Preface

This book presents a bilingual version, with translations and commentary, of an important but obscure multi-authored collection of gong’an cases known as Tongxuan’s 100 Chan Questions (Tongxuan baiwen 通玄百問), which features pithy question-and-answer exchanges followed by terse poetic remarks. This thirteenth-century text, which is included in the supplementary Buddhist canon (Xu zangjing vol. 67, no. 1312), was composed by several leading figures of the Caodong Chan Buddhist school, who were part of an important sublineage that was located in Beijing and supported by the emerging Mongol rulers. The collection thus represents the literary production of a crucial though lesser-known phase of Caodong history based in a branch situated in the northern territories that thrived at the dawn of the Yuan dynasty. See the map in Figure 1.2 and the accompanying discussion in chapter 1 for more details on the history of this faction in relation to other Caodong school lineages.