Entangling Vines: A Classic Collection of Zen Koans tr. by Thomas Yūhō Kirchner (review)

Entangling Vines is an outstanding bilingual edition and translation of a very important although heretofore relatively little known Japanese Zen Buddhist text entitled Shūmon Kattōshū 宗門葛藤集, which is a collection of 272 kōan cases without commentary. As explained in the “Translator’s Preface,” it was probably first published in 1689 (with 254 cases) and later revived and amplified over the years beginning with an 1858 edition. The Shūmon Kattōshū is considered to provide many of the main materials that are currently being used in the Rinzai sect’s kōan training curriculum, thus surpassing in length and also relevance to present-day instructional methods several more famous collections, Biyanlu (Blue Cliff Record), Linjilu (Record of Linji), Wumenguan (Wumen’s Checkpoint), and Daitō hyakunijissoku (Daitō’s Collection of One Hundred and Twenty Cases), the first three of which now exist in multiple English versions, while the fourth is discussed at length by Kenneth Kraft in Eloquent Zen: Daitō and Early Japanese Zen (1992).

With its impeccable renderings of the source text that is provided in full in Chinese and extensive explanatory annotations of the cases followed by an insightful seventy-plus-page section of “Biographical Notes” (213–85), Entangling Vines makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the literature and thought of premodern Zen. It is especially useful for studies of the practices in the Edo period that were greatly influenced by formative developments in Tang and Song dynasty Chinese Chan when the kōan (C. gongan) dialogues were first created and transcribed and were soon after transmitted to Kamakura-era Japan in the thirteenth century, where the cases were further edited and selected for commentaries or use in various methods of teaching. This work features many of the same high qualities of meticulous attention given to textual details and historical materials that is evidenced in Tom Kirchner’s previous publications, The Record of Linji (2008), a newly edited and annotated reissue of Ruth Fuller Sasaki’s translation originally from the 1960s, and Dialogues in a Dream (2010), a complete translation of the main work of Musō Sōseki, founder of Tenryū-ji and other Japanese Zen temples in the fourteenth century. The book under review is a revised edition of Entangling Vines: Zen Koans of the Shūmon Kattōshū (2004), which had a limited release as a publication produced by Tenryū-ji temple; in that version, the kōans were numbered a bit differently to include a total of 282 cases. During the interim period, Kirchner worked closely to polish the translations with eminent Japanese priest Dōmae Sōkan 道前宗閑, who is known for his studies of Hakuin, and who is intimately “familiar with the unpublished commentaries of the great Myōshin-ji scholar-monk Mujaku Dōchū (無著道忠, 1653–1744)” (21).

The Shūmon Kattōshū is to be distinguished from a different text consisting of comments on cases, the Kuzō Kattōshū 句雙葛藤集, which “is a voluminous anthology of phrases used in former times as a source for capping phrases, the words and verses from Chinese literature with which students demonstrate and refine their understanding of koans” (15). The origin of the Shūmon Kattōshū is probably from the Muromachi era and, from internal textual evidence, most likely derives from the Ōtōkan 應燈關 lineage of the Rinzai sect that is based on the teachings of Daiō Kokushi, Daitō Kokushi, and Kanzan Egen, who were associated with the opening of Daitoku-ji and Myōshin-ji temples in Kyoto during the fourteenth century. The main indication for this view is the inclusion of Song dynasty master Xutang Zhiyu 虚堂智愚, who appears in seventeen Shūmon Kattōshū cases, which is as many or nearly as many as Tang masters Nanquan (seventeen), Zhaozhou (twenty-three), and Yunmen (also twenty-three), who populate many of the earlier kōan collections that were compiled in Song China at a stage too early to...