Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

一身如雲水、悠悠任去來 isshin unsui no gotoku, yūyū to shite kyorai ni makasu Like Cloud and Water, I Come and Go at Ease

一身如雲水, like cloud and water, I come and go at ease: from Fenggan's poem, copied by a Japanese pilgrim in 1072 at the temple where the legend places him.

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Abstract

一身如雲水、悠悠任去來, like cloud and water, I come and go at ease, is the third and fourth lines of a twenty-line poem given to Fenggan 豐干, in Japanese Bukan, the monk whom the legend of Hanshan 寒山 places at 國清寺 on Mount Tiantai and whom 入矢義高 took for a figure the legend added as it grew; in the telling printed with the Hanshan poems, it stood written on the wall of his room [1][2][3][4]. The oldest dated witness found is Japanese, the monk 成尋's diary of 1072, which copies the first four lines at 國清寺; the oldest Japanese commentary read, of 1672, ends a gāthā at the same place, and in 1907 a Meiji editor, saying the Japanese editions had cut the piece into four, printed it whole [5][6][7]. In the Japanese books read, the line serves as a proof-text of the word 雲水: commentators on Dōgen wrote it beside the 雲水 of his texts, and a dictionary of 1908 cites it under the reading うんすゐ, though Dōgen's own rule for the monks' hall has only the word [8][9][10][11]. The history reads 雲水 as unsui, the free life of the 日本国語大辞典's third sense, and signs a reading of the couplet as a man's account of himself, not a description of monks.

Overview

The words. 一身 isshin, one body; oneself, oneself alone (日国 ① 一つの身体。ひとりの人 ② 自分自身。自分ひとり) [12]. 如 gotoku, like. 雲水 unsui, cloud and water; the 日国 gives three senses: ① 雲と水, cloud and water; ② 所定めず諸所を遍歴する禅僧, the Zen monk who travels from place to place with no fixed abode, first in Dōgen's 正法眼蔵; ③ 思うままに遍歴すること。また、その人, wandering as one pleases, or one who does, and under ③, among its other sources, it names 〔豊干‐壁上詩〕, this poem [13]. The デジタル大辞泉 leads with 一所にとどまらない自由な人。また、そのような境涯, a free person who stays in no one place, or such a life, and gives the itinerant monk second [13]. 悠悠 yūyū: the 日国's ① far, endless, and ② ゆったりとおちついたさま, calm and at ease [14]. 任 makasu, to leave to, let go as it will. 去來 kyorai, going and coming [15]. Word for word: one-self like cloud-water / at-ease leave-to going-coming. In this library's history of 行雲流水 the line is rendered my whole self is like cloud and water, drifting at ease, going and coming as it will [16]; the title here is shorter.

The poet. The デジタル大辞泉 gives 豊干 (ぶかん, also ほうかん) as a Tang monk who, it is said, lived at 國清寺 on Mount Tiantai and took in Hanshan and Shide, the three later called the 三聖; his dates are unknown [1]. The 世界大百科事典, in 入矢義高's entry, takes Hanshan for a figure of about the ninth century with no reliable biography, and Shide and Fenggan for 分身, doubles, added as the Hanshan legend swelled [2]. The poem stands under his name in every edition read [3][17][4].

Forms. In the 1647 Kyoto print and its 1633 block line: 一身如雲水悠々任去來 [3][18]. 成尋 1072 and the 嘉興藏 of 1599: 一身如雲水,悠悠任去來 [5][17]. The 1878 print of 面山's commentary: 一身如雲水、悠々任去来 [8]. The form on the work order, 一身如雲水、悠悠任去來, is the canon's; the modern form 来 is the one the 1878 print already writes [8].

The historical record

The poem on the wall

The Japanese prints of the Hanshan poems carry, after them, a short life headed 豐干禪師錄, the record of the Chan master Fenggan. In the print of 正保4 (1647) it tells how he lived at 國清寺, cut his hair level with his brows, answered every question with 隨時, it depends, husked rice for the monks, rode a tiger in by the pine path, and then [3]:

賢人隱遯示化東甌唯於房中壁上書曰

the worthy had hidden himself and appeared, transformed, in eastern Ou; only on the wall of his room was written: then the poem. Paul Rouzer, translating the Song text, has manifesting himself magically in the region of eastern Ou. There were only some lines written on the walls of his room, and notes that the record speaks in the first person of 閭丘胤, the purported author of the Preface, and that Ou is the coast of Zhejiang where the Tiantai mountains are [4]. The same print ends with the 記 of the monk 志南, dated 淳熙十六年, 1189, so it descends from his edition of the three hermits' poems [19].

The poem, in the 嘉興藏 text of 1599 [17]:

余自來天台,曾經幾萬迴。一身如雲水,悠悠任去來。逍遙絕無鬧,忘機隆佛道。世間岐路心,眾生多煩惱。兀兀沉浪海,漂漂輪三界。可惜一靈物,無始被境埋。電光瞥然起,生死紛塵埃。寒山特相訪,拾得常往來。論心話明月,太虛廓無礙。法界即無邊,一法普遍該。

Twenty lines: since I came to Tiantai, I have been through some ten thousand turns; like cloud and water, I come and go at ease, and then the free life without clamor, the world's forked minds, beings drowning in the sea of births, the one numinous thing buried, lightning, dust, Hanshan coming to call and Shide coming and going, talk of the mind and the bright moon, the void without hindrance, one dharma that covers all. Rouzer, whose text reads 凡經 and 世途, notes that the Song edition prints the poem as twenty lines divided by stanza divisions indicated by rhyme change [4]: the even lines rhyme 迴 and 來, then 道 and 惱, so the first rhyme ends with our couplet. A second poem follows under his name, a quatrain beginning 本來無一物 [17][4], whose first line is the line this library's history of 本来無一物 follows [20].

The Song record of the Chan lineages, the 景德傳燈錄, tells Fenggan's life, the tiger and the 閭丘胤 story, and gives no poem [21].

1072: a Japanese pilgrim copies four lines

The Tendai monk 成尋 left Japan for the Song in 1072 [22]. Under the fourteenth day of the fifth month of 熙寧5 (1072) (the day's heading names no month; month and year stand at the sixteenth, p. 346c24), at 國清寺, his diary 『參天台五臺山記』 records that at noon he worshiped at the 三賢院, the hall of the three worthies, retells the legend in the words of the preface, and ends [5]:

豐干詩。余自來天台。凡經幾萬廻。一身如雲水。悠悠任去來。委旨在傳錄。

Fenggan's poem: since I came to Tiantai, I have been through some ten thousand turns; like cloud and water, I come and go at ease. The details are in the records. He copied four lines and no more. This is the oldest dated record of the poem found, more than a century older than 志南's edition of 1189 [19], and it is a Japanese monk's, written at the temple where the poem is set.

The poem whole in China

The poem circulated whole. The monks 楚石梵琦 and 福慧 (野竹) wrote answer-poems to it, rhyme for rhyme, printed with it under the heading 豐干禪師詩并和共六首 [23]. The 嘉興藏 of the Ming prints it with the Hanshan poems under the heading 豐干詩附 and a colophon of 萬曆己亥, 1599 [17]. A Ming anthology of 1618, 李贄's 『三教妙述』, prints it in sixteen lines, without 忘機隆佛道 and 世間岐路心 or 太虛廓無礙 and 法界即無邊 [24]. A text of 1905 was set in lead type from 島田翰's hand collation of the Song large-character print in the 內府, the Imperial Household library (据島田翰手校內府宋大字本範鉛槧勒, its title leaf); it reads 曾經幾萬廻 and 悠悠任去來 [25]. Tanahashi and Levitt describe the Song version in the Japanese Imperial Household library as 志南's compilation of 1189, with a postscript of 1229 [26].

Japan: a commentary cuts it where 成尋 did

The Japanese line of the text descends from a print made in 正中2, 1325: the 1647 Kyoto print reproduces its colophon, 寒山詩終 正中歲次旃蒙赤奮若冬十月下澣 禪尼宗澤, the nun 宗澤's print of the year 乙丑 [3]. The 1633 print is the same block line, column for column [18]. The 1647 print carries 訓点, the marks for reading the Chinese as Japanese, and at enlargement reads the couplet 一身雲水ノ如ク、悠々トシテ去來ニ任ス; the 1633 print has the same marks column for column, read at ordinary size; neither puts a reading in kana beside 雲水 [3][18]. The 1647 print runs the poem on: 任去來 and 逍遙 stand in one column, with no mark between [3].

The oldest commentary read, 交易's 『寒山子詩集管解』 of 寛文12 (1672), prints Fenggan's record with the poems and says 凡有五偈, five gāthās in all. His first is the four lines 成尋 copied, 余自來天台凡經幾萬廻一身如雲水悠悠任去來, read 悠悠トシテ去來ニ任ス; his second begins 逍遙絕無鬧, his third 兀兀沈浪海, his fourth 寒山特相訪 [6]. His note to the first explains 幾萬廻 and Tiantai from Hanshan's own lines, and says nothing of 雲水 [6].

In 1907 釈清潭 printed the twenty lines as one poem in his 『寒山詩新釈』, with 豐干 glossed ブカン, and wrote [7]:

和本は此篇を截て四首と爲す、今唐本に從て一首と爲す、始めて義理通貫す

The Japanese editions cut this piece into four poems; I now follow the Chinese edition and make it one, and for the first time the sense runs through. 清潭 does not say where the Japanese editions made their cuts. In 交易's commentary the first falls after the couplet, at the four lines 成尋 had copied; the 1647 print runs the poem on [6][3].

雲水: the gloss on Dōgen's word

In Japan the line's life has been as a gloss on a word. Dōgen 道元 uses 雲水 for the monk who travels from teacher to teacher, and the 日国 dates that sense from his 正法眼蔵 [13]. His 宝慶記 has, in the line 這裡箇々老宿耆年雲水兄弟都不知, the 雲水兄弟, brother monks; the commentator 面山瑞方 (1683–1769, by the National Diet Library's record), in a commentary on the 宝慶記 printed in 1878, writes beside it [8]:

雲水 三隠記下、豊于偈、一身如雲水、悠々任去来

雲水: in the record of the three hermits, part two, Fenggan's gāthā: one-self like cloud and water, at ease, going and coming as it will. The print writes 来, and for the 干 of 豊干 a character with a slanted top stroke and a hooked foot, 于 or 千 (read at full resolution); read as 豊干. In 1882 an annotated edition of Dōgen's rule for the monks' hall, 衆寮箴規 (標註, with 古田梵仙's 傍解), sets the same line in its head-notes beside the rule's 雲水 [9]:

雲水 三隱詩下豊干禪師偈云一身如雲水悠悠任去來

The annotated editions of the rule of 1883, 1884 and 1887 carry the same head-note beside the same word [27].

The rule itself does not quote the line. Dōgen's 衆寮箴規, dated 寶治3 (1249), read whole in the Taishō, has 雲水 once [11]:

寮中不可到他人之案頭。而顧視他人看讀。乃妨自他道業也。雲水之最所爲痛也。

In the hall, do not go to another's desk and look at what he is reading: it hinders the way of both, and it is what the 雲水 most deplore. The verse is the commentators', set beside Dōgen's word. The dictionaries followed: a dictionary of Japanese and Chinese words of 1908 enters うんすゐ 雲水 as 雲か水かのやうに、居所も定まらぬ義にて、行脚の僧をいふ, like cloud or water, meaning one whose dwelling is not fixed: said of the itinerant monk, and cites 豐干禪師の詩に「一身如雲水悠々任去來」, glossing 豐干 ブカン [10]. This library's history of 行雲流水 tells the 1906 dictionary entry that derives the monk's name 雲水 from 行雲流水 and cites this line for it [16]. The 日国 cites the poem not under the monk but under ③, wandering as one pleases [13].

Given to Hanshan

A master's talk on the 『伝光録』, by 大円玄致 (1842–1920), printed in 1925, glosses 脫落身心 with the line and gives it to Hanshan: 寒山子は、「一身如雲水 悠々任去來」といふた, Hanshan said, "like cloud and water, I come and go at ease" [28]. Every edition read prints it under Fenggan [3][17][4].

The line today

The National Diet Library's full-text index of printed books and magazines, read in its search windows from 1982 to 2000, shows the line's later life in Japan in the tea room and the calligrapher's phrase book; the windows show where it appears, not how often. The tea magazine 淡交 reports a gathering whose alcove scroll was 一身如雲水, brushed jointly (合筆) by the grand master 鵬雲斎 and the monk 逸外 (1982) [29], and in 2000 explains it with the four lines read 一身雲水の如く、悠々去来に任す [30]. A phrase book for calligraphers of 1993 gives it as 一身雲水の如く悠悠去来に任す … 豐千禪師 (the text layer's 千, read as 干) [31]; a handbook of Zen phrases of 1998 reads 一身は雲水の如し and derives 雲水 from 行雲流水 or 穿雲渡水 [32]; a stone in the teacher's own hand beside the teacher's grave reads 一身如雲水・悠々任去来 [33].

The poem in English

Of the translators of the Hanshan poems, Burton Watson names Fenggan and says none of the latter translated here [34]; Tanahashi and Levitt leave his poems out [26]. Red Pine, in 2000, splits the twenty lines into three poems of eight, six and six; his first opens [35]:

I have been to Tientai / maybe a million times / like a cloud or river / drifting back and forth

with the note Monks who wandered from temple to temple were called "brothers of clouds and rivers" [35]. Paul Rouzer, in 2017, keeps the twenty lines as one poem [4]:

Ever since I came to Tiantai / Myriads of cycles have gone by. / My single form is like cloud and water, / And through the vastness I go where I please.

Rouzer's the vastness answers the 日国's first sense of 悠悠, far, endless; the Japanese readings, 悠々トシテ in the Edo prints and 悠々去来に任す today, make it the manner of the going, which is the 日国's second, at ease [14][3][6][31][30]. In the library's books these are the only two English renderings of the couplet; Robert Henricks's complete translation of 1990 was not seen.

What is not a source, and what is not claimed

A reading

I read the couplet as a man speaking of himself. 一身 is the first word: one body, oneself alone [12]. He has come to Tiantai and been through ten thousand turns; he does not say that he is a monk, a 雲水 in the second sense, but that he himself, one body, is like cloud and water, and that, at ease, he leaves his going and coming to go as it will. The 日国 hears it the same way when it cites the poem under wandering as one pleases [13], and so does the 大辞泉 when it leads 雲水 with a free person who stays in no one place [13]. 成尋, who copied these four lines, and 交易, who ends a gāthā after them, give it the shape the scroll gives it, a self-portrait in four lines that ends on letting go [5][6]. The commentators on Dōgen read the same words as a definition of the monk, and in their books that is what the line is for [8][9]; on the scroll it is not a rule for anyone. 雲水 here I read as unsui, the reading every witness that shows one gives: the 1908 dictionary under うんすゐ, the 日国 under うん‐すい [10][13]; and 悠悠 as the Edo prints mark it, yūyū to shite [3][6]. The line I would hang is the line read this way: I am like cloud and water, I come and go at ease. Signed, 典.

Notes

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Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Sources not seen

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

References

  1. 「豊干」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E8%B1%8A%E5%B9%B2-123796
  2. 「寒山拾得」, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (寒山・拾得, 入矢義高), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%AF%92%E5%B1%B1%E6%8B%BE%E5%BE%97-48804
  3. 『三隠詩集』, 正保4 (1647), 村上平楽寺, 四天王寺大学 恩頼堂文庫, canvas 44 (folio 三十七, 豐干禪師錄 and the poem; the colophon of 正中2 on the same canvas), at the 国書データベース. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100442253/44
  4. Paul Rouzer, The Poetry of Hanshan (Cold Mountain), Shide, and Fenggan, De Gruyter, 2017, pp. 336–338 and notes 1–3, open access (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/27418/9781501501913.pdf
  5. 成尋, 『參天台五臺山記』 卷1, 熙寧5年5月14日, B32n0174, p. 346a18–b20 (the year, 熙寧五年五月十六日, at p. 346c24), at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/B32n0174_p0346b18
  6. 交易, 『寒山子詩集管解』 卷7, 寛文12 (1672), 二松学舎大学, canvases 201–202 (colophon canvas 234), at the 国書データベース. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100419435/202
  7. 釈清潭, 『寒山詩新釈』, 1907, 附錄の一 豐干詩, p. 225, National Diet Library pid 894786, scan 121. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/894786/1/121
  8. 瑞方 (面山瑞方), 『宝慶記摘葉集』 下, printed 1878, folio 四十八, National Diet Library pid 823489, scan 50. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823489/1/50
  9. 道元, 『吉祥山永平寺衆寮箴規 標註』, 古田梵仙 傍解, 1882, head-note, National Diet Library pid 822929, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/822929/1/6
  10. 畠山健 閲, 『国語漢文中辞林』, 1908, p. 54, National Diet Library pid 862836, scan 94. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862836/1/94
  11. 道元, 『永平元禪師清規』, 衆寮箴規, T82 no. 2584, 0329c20–0331a14 (雲水 at 0330a19), at SAT. https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/T2584_.82.0329c20:0331a14.cit
  12. 「一身」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E4%B8%80%E8%BA%AB-434248
  13. 「雲水」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%9B%B2%E6%B0%B4-35656
  14. 「悠悠」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%82%A0%E6%82%A0-651250
  15. 「去来」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%8E%BB%E6%9D%A5-53511
  16. Takase Studios, Philology library, 行雲流水 kōun ryūsui, § The historical record (the 1906 故事熟語辞典; What is not a source). https://takase.com/library/philology/koun-ryusui
  17. 『寒山子詩集』, 豐干詩附, 嘉興藏 J20nB103, p. 669b22–c06 (colophon 萬曆己亥, p. 669c13), at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/J20nB103_p0669b23
  18. 『寒山詩』, 寛永10 (1633), 中野市右衛門, 国文学研究資料館 ワ4-65, canvas 41, at the 国書データベース. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/200013322/41
  19. 志南, 天台山國清寺三隱集記, 淳熙16 (1189), in 『三隠詩集』, 正保4 (1647), canvas 57, at the 国書データベース. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100442253/57
  20. Takase Studios, Philology library, 本来無一物 honrai muichimotsu. https://takase.com/library/philology/honrai-muichimotsu
  21. 『景德傳燈錄』 卷27, 天台豐干禪師, T51 no. 2076, 0433b11–c05, at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/T51n2076_p0433b11
  22. 「参天台五台山記」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%8F%82%E5%A4%A9%E5%8F%B0%E4%BA%94%E5%8F%B0%E5%B1%B1%E8%A8%98-71182
  23. 楚石梵琦 and 福慧, 『天台三聖詩集和韻』, 嘉興藏 J33nB283, p. 422a12–a22, at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/J33nB283_p0422a12
  24. 李贄, 『三教妙述』 4集, 萬暦46 (1618) 序刊, folio 八十六, National Diet Library pid 2580806, scan 25. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2580806/1/25
  25. 島田翰 校, 『寒山詩集 宋大字本』, 1905, scan 4 (title leaf) and scan 62 (folio 三十三), National Diet Library pid 894785. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/894785/1/62
  26. Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt, The Complete Cold Mountain, Shambhala, 2018, the note on the text (the library's copy, text layer).
  27. 道元, 『永平元禅師清規』, annotated editions: 冠註, 1883, pid 822863; 増冠傍註, 1884, pid 822859; 補註傍解, 1887, pid 822861; the 衆寮箴規 head-note at scan 5 of each, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/822863/1/5
  28. 大円玄致 垂示, 『伝光録白字弁』, 1925, p. 400, National Diet Library pid 971129, scan 208. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971129/1/208
  29. 『淡交』, July 1982 (search window only), National Diet Library pid 7891091. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/7891091
  30. 『淡交』, August 2000 (search window only), National Diet Library pid 7891325. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/7891325
  31. 宇山栖霞 編著, 『集大成現代墨場必携』, 1993 (search window only), National Diet Library pid 13395999. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13395999
  32. 沖本克己・竹貫元勝, 『これで大丈夫禅語百科』, 1998 (search window only), National Diet Library pid 14026457. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14026457
  33. 酒井大岳, 『あるけば咲いている』, 1999 (search window only), National Diet Library pid 14085454. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14085454
  34. Burton Watson, Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T'ang Poet Han-shan, Grove Press, 1962, introduction (the library's copy, text layer).
  35. Red Pine, The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, revised and expanded, Copper Canyon Press, 2000, p. 261 (the poem) and p. 260 (note 1) (the library's copy).

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