勅修百丈清規 7.48

7.48

住持　　　　　　押

The abbot, signed

The institution of the wooden board account record (banzhangshi) perhaps derived from the custom of earlier times to record whatever information was necessary for accomplishing ritual conduct on a wooden board, whereby it was shown that no arbitrary changes [to the record] were allowed. This has become the practice of preparing a wooden board accounting record on the death of a practitioner of the Zen monastic community. Whenever a practitioner dies, his personal items are distributed at auction for the sake of the other practitioners, by pricing these items before the practitioners’ very eyes as a disciplinary measure to counter the greedy accumulation of personal possessions. At the auction, such possessions are assigned a monetary value, necessarily requiring a record of reference inscribed on a wooden board. Other than the amount expended for an event, the remaining money must be divided into three parts and seven parts, with the former amount of three-tenths given to the temple’s general fund as overhead.

(For example, in the case of one hundred guanwen, thirty guanwen would be turned over to the temple’s revenues. In the case of there being less than a hundred guan, no three-tenths overhead should be considered.)

The remaining amount must be equally distributed to the practitioners. If remuneration for the practitioners’ service of chanting sutras is one hundred wen, one guan must be due for conducting a religious rite, and twice that amount is due to the abbot. Using a revenue of one thousand guan as a standard, the distribution of expenditures has been shown in the format above. If a given auction brings a higher amount, a proportional increase should be made as to each expenditure; if it brings in less revenue, a proportional decrease in expenditure should be made. Taking into account the actual circumstances and also taking into consideration the number of practitioners, adequate and expedient changes should be made.

(If a recently deceased retiree official left behind personal possessions such as a rice field, rice crops, cottages, bedding, furniture, and so on, all these must be turned over to the temple. In accordance with the amount acquired from the auction, if it is more than what is necessary, more days of services for chanting sutras may be prescribed to dispense with the excess money as a gift to the practitioners, and by scheduling additional rites and services, such as servings of tea and sweet hot water, turning the funeral shrine around, and so on.)

End of Chapter VII: The Practitioners

of the Zen Community

The Annual Celebration Days

and Calendar

I. Preface to the Chapter

Practitioners do not follow the order of their chronological age but that of ordination age, so that [the religious] world is distinguished from the secular one. In the western regions (i.e., the Central Asian Buddhist countries including India), there are three seasons, one of which is established as the period of retreat, during which no one may leave or come to the monastery. The system of order is based on seniority determined by whether one’s learning of the Zen texts by heart (chansong), practice of cross-legged seated meditation (xingzuo) and year of ordination (shoujie) [were accomplished] earlier or later than another’s. For the duration of ninety days [each year], practitioners [remain in their respective residences] in order to achieve some definite degree of merit in the practice of the path. In the thirty days [prior to the retreat period], each acquires the basic needs of life (i.e., clothing, food, and so on), enabling them to develop Zen insight internally and nurture their physical well-being externally, so that they can sustain peace of mind and body [through the subsequent period of concentration]. Every practitioner is obliged to commit himself to that full period and carry out disciplined training without wasting a moment, and to spare every living thing and be motivated by compassion and patience. What a wonderful institution this is, which has been followed for ten thousand generations!

The five regions of the Indian continent are so vast that the weather in these regions varies between hot, cold, rainy, and dry and is never the same everywhere. Thus, the period of retreat begins in the fourth month in some provinces, in the fifth month in others, and even in the twelfth month elsewhere, although it always begins on the sixteenth day of the month. The so-

called rainy season retreat(yuanju) has been institutionalized according to the

various geographical regions and their seasonal changes. It is sometimes called

the “summer retreat” (zuoxia) and at other times the “winter retreat (zuola),

and it was on the basis of this retreat [period] that the meaning of “ordination

age” (jiela) began to be used to refer to the years of a practitioner’s career. It

is, however, a kind of baseless vulgar saying that [the expression, “so-and-

so many years of winter retreat,” originally referring to the determination of

a practitioner’s career in reference to his ordination age], was distorted to

mean that examining the quality of a wax-made statue buried in the ice is to

verify the impeccability of a person’s practice in terms of clean ice, and that

burying a wax-made human form in the ground is the way to examine whether

his practice has accomplished the goal or not. How could such distorted ideas

have come from our traditional transmission? Moreover, what is practiced

and experienced in our tradition cannot be fathomed even by a holy man [such

as Laozi]. How much less could such an external object be a measurement

of the state of religious transcendence or immanence?

Today, in the Zen monastic institution, the inauguration of the summer

retreat is set for the mid-month (i.e., fifteenth) day of the fourth lunar month,

and it ends on the mid-month day of the seventh lunar month. If the retreat is

set to begin one day earlier, by performing a special ceremony, every retreat

participant is enabled to fully concentrate on their intent, the fulfillment of

their practice within the retreat period. Thus, omitting or abridging trouble-

some literary statements is not necessarily discordant with the spirit of the

Vinaya discipline. [Some argue that] this is not in accordance with the Vinaya,

but they do not realize or understand the intended meaning of the rule hidden