密菴和尚語錄 1.2

1.2

Three years after Chan Master Mi'an manifested quiescence, his true dharma-heir Liaowu, residing at Lingyan, entrusted [Zhang] Zi with compiling his late teacher's lifetime sayings into a single volume and requested a preface. [Zhang] Zi respectfully considers: Once the late master met Ying'an, he immediately comprehended the Great Dharma, and his words on the broken earthenware basin were widely propagated through the monasteries—there is nothing here to be prefaced. He held seven celebrated mountains, his Way filling all under heaven, and the dragons and elephants of the day all came forth from his tongs and hammer—there is likewise nothing here to be prefaced. He entered the imperial palace to expound prajñā, deeply according with the Emperor's intention and further brightening the ancestral gate—there is also nothing here to be prefaced. Nevertheless, having undeservedly received the transmission of the robe, it is unbefitting for [Zhang] Zi to remain silent, and so I reverently compose this preface, saying: The *Recorded Sayings of Mi'an* constitutes one case, comprising eighty-eight printing blocks in all, twenty lines to a block, and twenty characters to a line. If here you can grasp it, you are permitted to see Mi'an in person; if not yet so, listen to a single turning phrase. On the ninth day of the middle winter month in the fifteenth year of Chunxi [1188 CE], student Zhang Zi wrote this preface.