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諸行無常 shogyō mujō All Things Are Impermanent

諸行無常 (shogyō mujō) says that all that is made keeps changing and nothing lasts unchanged. It is the first line of a verse in the Chinese sutras, and in Japan it is cut on a stone at Yakushiji in 753. This study follows the bell that rings it, from a Chinese monk's vision of 667 to the opening of the 平家物語.

Japanese Scroll of All Things Are Impermanent (shogyō mujō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
All Things Are Impermanent諸行無常shogyō mujō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

諸行無常, read shogyō mujō, says that everything that is made keeps changing, arising and perishing, and that nothing lasts unchanged; the 日本国語大辞典 and the デジタル大辞泉 call it one of the three seals of the Buddhist teaching, and the 大智度論 lists that seal first [1][2]. It is the first line of a four-line verse that the Chinese translations of the sutras give to the god Śakra at the Buddha's death, to the Buddha himself, and to the monk Upagupta feeding two orphaned tiger cubs, and the 涅槃経 gave it the story of a boy in the Himalaya who offered his body to a demon for its second half [3][4][5][6]. In Japan the four characters stand on the Buddha's-footprint stone of 薬師寺, cut in 753 for a dead wife, and 空海 quoted the verse in an offering for another dead woman [7][8]. In 985 源信 set the verse beside a bell that the Chinese monk 道宣 had described in 667 from a vision, a crystal bell that rang the four lines so that dying monks were freed of pain; from there the bell rang through the 栄花物語, the 平家物語, the 徒然草 and the noh and kabuki stage [9][10][11]. My reading, signed below, is that the line in its sources states a fact about what is made and ends in stillness, and that the warning English hears in the 平家's bell is not in the bell's own story.

Overview

The sense. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 at kotobank defines 諸行無常 as 仏語。仏教の根本主張である三法印の一つ。世の中のいっさいの造られたものは常に変化し生滅して、永久不変なものはないということ, a Buddhist term: one of the three seals, the root assertions of Buddhism; that everything made in the world is always changing, arising and perishing, and nothing is eternal and unchanging; the デジタル大辞泉 gives the same with 世の中の一切のもの, everything in the world [1]. The 日本大百科全書 explains the made: the 行 of 諸行 means つくられたもの, what is made, so the whole says that everything made arises, perishes and changes with the passing of time and nothing is constant [1]. JMdict enters it as all things must pass; all worldly things are impermanent [12]. A news glossary of 2017 at the same page adds that the phrase is mostly used when speaking of the fleetingness of life, 人生のはかなさを語るときに使うことが多い [1].

The words. 諸行 has three senses in the dictionaries, and only the first is the phrase's: the デジタル大辞泉 gives ① 因縁の和合によってつくられる、この世の一切の事物・現象, every thing and event in this world, made by the coming together of causes and conditions, then ② every good deed, and ③ in the Pure Land school, every practice other than the nenbutsu [13]. The made is the 有為 of the sutras, which the デジタル大辞泉 explains as the translation of the Sanskrit saṃskṛta, 作られたものの意, meaning what is made [14]. 無常 is the word impermanence, older than Buddhism in Chinese; its first sense in both dictionaries is the one here [15].

The verse. The four lines read 諸行無常，是生滅法，生滅滅已，寂滅為樂: all that is made is impermanent; this is the law of arising and perishing; when arising and perishing have perished, their stilling is bliss [6]. The Pāli of the same verse, at the Buddha's death, is Aniccā vata saṅkhārā, uppādavayadhammino; uppajjitvā nirujjhanti, tesaṁ vūpasamo sukho [16].

What follows. The historical record follows the verse through the Chinese canon, the seals and the bell, then into Japan: a stone, an offering, the bell of the 平家 and of the stage, the reading and the English. A reading is mine.

The historical record

A verse older than its story

The four lines stand whole in several Chinese translations, each in a different setting. In the 別譯雜阿含經, an anonymous translation, the god Śakra, 釋提桓因, speaks them at the Buddha's death, with a fourth line of its own, 乃名涅盤, this is called nirvāṇa [3]:

釋提桓因復說偈言：「諸行無常，是生滅法，生滅滅已，乃名涅盤。」

Śakra then spoke a verse: "All that is made is impermanent; this is the law of arising and perishing; when arising and perishing have perished, this is called nirvāṇa." The same translation ends the Buddha's discourse on the forgotten names of a mountain with the four lines as they are known [17]. In the 大般涅槃經 attributed to the pilgrim 法顯, the Buddha speaks them himself, to his weeping monks [4][18]:

於是如來即便說偈：「諸行無常，是生滅法，生滅滅已，寂滅為樂。」

Then the Tathāgata spoke a verse: "All that is made is impermanent; this is the law of arising and perishing; when arising and perishing have perished, their stilling is bliss." In the 阿育王傳, a life of the emperor Aśoka attributed to a translator of the Western Jin, the monk Upagupta feeds two tiger cubs whose mother has died, 為虎子而說偈言, and spoke the verse for the tiger cubs, saying it in their ears each day as he fed them [5]. In a sutra attributed to 鳩摩羅什, the future Buddha Maitreya, watching a jeweled tower vanish, praises the cool, sweet-dew verse of impermanence of the past Buddhas and recites the four lines [19][20]. The dates the canon gives these translations are its traditional attributions, and this history does not rest a first on any of them [5]. The Sanskrit, in Ernst Waldschmidt's edition of the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, is Śakra's verse at the death, anityā vata saṃskārā utpādavyayadharmiṇaḥ …, but the edition marks every word of the verse except the last as restored from the parallels and not read in the manuscript [21].

A study of 2009 by 沼波政保 counted the phrase in the Taishō canon: 諸行無常 occurs 554 times, 41 times with all four lines and 86 times with only the first two [22].

The boy in the Himalaya

The 大般涅槃經 translated by 曇無讖 tells the verse's best-known story: Śakra, in the form of a demon, spoke the first half, 諸行無常，是生滅法, to a boy practicing in the Himalaya, and the boy gave his body for the second half [6]. The verse is older than this story in the translations above, and the story is one setting of it. The 日本国語大辞典 names the boy 雪山童子, the boy of the snowy mountains, with its earliest example from the 三宝絵 of 984, and the 世界大百科事典 (旧版) notes that the story is painted on the 玉虫厨子, the Tamamushi shrine of 法隆寺 [23].

The first of three seals

In the 大智度論, translated by 鳩摩羅什, a seal of the Buddha's teaching is what lets a reader pass without hindrance, as a king's seal does; the seals are three [2][24]:

佛法印有三種：一者、一切有為法念念生滅皆無常，二者、一切法無我，三者、寂滅涅槃。

The seals of the Buddha's teaching are three: first, all conditioned dharmas arise and perish from moment to moment and are all impermanent; second, all dharmas are without self; third, the stillness of nirvāṇa. The same passage names the first 一切作法無常印, the seal that everything made is impermanent, and explains that what is not made is not called impermanent, since it neither arises nor perishes [2]. This is the made of the 日本国語大辞典's definition. The 阿毘曇毘婆沙論 states it of the phrase itself: 如說諸行無常、諸法無我、涅槃寂靜，此中說一切有為法是行, as when it is said, "all that is made is impermanent, all dharmas are without self, nirvāṇa is still," the 行 here means all conditioned dharmas [25]. 智顗 in the 法華玄義 gives the set its name and its use: a sutra stamped with the three seals is the Buddha's teaching, and 無三法印，即是魔說, without the three seals, it is Māra's [26][27]. The four characters do not stand in the 大智度論's or the 法華玄義's passage; the seal is stated there in other words [2][26].

A bell seen in a vision

The bell that rings the verse is 道宣's. The Vinaya master 道宣 (596–667) wrote, in a handbook of monastic rules the canon's catalogue dates to 626, that at the Jetavana the dying were laid in a hall in the northwest corner, where the sun goes down, called the hall of impermanence, 無常院: 堂號無常，來者極多，還反一二, the hall was called Impermanence; very many came, and one or two returned [28][29]. There is no bell in that passage. In his account of the Jetavana monastery, the 中天竺舍衛國祇洹寺圖經, the hall has eight bells, four of silver and four of crystal; when a sick monk is near death, a gold figure on the crystal bell lifts a white whisk [10]:

手舉白拂，鍾即自鳴，音中亦說：「諸行無常，是生滅法，生滅滅已，寂滅為樂。」病僧聞音，苦惱即除，得清涼樂，如入三禪，垂生淨土。

He raises the white whisk, and the bell rings of itself, and in its sound too are the words: "All that is made is impermanent; this is the law of arising and perishing; when arising and perishing have perished, their stilling is bliss." The sick monk who hears the sound is at once freed of his pain and gains a cool bliss, as if entering the third meditation, and is about to be born in the Pure Land. The silver bells were made by Śakra and the crystal by the god of the moon, and 至佛滅後二鐘上去，各還本土, after the Buddha's death the two kinds of bell rose and went back each to its own heaven [10]. 道宣's own preface heads the book 唐乾封二年季春終南山釋氏感靈所出, brought forth by a spirit's response, on Mount Zhongnan, late spring of the second year of Qianfeng, which is 667, and at its end he answers those who will call it a tale of the dark and of dreams [30][31]. A life of 道宣 written in the Song, which the Taishō editors append, says a deva told him of the book and 道宣 wrote down what he dictated [31].

The book was lost in China and kept in Japan. 元照, the Song Vinaya master, wrote in his commentary on 道宣's handbook 《圖經》：近日本將至，文有兩卷，即祖師撰者, the 圖經 has lately been brought from Japan; it is in two fascicles, the one the founder wrote [32][33]. A Japanese preface of 1681 to the printed text says that in the Song the book had been lost, 此經既喪矣, until 元照 came on it from Japan, and that a whole old copy was found at the 石清水 shrine-temple and cut for print [30]. The text the Taishō prints carries at its end a note in the name of 円珍 (814–891), dated the eighth month of 元慶4, 880, on a copy that a 禅師 named 湛譽 wrote out and gave him [31][34].

In Japan: a stone and an offering

The four characters stand in Japan on the Buddha's-footprint stone of 薬師寺 in Nara, which the dictionaries date to 753 and call the oldest of its kind in Japan [35]. The antiquarian 狩谷棭斎 (1775–1835) copied its inscriptions in his 古京遺文 [36]. In a manuscript copy of that book catalogued in 1843, the back of the stone reads that it was vowed 爲亡夫人從四位下茨田郡王, for the late wife, 茨田郡王 of the junior fourth rank, and another face names its patron, 智努, who took the name 文室眞人 in 752; a further side carries one line [7][37]:

諸行無常。諸法无我。涅槃寂靜。

All that is made is impermanent. All dharmas are without self. Nirvāṇa is still. These are the three seals, not the verse. A typeset edition of 1893 reads the same line, in the library's text [38]. The stone itself was not seen for this history, and both copies are 狩谷's transcription.

空海 (774–835) quoted the verse in an offering for the dead wife of a former governor of 丹波, as the piece's title has it, in the 性霊集, the collection of his writings his disciple 真済 compiled around 835 [8][39][40]. In a print of the early 1600s it reads [8]:

逝水不休尼父談生者必滅我師說故經云諸行無常云々若有男女一聞此偈能滅罪業早登善果雪童投身

"The passing water never rests," said Confucius; "what lives must perish," said our teacher. So the sutra says, "All that is made is impermanent," and the rest. If any man or woman hears this verse once, it can wipe out their sins and bring them early to good fruit. The snow boy threw down his body … The sentence goes on to a second figure who gave his body for the teaching, which this history does not gloss. 空海 quotes the verse by its first line and calls it 此偈, this verse, with the boy beside it. In the verse that closes the catalogue of what he brought back from China, dated 806, he wrote 投身半偈, he threw down his body for half a verse [41].

985: the verse, the bell and the boy

The 三宝絵 of 984, a book of Buddhist stories written in Japanese, tells the boy's story with the first half of the verse heard faintly on the wind; it is the earliest example of 諸行無常 the 日本国語大辞典 gives [42][1]. A year later 源信 (942–1017) brought the verse, the bell and the boy into one paragraph of the 往生要集, the book on rebirth in the Pure Land that shaped Japanese Pure Land belief [9][43][44]:

或復大經偈云。諸行無常。是生滅法。生滅滅已。寂滅爲樂 已上 祇園寺無常堂四隅。有頗梨鍾。鐘音中亦説此偈。病僧聞音苦惱即除。得清涼樂。如入三禪垂生淨土。況復雪山大士捨全身而得此偈。

Or again a verse of the great sutra says: "All that is made is impermanent; this is the law of arising and perishing; when arising and perishing have perished, their stilling is bliss." At the four corners of the hall of impermanence at the Jetavana there are crystal bells, and in the bells' sound this verse is spoken too. The sick monk who hears the sound is at once freed of his pain and gains a cool bliss, as if entering the third meditation, and is about to be born in the Pure Land. And the great being of the snowy mountains gave his whole body to gain this verse. The sentence on the monk who hears the bell is 道宣's, word for word [10].

The 栄花物語, a court history whose first thirty books the dictionaries date to 1028–1034, carries the bell into its seventeenth book [45]. A typeset edition of 1901 with notes by 織田得能 prints the passage [46]:

かの天竺の祇園精舍の玻璃珠の鐘の音に諸行無常是生滅法生滅々已寂滅爲樂とこそ聞ゆなれ。病の僧この鐘の聲を聞きて皆くるしみをうせ、あるひは淨土に生るなり。

In the sound of the crystal bell of the Jetavana monastery in India, it is said, one hears "All that is made is impermanent …" to the end; the sick monk who hears the voice of this bell loses all his suffering, or is born in the Pure Land. 織田's note traces the passage to the 圖經 through the 往生要集 [46]. A cursive copy in the National Diet Library writes the same crystal bell in kana, はりすのかね [47]. Other editions in the library's text end the sentence differently.

The bell of the 平家

The 平家物語, the tale of the fall of the Taira, whose author and date the dictionaries call unknown, opens with the bell [48][49]:

祇園精舍の鐘の聲、諸行無常の響あり、沙羅雙樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理を顯す

The voice of the bell of the Jetavana monastery has the ring of "all that is made is impermanent"; the color of the sal trees' flowers shows the law that the flourishing must decline. The second clause is not the verse's. 沼波's study of 2009 found that in the canon 諸行無常 is never followed by 盛者必衰 and the two are never paired; 盛者必衰 is a line of the 仁王経's verse, and the pairing is the 平家's own [22][50]. 沼波 also reads the bell of the 圖經 as a story to be received as such, not as a bell that rang [22].

兼好's 徒然草, of about 1330, sets the bell's pitch [51][52]:

およそ鐘のこゑは黄鐘調なるべし。これ無常の調子、祇園精舍の無常院のこゑなり。

In general, a bell's voice ought to be in the mode of 黄鐘. This is the mode of impermanence, the voice of the hall of impermanence at the Jetavana. 兼好 does not write 諸行無常. His bell is the 無常院's, and its mode is impermanence [51].

The bells of the stage

On the noh stage the four lines were divided among the hours. In the song 三井寺, a mother searching for her stolen child strikes the temple bell [53]. A book printed in 1714, the 法音抄, which glosses the 三井寺 song, quotes the passage with its reading marked beside the characters [11]:

初夜の鐘をつく時は諸行無常とひゞく也後夜の鐘をつく時は是生滅法と響くなり晨朝のひゞきは生滅々已入逢は寂滅為楽と響きて

When the bell is struck at the first watch of night it rings 諸行無常; when the bell is struck at the last watch it rings 是生滅法; at dawn it rings 生滅滅已; and at sunset it rings 寂滅為楽. The 日本国語大辞典 dates an example of the song to about 1464 [54]. 近松's puppet play 曾根崎心中, first performed in 1703, sounds the bell on the lovers' last walk: the 日本国語大辞典 quotes its line 今生の鐘の響きのききをさめ、じゃくめつゐらくとひびくなり, the last bell of this life they will hear, ringing jakumetsu iraku [55][56]. The kabuki dance 京鹿子娘道成寺, first performed in 1753, gives the four bells to a dancer who resents the temple's bell [57]. A songbook of 1890–91 prints the 長唄 [58]:

鐘に恨みが數々ござる。初夜の鐘をつく時は。諸行無常と響くなり。後夜の鐘をつくときは。是生滅法とひゞくなり。晨鐘のひゞきは生滅々已入相は寂滅爲樂とひゞくなり。聞て驚ろく人もなし。

I have many grudges against the bell. When the bell is struck at the first watch of night, it rings 諸行無常; when the bell is struck at the last watch, it rings 是生滅法; the dawn bell rings 生滅滅已, and the sunset bell rings 寂滅為楽. And no one who hears it is startled.

The banner and the evening bell

In the Edo prints in the library's text, the phrase is written on banners and rung by the evening bell. A 1647 print of 無住's 沙石集, a book of Buddhist tales of 1283, has the four lines written on the paper at the foot of a banner [59][60]. 馬琴's 南総里見八犬伝, in prints of 1814, has four banners hung from the trees on the four sides of a tower with the four lines on them, and the evening bell of a mountain temple bringing the thought of 諸行無常 [61]. A guide to Edo of 1834 prints a temple bell's inscription that includes the four lines [62]. The dictionaries record the burial societies called 無常講, impermanence associations, which pooled money for funerals, and the 世界大百科事典 (旧版) ties the name to the Jetavana's bell: the hall where the gravely ill were laid and a bell was struck at a death, from which, it says, Japan came to call every death 無常事 [63].

The いろは

The いろは song, the forty-seven-syllable poem, has been read as a rendering of the verse in Japanese since a commentary attributed to 覚鑁 (1095–1143) set its lines against the verse's one by one: 色匂散 to 諸行無常, 我世誰常 to 是生滅法, 有爲奥山今日超 to 生滅滅已, 淺夢不醉 to 寂滅爲樂 [64][65]. A Shingon treatise of 1287 sets the two side by side [66]. In English, Arthur Lloyd wrote in 1911 that the Iroha poem is but a paraphrase of the verse [67]. The handbooks say the song is based on the 涅槃経's passage [65].

The reading

The modern dictionaries read the phrase しょぎょうむじょう, and the デジタル大辞泉 gives the older spelling, シヨギヤウムジヤウ [1]. The 1714 commentary on 三井寺 marks the four characters シヨギヤウムジヤウ, and the songbook of 1890–91 しよぎやうむじやう [11][58]. The same spelling stands in kana in a print of the 宝物集, a collection of Buddhist tales of about 1180, dated 1648 in the library's record [68][69]. No other reading was found in the texts read for this history.

In English

The verse reached English from the Pāli before the phrase did. T. W. Rhys Davids, translating the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta in 1881, gave Sakka's verse as How transient are all component things! Their nature's to be born …, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give it, and that rendering was reprinted and quoted many times [70]. The Japanese phrase entered English through Japanese writers: Keijiro Nakamura in 1902 gave Shogyo mujo—Impermanence of things as the first of three phrases that sum up the doctrine, and Tasuku Harada in 1914 the impermanence of all things, sho-gyo-mujo, a most common Buddhist phrase [71][72]. Inouye's dictionary of 1909 gives the 平家's opening, The bell of the Gion monastery tolls … the transitoriness of all things [73]. August Karl Reischauer in 1917 rendered the seal All Work is impermanent (Jap. Shogyo mujo), taking 行 as work, a rendering the later English did not keep [74].

A. L. Sadler's translation of the 平家 in 1918, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, set the English that held [75]:

The sound of the bell of Gionshoja echoes the impermanence of all things.

In his book of 1928 Sadler changed Gionshoja to Jetavana and kept the clause [76]. Helen Craig McCullough quoted the 1918 sentence in 1959 as the theme of the war tales, and her own translation of 1988 reads The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things [77][78]. Arthur Waley wrote of the phrase from the sutra found on so many graves, shogyo-mujo, all things are transient, in Japanese Poetry: The Uta, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights of a 1976 printing give it [79].

A second English line made it vanity. Kenkyusha's Japanese-English dictionary, in its American edition of 1942, enters 諸行 as All earthly (worldly) things and gives the phrase as All is vanity. / All earthly things are transient [80]. A reader of 1965, Readings in Japanese Literature, glossed shogyō mujō as all that is made is but transitory, all is vanity, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give it [81]. Nelson's character dictionary, in its edition of 1974, gives the vanity of all things (a Buddhist concept) [82]. Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida's translation of the 平家 of 1975 renders the bell as The bell of the Gion Temple tolls into every man's heart to warn him that all is vanity and evanescence; the sentence was quoted in The Christian Science Monitor in 1972, before the book appeared, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give both [83][84]. Burton Watson's translation of 2006 reads The bells of the Gion monastery in India echo with the warning that all things are impermanent [85].

The Buddhist dictionaries kept the doctrine. The Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary of 1965 gives Shogyō-mujō: All conditioned things are impermanent. One of the three truths of Buddhism, and for the verse, All things are impermanent; / They appear and disappear. / When an end is put to this appearance and disappearance, / Then the bliss of nirvana is realized [86]. Kazuaki Tanahashi's glossary to his translation of 道元's 正法眼蔵, of 2013, glosses impermanence of all things, 諸行無常, as literally, everything that is created … is impermanent, and The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism of 2014 all that is compounded is impermanent [87][88]. Shohaku Okumura, in a translation of 2022, writes of the 平家's opening that this view of impermanence is fundamentally different from the ordinary sense of the fragility of life expressed by many Japanese poets [89].

Today

The 日本大百科全書's entry ends with a judgment: Japanese literature has favored the theme, but unlike the logical inquiry of Indian Buddhism it has tended to take it only as a lament for a past that vanishes with time, and that, the entry says, has undeniably made the Japanese view of Buddhism forlorn, weak and dark [1]. The 世界大百科事典 (旧版), under time, reads it the other way, as perhaps not a denial of a constant world but a positive statement of the root of a changing one [1]. In the CiNii Research index of Japanese papers and articles, searched for this history, most titles that carry the phrase are magazine columns that use it as a headline for change [90].

A reading

I read 諸行無常 as the 大智度論 reads it: a seal, a statement about what is made. It does not lament. It says that whatever comes together from causes comes apart, and the verse it opens goes on to say that when arising and perishing have perished, their stilling is bliss. The 日本大百科全書's complaint is fair, and I think the record shows where the lament came from.

It came from the uses. The first Japanese witness in the texts read for this history is a memorial stone for a dead wife; 空海 quoted the verse in an offering for another; the bell that rings it was imagined for a hall of the dying; and in Japan the phrase went on to banners, graves and the burial societies named for the hall of the dying. In those places the four characters are read at a death, and they become the voice of loss. The 平家 then did what the canon never did and paired the line with 盛者必衰, so that the bell came to speak of the fall of the proud.

But the bell's own story is not a warning. In 道宣's vision, in 源信's paragraph and in the 栄花物語, the dying monk who hears the bell is freed of his pain. The bell rings the whole verse, and it is the last line, the stilling, that the monk is given. The English that hears a warning in the 平家's bell, to warn him that all is vanity, the warning that all things are impermanent, adds a word the bell's sources do not carry. Sadler's echoes is nearer. The kabuki dancer's line, that no one who hears the bell is startled, is a complaint that the bell no longer startles, and it shows how far the Japanese stage had moved the bell from its source.

So I sign for the line as the seal states it and for the verse as the bell rang it: a fact about the world, with its consolation attached. The other reading is in the record too, from 753 on, and it is a true reading of how the Japanese have used the phrase. It is not what the four characters say.

Notes

Not the 平家's coinage, and not first in the 涅槃経's story. The four lines stand in Chinese translations without the boy and the demon, spoken by Śakra, by the Buddha and by Upagupta [3][4][5].

Not deeds. en.wiktionary, read in October 2026, glosses 行 as deed and the Sanskrit as all deeds are impermanent, and says the four characters are first cited in Chinese around the mid-600s [91]. The 日本国語大辞典 and the 日本大百科全書 read 行 as what is made, and the four characters stand in translations the canon attributes to the fourth and fifth centuries [1][4].

The Pāli on ja.wikipedia. The lede of the ja.wikipedia article, read in October 2026, gives the Pāli as sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā, which is a line of the Dhammapada; the verse's Pāli is aniccā vata saṅkhārā [92][16].

The bell as a story. 道宣's account says of itself that it came from a vision, and that the bells left the world at the Buddha's death [30][10]. The temple bell in the Jetavana grove today was given by a Japanese association in 1981, as ja.wikipedia's article on the Jetavana says [93].

兼好 does not write the phrase. His sentence is the bell's: the mode of impermanence and the voice of the 無常院 [51].

Hakeda's prince. Yoshito Hakeda's translation of 1972 renders 空海's 投身半偈 as To gain even a half stanza of the Dharma, we are told, / A prince sacrificed his body; 空海's text says only threw down his body for half a verse [94][41].

Not among Hearn's proverbs. Lafcadio Hearn's Japanese Buddhist Proverbs in In Ghostly Japan (1899) does not include 諸行無常; it has Mujō no kaze wa, toki erabazu, the Wind of Impermanency does not choose a time [95].

The 栄花's two shapes. The 1901 edition and the cursive copy, read at the page, have the crystal bell and end the sentence とこそ聞ゆなれ; other editions in the library's text end it と聞ゆなれば, and the 三条西家本 among them was not seen at the page, so whether it has the crystal was not settled [46][47].

Sources not seen

The 薬師寺 Buddha's-footprint stone itself, or a modern transcription of its inscriptions.

The critical text of the 性霊集 (日本古典文学大系 71) and a manuscript of it, for 空海's offering.

黒田彰's facsimiles of a Japanese manuscript of the 祇洹寺圖經, in 『文学部論集』 (佛教大学) 98 (2014) and 99 (2015).

The 三条西家本 栄花物語 at the page, for the bell sentence's other shape.

唐木順三, 『無常』, 1964, and 二宮愛理, 「『栄花物語』正編の引歌表現：諸行無常への導き」, 2021.

Arthur Waley's Japanese Poetry: The Uta at the page, and the first printing of Kitagawa and Tsuchida's sentence before 1975.

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

References

  1. 「諸行無常」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 日本大百科全書, 世界大百科事典 (旧版) and 共同通信ニュース用語解説, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/諸行無常-80081
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  21. Ernst Waldschmidt, ed., Das Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra, Berlin, 1950–51, § 44.5, as GRETIL gives the text. https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/4_rellit/buddh/mpsu_w_u.htm
  22. 沼波政保, 「「諸行無常」・「盛者必衰」と経論 ―『平家物語』序章をめぐって―」, 『閲蔵』 (同朋大学大学院文学研究科研究紀要) 5, 2009, pp. 1–15, at the 同朋大学 repository. https://doho.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/1453/files/閲蔵5.1-15.pdf
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  31. 『中天竺舍衛國祇洹寺圖經』 卷下, the close, the note in 円珍's name, 乘春's afterword and the Taishō editors' testimonia, T45n1899, p. 895c–896b, at CBETA. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/T45n1899_p0895c25
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  81. Readings in Japanese Literature, 1965, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give it. https://archive.org/details/readingsinjapane0000unse_pt2
  82. Andrew N. Nelson, The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary, second revised edition, Tuttle, 1974, p. 836, under 諸.
  83. Hiroshi Kitagawa and Bruce T. Tsuchida, translators, The Tale of the Heike, University of Tokyo Press, 1975, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give it. https://archive.org/details/taleofheikeheike0000unse
  84. The Christian Science Monitor, 19 September 1972, as the Internet Archive's full-text highlights give it. https://archive.org/details/per_christian-science-monitor_1972-09-19_64_250
  85. Burton Watson, translator, The Tales of the Heike, Columbia University Press, New York, 2006, book 1, The Bells of Gion Monastery.
  86. Daitō Shuppansha, Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary, Tokyo, 1965, s.v. Shogyō-mujō and Shogyō-mujō-ge.
  87. Kazuaki Tanahashi, editor, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Shobo Genzo, Shambhala, 2013, the glossary, s.v. impermanence of all things (read in an ebook edition without printed page numbers).
  88. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University Press, 2014, the list four seals indicative of the Buddhist view (read in an ebook edition without printed page numbers).
  89. Shohaku Okumura, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, Wisdom Publications, 2022, the commentary on Dōgen and impermanence (read in an edition without printed page numbers).
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  91. 「諸行無常」, en.wiktionary, read October 2026. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/諸行無常
  92. 「諸行無常」, ja.wikipedia, read October 2026. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/諸行無常
  93. 「祇園精舎」, ja.wikipedia, read October 2026. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/祇園精舎
  94. Yoshito S. Hakeda, Kūkai: Major Works, Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 150–151.
  95. Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly Japan, Little, Brown, Boston, 1899, "Japanese Buddhist Proverbs", no. 59, p. 184. https://archive.org/details/cu31924014202687

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

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

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 諸行無常 (shogyō mujō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/shogyo-mujo.