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楞嚴會

Pronunciations

Basic Meaning: Heroic March assembly

Senses:

  • An 'assembly'  會 (short for 'Dharma assembly'  法會) that entails chanting the Heroic March Dhāraṇī 楞嚴呪 to generate merit to be dedicated in support of prayers for the safe completion of a monastic retreat 安居. Some Chinese histories state that this practice was started by Chan master Zhenxie Qingliao 眞歇淸了; 1088–1151), who as the abbot of a monastery on Mount Butuo 補陀山 in Mingzhou was confronted with an epidemic that spread among all the monks. According to that story, Avalokitêśvara spoke to Zhenxie in a dream and recommended that he have all the monks line up in order of monastic seniority and circumambulate while chanting the Heroic March Dhāraṇī. That practice, it is said, had the desired effect of stopping the epidemic and thereafter became widespread as a means of protecting monastic retreats from all such unfortunate occurrences. However, as the Japanese monk scholar Mujaku Dōchū 無著 道忠 (1653–1744) pointed out in his Encyclopedia of Zen Monasticism 禪林象器箋, there is evidence that the Heroic March assembly was practiced in Chinese monasteries before Zhenxie, so this story is 'hard to believe.' In his Record of Research on Sōtō Monastery Rules (Tōjō sōdō shingi kōtei betsuroku 洞上 僧堂淸規考訂別錄), the Sōtō monk scholar Menzan Zuihō (面山瑞方, 1683–1769) argued that because the Heroic March assembly is not mentioned in the Rules of Purity for Zen Monasteries (Chanyuan qingui 禪苑淸規), compiled in 1103, it could not have been widely practiced in Song China at the time when Dōgen 道元 visited (Sōtōshū zensho, 'Shingi,' p. 271). Menzanʼs reasoning was flawed, however, because the Rules of Purity for Zen Monasteries contains neither a calendar of annual observances nor a collection of verses for the dedication of merit, the two genres of monastic rules in which the Heroic March assembly would have been mentioned. [Griffith Foulk]
  • By association, the expression 'Heroic March assembly' became synonomous with 'ninety-day retreat'  九旬安居 in Song dynasty China, and that usage carried over into Japanese Zen. 〔勅修百丈淸規; 禪林備用淸規〕 [Griffith Foulk]
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    [Dictionary References]

    Bukkyō jiten (Ui) 1122, 1114

    Zengaku daijiten (Komazawa U.) 1284a

    Zenrin shōkisen (Mujaku Dōchū) 521/509

    Bukkyōgo daijiten (Nakamura) 1428b

    Fo Guang Dictionary 5493

    Ding Fubao {Digital Version}

    Bukkyō daijiten (Mochizuki) (v.1-6)5013b

    Bukkyō daijiten (Oda) 1803-1, 1816-3

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    The rights to textual segments (nodes) of the DDB are owned by the author indicated in the brackets next to each segment. For rights regarding the compilation as a whole, please contact Charles Muller. Please do not reproduce without permission. And please do not copy into Wikipedia without proper citation!

    Entry created: 2009-10-21