
- 凝然『八宗綱要』, 1268, at CBETA. 卍新纂續藏經 B32n0171, p. 97a08–13.
- 「八宗綱要」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank; the Meiji commentary, National Diet Library pid 817009, scan 59 (1876 typeset) and pid 817017, scan 109.
- 『壇經』, 宗寶 edition, 1291, at CBETA. Taishō T48n2008, p. 349a07–08.
- 『禪林類聚』, compiled 1307, printed in Japan 1367 and 1675. National Diet Library pid 2559889, scan 57 (1675 print), and pid 2543652, scan 56 (1367 print).
- 観阿弥『卒都婆小町』, fourteenth century. National Diet Library pid 1019634, scan 22 (1926 typeset).
- 『謡抄』, about 1600, on 卒都婆小町. National Diet Library pid 11606633, scan 34; 「卒都婆小町」, at kotobank.
- National Diet Library pids 817009, 817017, 817001, 817189, 816673 (Meiji primers and handbooks), 817127, scan 160 (井上円了), 882408, scan 44, and 881826, scan 34 (the two novels).
- 『禪林句集』, 1889 and 1894 printings. National Diet Library pid 899715, scan 32, and pid 875204, scan 21; the 傳燈錄's 一物也無, at CBETA, 卍新纂續藏經 X83n1577, p. 376a15–16.
- R. H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido, 1942, p. 320.
- R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume 1, Hokuseido, 1960, p. 115.
- National Diet Library, NDL Lab full-text search, 「本来無一物」(640 books) and 「何處惹塵埃」(122 books).