禅宗大师的故事：太谷、森盖、哈昆和龙冈的生活故事

这是四位著名的前现代日本禅宗大师的民间故事和佛教教学故事的生动收藏：太谷禅宗（1584-1669）、仙盖吉本禅宗（1750-1831）、白居易（1686-1769）和太谷理干禅宗（1758-1831）。
《禅师故事集》收录了日本历史上江户时代（1603-1868）四位著名禅师的翻译故事。这些故事取材于一个见证了日本禅宗“民主化”的时代，描绘了禅宗名人与日本现代早期涌现的清教徒或“市民”文化之间的强大、有趣和辛辣的互动。在这里，我们发现禅宗僧侣与武士、商人、家庭主妇、艺人和农民打交道。这些大师们确认，禅宗修行、禅宗研究、甚至启蒙的精髓可以通过普通的语言传达给日本社会的所有成员，甚至包括喜剧诗和工作歌曲。在这一丰富画面的背景下，禅宗大师故事不仅是禅宗学生的文本，也是了解江户日本迷人的文学、材料和社会历史的一个广泛窗口。
在他的引言中，翻译彼得·哈斯克尔解释了禅宗“故事”的历史，从中国传统的黄金时代，到经典的《可兰经集》的编纂，再到禅宗大师故事中的故事被绘制的时代。他写道，中国传统的真实情况——“它把重点放在个人的日常活动上，作为功能，是绝对的表现”——在日本语境中继续存在。“这些日本故事中的大多数，无论多么幽默，有时多么粗俗，都会传达出禅宗大师的一些性格，即使在最卑微、最不可能的情况下，禅宗大师的成就也必须显而易见。”
Zen Master Tales: Stories from the Lives of Taigu, Sengai, Hakuin, and Ryokan
A lively collection of folk tales and Buddhist teaching stories from four noted premodern Japanese Zen masters: Taigu Sôchiku (1584–1669), Sengai Gibon (1750-1831), Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), and Taigu Ryôkan (1758-1831).
Zen Master Tales collects never before translated stories of four prominent Zen masters from the Edo period of Japanese history (1603-1868). Drawn from an era that saw the “democratization” of Japanese Zen, these stories paint a picture of robust, funny, and poignant engagement between Zen luminaries and the emergent chоnin or “townsperson” culture of early modern Japan. Here we find Zen monks engaging with samurai, merchants, housewives, entertainers, and farmers. These masters affirmed that the essentials of Zen practice—zazen, koan study, even enlightenment—could be conveyed to all members of Japanese society in ordinary speech, including even comic verse and work songs. Against the backdrop of this rich tableau, Zen Master Tales serves not only as a text for Zen students but also as a wide-ranging window onto the fascinating literary, material, and social history of Edo Japan.
In his introduction, translator Peter Haskel explains the history of Zen “stories” from the tradition’s Golden Age in China through the compilation of the classic koan collections and on to the era from which the stories in Zen Master Tales are drawn. What was true of the Chinese tradition, he writes—“its focus on the individual’s ordinary activity as the function, the manifestation of the absolute”—continued in the Japanese context. “Most of these Japanese stories, however unabashedly humorous and at times crude, impart something of the character of the Zen masters involved, whose attainment must be plainly manifest in even the most humble and unlikely of situations.”

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