以心伝心 ishindenshin Telepathy
This is a philological study of the Japanese phrase 以心伝心 (ishindenshin), mind to mind. It spans the record from a Chinese Chan master's definition of 857, which already holds that nothing is actually handed over, to Fukuzawa Yukichi's Meiji-era use of it for an influence no test can detect, and examines how a phrase every authority in its own line denies is a real transfer became the ordinary Japanese word for two people who no longer need to speak.
Abstract
以心伝心, ishindenshin, four characters that read as a whole classical sentence, by the heart, transmit the heart, is a Chinese Chan phrase before it is a Japanese one. Its sharpest definition, by the master Huangbo in 857, already contains the paradox the tradition never lets go of: the transmission consists of nothing changing hands. Every authority in its line after him — Wumen mocking the founding story, Dōgen calling the phrase beginners' talk, an eleventh-century statesman told the story is in no scripture, Fukuzawa reaching for it to name an influence no test can detect — denies that anything real passes, and the phrase became, in ordinary Japanese, the warmest thing said of two people who no longer need words.
Overview
The sense. Four characters that read as a sentence — by the heart, transmit the heart. The great historical dictionary of Japanese gives three senses [1]. The Buddhist one: to convey from heart to heart an awakening or a truth that words cannot express, used chiefly by the Zen school — first attested in Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō, 1231–53. The everyday one: for two minds to reach each other without a word, so that nothing has to be explained — first attested in Fukuzawa Yukichi, 1875. And a third that nobody else quotes: in 1933 it was student slang for a love match — free love and free marriage. デジタル大辞泉 warns that writing it 意心伝心 is an error, and lists a long run of near-synonyms from 意気投合 and 肝胆相照らす to 拈華微笑 [1]. 世界大百科事典 and 日本大百科全書 both ground the term in the flower-sermon story and pair it with not setting up written words and a transmission outside the teachings as the Zen school's mottoes [1]. One encyclopedia, ブリタニカ国際大百科事典, says something the others do not: a word beginning with the Tang Chan monk Huineng [1] — the historical record below tests that.
The words. 以 (i) is the classical Chinese by means of. 心 (shin) is the heart-mind. 伝 (den) is to transmit or hand on. 心 again. Read as classical Chinese, the four characters are a whole sentence: by mind, transmit mind — which is how one Japanese idiom dictionary glosses it, 「心を以て心に伝う」 [1].
The text in English. JMdict gives two senses: telepathy, tacit understanding, thought transference, communion of mind with mind, marked as a four-character idiom, and a separate Buddhist sense, non-verbal Zen Buddhist transmission to a disciple of the central tenets of Buddhism [2]. The house title, Telepathy, is that dictionary's first English word [2] — sourced, and, as the historical record's Today paragraph below sets out, the weakest of the four.
The historical record
857, the Essentials of Mind Transmission (『黃檗山斷際禪師傳心法要』), compiled by the statesman Pei Xiu from the teaching of the master Huangbo.
"If there is nothing to depend on or hold to, how is the succession carried on?" The master said: "Mind transmits mind." "If mind transmits mind, how can you also say there is no mind?" The master said: "To get not a single thing — that is what is called transmitting mind."**
That is the definition the whole later tradition works from, and it already contains the paradox: the transmission consists of nothing changing hands [3].
The Tang dynasty, the Bloodstream Sermon, a text carried under the name of Bodhidharma. The pairing everyone knows — mind to mind, without setting up written words — is in the Bloodstream Sermon: the three realms arise and return to one mind; the buddhas before and the buddhas after transmit mind by mind, and do not set up words [4].
738 to 839, Chengguan, fourth patriarch of the Huayan school. And the phrase is not only Chan property: Chengguan, who died in 839, uses it in his own preface — employing the purport of mind-transmitting-mind … to reconcile the Chan schools of North and South [5].
1004, the Transmission of the Lamp. In the great lamp-record it does three different jobs. Once as a verdict — mind transmitting mind: this is right view. Once as the lineage claim — after the Buddha's extinction he entrusted the Dharma to Kāśyapa, mind to mind, and each generation transmitted to one man only, with the sharp objection following immediately: if all beings are the Buddha's only child, why is the transmission not universal? And once, best of all, as an exchange with the master Xuefeng [6]:
"Did the ancient worthies not transmit mind by mind?" — "And they set up no written words or phrases either." — "If there are no words or phrases, how does the master transmit?" — Xuefeng was silent for a long while. The monk bowed his thanks.
About the Sixth Patriarch: 1291, the 宗寶 recension of the Platform Sutra. One encyclopedia says the phrase begins with Huineng [1], and the Platform Sutra does contain it: the Fifth Patriarch, handing over the robe, tells him the robe is a token of faith, but the Dharma is transmitted mind to mind, and each is made to awaken and understand for himself [7]. That sentence, however, is in the recension of 1291. In the Dunhuang manuscript of the Platform Sutra, the oldest we have, the two characters transmit mind do not occur at all [8]. Six centuries separate the man from the sentence, and the attribution is a fair reading of the received text rather than of the earliest one.
1228, the Gateless Gate, case 6 — the flower sermon. The origin everyone cites is the flower sermon:
Long ago, at the assembly on Vulture Peak, the World-Honored One held up a flower and showed it to the assembly. All were silent. Only the venerable Kāśyapa broke into a smile. The World-Honored One said: "I have the treasury of the true dharma eye, the wondrous mind of nirvāṇa, the true form of no-form, the subtle gate of the Dharma — not setting up written words, transmitted outside the teachings — and I entrust it to Mahākāśyapa."
In Robert Aitken's English of 1991 the sentence runs It is not established upon words and phrases. It is a special transmission outside tradition. I now entrust this to Mahākāśyapa, and Wumen's comment He sells dog flesh under the sign of mutton [9]. Two things about that page are worth attention. The phrase 以心伝心 does not appear in the Gateless Gate at all [10] — the story and the words live in different books. And Wumen, who chose the case, mocks it in his own comment: the yellow-faced Gautama behaves as if nobody were there … he hangs out a sheep's head and sells dog meat. Suppose the whole assembly had laughed — how would the treasury of the true dharma eye have been transmitted? And suppose Kāśyapa had not smiled — how then?
1741, Mujaku Dōchū's Zen Grove Lexicon (『禪林象器箋』), reporting an eleventh-century exchange. In the eleventh century a statesman asked for the source. The Japanese Zen scholar Mujaku Dōchū collected the whole argument in 1741. Wang Anshi — the great Song reformer — asked the Chan master Fohui Quan: what the Chan people call "the World-Honored One held up a flower" — which scripture is that in? The master answered: "It is not in the canon." Wang then said that he had once, in the imperial academy, come across a three-fascicle Sutra of Brahmā's Questions that told the story in full, and that the sutra had been kept secret because it dealt with emperors' affairs, so the world had not heard of it. Lecturers of the day replied that the sutra contained no such thing and that the transmission was false [11]. The sutra does survive — but only in the supplementary canon, the collection where Chinese-composed and doubtful texts are kept, and the copy is full of holes [12]. A tradition was asked for its papers and produced a book nobody could find.
1231 to 1253, Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō. In Japan, the first writer to use the phrase also puts it down. Dōgen writes it twice. Once plainly, in the chapter Twining Vines — the passage the dictionary cites as the first attestation. And once, in The Insentient Preach the Dharma, like this: there is skin, flesh, bone and marrow in this speaking; it is not only mind-transmitting-mind — **mind-transmitting-mind is the talk of beginners and late learners [13].
1875, Fukuzawa Yukichi's An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (『文明論之概略』), book three. The first secular use is a complaint, in the first edition, where the teacher is 教師, and in three later printings that differ from it by a particle [14]:
The teacher's work ends there; he has no other art for transmitting the Way. Beyond it there is only each man's own effort — reading the ancients, watching what men of today say and do, and imitating their conduct. This is the so-called mind-to-mind, or what some call moral influence. Influence being formless, there can be no test of whether it has taken or not.
Fukuzawa is not admiring the phrase; he is naming what people say when a method cannot be examined.
1872 to 1877, three early secular books. Then it escapes into ordinary Japanese almost at once, and into unlikely books: a manual of physical diagnosis, on learning to hear what a chest sounds like [15]; a comic novel, printed with its pronunciation spelled out in kana for readers who did not know it [16]; and a handbook on rearing wild silkworms, where the liveliness and fineness of the technique is grasped in the mind and cannot be exhausted by the tongue — and so the ancients said, mind to mind [17]. A doctor, a comedian and a silkworm farmer, close together in time.
1905 to 1967, and the twentieth-century curve. Its great age is the twentieth century: some four thousand books in the Diet Library's public-domain index use it, rising decade by decade to a peak in the 1930s [18]. Sōseki has it in I Am a Cat in 1905; Ibuse Masuji in 1956; Kaga Otohiko in 1967 [1]. Fewer than four percent of those books are pre-modern.
1974, Nelson's Japanese-English Character Dictionary. And it was Nelson's before it was the web's: the character dictionary glosses 以心伝心 telepathy; sympathy [19].
Today. English never settled on one rendering, and the counts show which way it went: a special transmission outside the scriptures is by far the commonest form in print, then mind to mind transmission, then the romanization ishin denshin, then transmission from mind to mind [20]. The everyday half of the word travels separately, as tacit understanding. The house title, Telepathy, comes from the standard online dictionary of Japanese, which lists it first — ahead of tacit understanding, thought transference and communion of mind with mind [2]. Telepathy is a transfer — content leaving one head and arriving in another, the very thing the tradition spends eight centuries denying; Mind to Mind keeps the four characters and takes no position, and tacit understanding is what the word means in a Japanese sentence today.
What is not a source. The Gateless Gate is not a source for the phrase [10], though it is the source for the story; the four characters do not occur in it. The oldest Platform Sutra is not a source for it either [8] — that sentence enters in 1291 [7]. And the flower sermon has no undisputed scripture behind it. Its only scriptural home is a text that survives outside the main canon and was already being called a forgery in the Song [12]. One more, smaller: 拈華微笑, the four-character name for the flower story, appears in some nine hundred books in the index and not one of them is pre-modern [18] — the story is ancient, its tidy label is modern.
A reading
This is the most successful phrase in Japanese for a thing its own tradition kept insisting could not be handed over.
Look at who says so. Huangbo: what is transmitted is not one single thing. Wumen: a sheep's head over dog meat — and what would have been transmitted if nobody had smiled? Xuefeng, asked how a wordless teaching passes, says nothing at all for a long time, and the monk thanks him for the answer. Dōgen, the first Japanese to write the phrase, calls it beginners' talk. Wang Anshi asks which scripture the story is in and is told there is none. Fukuzawa reaches for it to name the kind of influence no test can detect. And the phrase won anyway — four thousand books, and a place today in the warmest ordinary sentence one can say about two people.
The refusals are the meaning, not an obstacle to it. What the word names is not a transfer but a recognition: two people arriving at the same place, with no evidence that it happened except that both of them know. That is exactly the shape of the story it comes from. The Buddha says nothing and holds up a flower; the only proof is one man's face changing.
And it is not a word about powers. It is a word about company — right for two people who have been together long enough that it is simply true, and right for a teacher and a student, which is where it started.
Notes
Every witness cited above and dated before 1946 writes the older form 以心傳心; 伝 for 傳 is ordinary modern orthography, not a variant reading.
Ishindenshin takes no macron.
References
- 「以心伝心」, 精選版日本国語大辞典 · デジタル大辞泉 · 世界大百科事典 · 日本大百科全書 · ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 · 四字熟語を知る辞典 · ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/以心伝心
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「以心伝心」, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/api/v1/search/words?keyword=以心伝心
- 裴休編, 『黃檗山斷際禪師傳心法要』, 857, CBETA T2012A, j1. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2012A&juan=1
- 『少室六門』血脈論 (Tang, attrib. 菩提達磨), CBETA T2009, j1. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2009&juan=1
- 澄觀, 『大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏演義鈔』卷2 (738–839), CBETA T1736, j2. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T1736&juan=2
- 道原, 『景德傳燈錄』, 1004, CBETA T2076, j9 · j13 · j18. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=9 · https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=13 · https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=18
- 『六祖大師法寶壇經』(宗寶本, 1291), CBETA T2008, j1. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2008&juan=1
- 敦煌本『壇經』(唐, 法海集), CBETA T2007, j1. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2007&juan=1
- Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-men Kuan (Mumonkan), North Point Press, 1991, case 6.
- 無門慧開, 『無門關』第六則 世尊拈花, 1228, CBETA T2005, j1. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2005&juan=1
- 無著道忠, 『禪林象器箋』靈像門, 1741, CBETA B0103, j5. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=B0103&juan=5
- 『大梵天王問佛決疑經』, CBETA X0026, j2. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=X0026&juan=2
- 道元, 『正法眼蔵』, 1231–53, 葛藤 (scan 235) · 無情説法 (scan 266). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018721/1/235 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018721/1/266
- 福沢諭吉, 『文明論之概略』巻之三, 1875, first edition (scan 20–21) · 1926 printing (『福沢全集』, scan 73). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993901/1/20 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/979054/1/73
- 佐々木師興, 『診法要略』, 1872. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/834418
- 増山守正, 『臍の西国：滑稽窮理』, 1876. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/882686
- 尾崎行正, 『山蚕或問』, 1877. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/841290
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 以心伝心 and 拈華微笑, 4,049 and 927 books, counted by decade. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- Andrew N. Nelson, The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary, 1974, entry 心 (以心伝心).
- Internet Archive full-text search, counts on nine English forms of the phrase. https://be-api.us.archive.org/ia-pub-fts-api