Swallow the West River in One Gulp

一口吸盡西江水

Details on the Chan (Zen) phrase 一口吸盡西江水, which is carried in the Jikishinkage-ryū Heihō zakki (兵法雑記) of Yamada Ippūsai — composed 1686, surviving in his own 1708 copy — and later mokuroku from 1764 and 1800 Jikishinkage-ryū mokuroku as the gokui seikō-sui (西江水). It originates in 17th-century Yagyū Shinkage-ryū writings as a capstone gokui of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū and was very likely imported into Jikishinkage-ryū from the Edo line of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū by Yamada Ippūsai. Unlike shin hen bankyo (心遍萬境) found in Hikita Kage-ryū densho, this phrase has a firm, attested Chan locus.

The toponym 西江 is generally taken as “the great western river” — an image of vastness, not a gazetteer identification of a specific body of water (Mazu taught in Jiangxi, 江西).

A swordsmanship gokui across the Shinkage-derived schools

The Honshiki san-mondō (本識三問答), a Yagyū-method text bound in the Bujutsu sōsho (武術叢書, 1915), expounds 西江水 as the apex secret of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū — the teaching “above” the entire mokuroku, to which all techniques reduce.

The phrase (「西江水一つにて濟む」, “it is settled by the one West River water alone”) is attributed in that work explicitly to Yagyū Munenori, named there as 柳生但馬守.

The school’s own account glosses the 一口: Munenori “named it out of the mind of ‘one gulp’ (一口の心).”

It ties 西江水 to the core Yagyū concept of no-sword as well — Munenori is reported to have said he would have called the school 無刀流 (Mutō-ryū; the No-Sword school). The Tsuki no Shō carries the same credo attributed one generation up: 亡父ハ「無刀流、我カ法ナリ」といはれしと、老父かたりたまへし也 (p. 49) — the saying is the late father’s, relayed by the aged father. If the deixis identification below holds (亡父 = Sekishūsai), the Honshiki’s Munenori attribution looks like a relay collapse — a dictum voiced by Munenori in transmission hardening into Munenori’s own — a small, documentable instance of the generational-name conflation mechanism. And it versifies the phrase as waka:

兵法は懸待表裏みつなれど、つゞめてみれば西江水

In swordsmanship there are the three — engaging, waiting, and the front-and-back of deception — but gathered up and seen whole, it is the West River water.

兵法の敷〔數?〕の習を打ちすてゝ、西江水を一口に呑む

Casting off the manifold trainings of swordsmanship, swallow the West River water in one gulp.

The second waka is the Chan 一口吸盡西江水 turned directly into a sword gokui.

A syncretic passage in the text’s Unchū-ryū (運籌流) appendix equates the same principle across traditions, where 西江水 is identified with 空理／天理 (the empty/heavenly principle), 本來の面目 (Chan, “Original Face”), 明德 (Confucian Daxue, “illustrious virtue”), 內外清淨 (Shintō) and finally the concept of mastery (meijin 名人): one principle under many names. This is quite poetic, but indicates some sword lineages read 西江水 as a high-level concept associated to attainment, not merely as a Chan citation.

The Yagyū inka episode

In the Yagyū transmission tradition, the phrase sits at the very center of Yagyū Jūbei Mitsuyoshi’s (柳生三厳) 1637 licensing. When Jūbei submitted his densho, his father Munenori ordered it burned (一炬焼却). Jūbei consulted Takuan Sōhō (沢庵宗彭), then lodging with Munenori, who explained that Munenori’s real meaning was「西江水を一口に吸尽して、徹底乾者乎、是乎為汝之印可也」 (“[are you not] one who has swallowed the West River water in one gulp and drained it dry to the very bottom? — this is your inka”).

Takuan emended the text and Jūbei was then granted his license.¹ On this account, 一口吸盡西江水 is the specific kōan at the heart of the Jūbei–Takuan transmission.

Interim Conclusions

The phrase 西江水 does not appear in Takuan’s own martial-arts prose: a full-text check of his Taiaki (太阿記), Reirōshū (玲瓏集), and Fudōchi Shinmyōroku (不動智神妙録), as digitized, finds none of it — while their signature vocabulary (殺人刀・活人剣, 拈華微笑, 真我／人我, 石火の機) is all present.

It appears the sword lineages did not acquire the phrase by quoting Takuan’s writings; they drew it from the Chan stratum directly — where it saturates hundreds of works. On the Yagyū side, the Tsuki no Shō’s own deixis (see below) now indicates the term was in the house before the 1637 licensing: Takuan’s role at the inka is best read as re-explication — re-pointing an inherited house term in its original Chan idiom — rather than as the term’s source.

Its route into swordsmanship is Chan-canonical, and we know the Yagyū Sekishūsai-stratum mokuroku was already naming articles in Chan vocabulary a generation before Takuan-specific material enters the house.

The fact that it is present in the Jikishinkage-ryū mokuroku of the 18th century points to it being an earlier teaching in that line and evidence seems to indicate it was added by Yamada Ippūsai from his study under the Edo line of Yagyū.

Weighed evidentiary layers to trace Seikō-sui’s transmission through Ippūsai

We know that Naganuma Kunisato updated the Jikishinkage-ryū mokuroku with additional matters in the mid-18th century and it is plausible Yamada made his own alterations to the art he received based on his own experience training in the Edo line of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū (headed by Mitsuyoshi, continued through Munefuyu).

The earliest Jikishinkage-ryū witnesses for 西江水 are the Heihō zakki (composed 1686; the surviving witness is Ippūsai’s own 1708 copy) and densho whose colophons claim derivation from Kamiya Denshinsai’s mokuroku but are themselves Ippūsai-era or later copies. Evidence leans fairly clearly toward entry at the Ippūsai horizon via the Edo Yagyū contact, and against the phrase being a Kamiizumi original.

Karukome’s analysis of early Ogasawara line densho do not find evidence for seikō-sui in those lists. Seikō-sui appears in the 1708 Heihō zakki of Yamada Ippūsai but not in the 1670 mokuroku Ogasawara awarded to Kobayashi Ichirōemon.

The reasoning in tiers:

• The Yagyū tradition’s own testimony makes 西江水 a Yagyū-generation coinage, not a Kamiizumi inheritance. This is the strongest single datum, and it comes from the Seikōsui no koto itself.
  • The origin anecdote says the aged 亡父, after the privy realization, 「此心持ヲ得道シテ、今此ヲ西江水ト秘シテ、無上至極ノ極意ト号ス」 — he attained the mind-set and then named it 西江水, keeping it secret. The naming is decades after Kamiizumi (d. c. 1577) under either reading of the 亡父/老父 crux — and the crux is now resolved, as a strong working hypothesis, by a full-corpus deixis census of the Tsuki no Shō (2026-07): 亡父 = Sekishūsai (d. 1606), 父/老父 = Munenori — on twelve paired-comparison entries (亡父ノ録 against 老父ノ録/父云 within single entries), a zero-oral-quotation asymmetry (155 父云/老父云 dicta against zero 亡父云; the late father’s three surfaced sayings all arrive relayed with hearsay markers), an 老父/宗矩 near-apposition (pp. 39–40), and a shogunal ladder (家康-era mokuroku consistently 亡父ノ書; the 公方様 exchanges first-person). Under the census, the coinage falls before 1606.
  • The gokui shows transmission depth inside the house: the Seikōsui no koto records two named applications — 亡父ノ用 (base contracted) against 老父ノ用 (base extended), with Mitsuyoshi preferring the latter (p. 42). A teaching with generation-distinct applications is an inherited teaching, not a fresh coinage of the living generation.
  • The decisive external check is now concrete: the 亡父 record groups 没茲味手段・西江水・越所 as one complex (p. 41), and Sekishūsai’s 没滋味手段口伝書 is extant — collating that document against the quoted grouping would either authenticate the identification and date 西江水 documentarily before 1606, or break it.
  • Corroborating this, the Kamiizumi naming legend on p. 69 attributes exactly three teachings to the founder — 手字手利剣・水月・神妙剣 — and 西江水 is conspicuously not among them. The school itself, in the same document, distinguishes founder-attributed gokui from this one. A secret, idiosyncratically-named, one-generation-old gokui is a poor candidate for pan-Shinkage inheritance; if it were Kamiizumi’s, one would expect it in the p. 69 set and in other Shinkage branches, where (so far) it does not appear.
• The Jikishinkage-ryū stratigraphy places its appearance exactly at Ippūsai.
  • 西江水 stands in both columns of the Karukome table (Karukome Yoshitaka 2013) — so it predates the Kunisato additions (相尺・留三段・切落・吟味) — but the “earlier” column is itself the Ippūsai-era stratum (兵法雑記, 1686/1708 copy / 直心正統流兵法目録).
  • It is absent from an 1670 dated mokuroku Ogasawara issued.
• The channel and the fingerprint both fit the Ippūsai route.
  • Ippūsai imported the kodachi/habiki material from Edo Yagyū training — so a transmission conduit from exactly the line that held the Tsuki no Shō gokui (Mitsuyoshi was the Edo heir; the kuden would run through Munefuyu’s line, which is the Edo Yagyū Ippūsai encountered).
  • The Jikishinkage-ryū densho’s own 面影 commentary explicitly names 柳生公 and positions Jikishinkage-ryū against it — direct evidence that this recension family was formed in conscious contact with Yagyū doctrine.
  • The conceptual apparatus is shared: Yagyū 西江水 = mind-placement — now explicit across twelve in-text loci, with all four apparatus terms identified or keyed to it in the text itself (心ヲ置トハ西江水也、置所也 p. 51; 越所…西江水ヲ以テ越ル pp. 44–45; 拍子之持処ハ神所、西江水ナリ p. 32; 空ノ内ノ捧心、西江水ト可知 p. 29) — while Jikishinkage-ryū 西江水 = settling into the 気海丹田. Same operation, different house idiom — which is what adaptation-in-contact looks like, versus either verbatim copying or independent coinage.
• On the Takuan possibility, the Tsuki no Shō does not credit Takuan for 西江水, and this silence is mildly informative.
  • The text does credit Takuan by name elsewhere, repeatedly and scrupulously (無見, 病気真之位, トクシヤウ, the 八識 exposition, the 風水の音 pairing — Mitsuyoshi even distinguishes “this my father and grandfather did not know; it comes from Takuan”). A text with that crediting habit presenting 西江水 as an in-house realization suggests the school regarded it as its own.
• On the oral-Takuan possibility, the deixis census changes the balance:
  • An oral Takuan supply of the kōan name was compatible only with the 亡父 = Munenori reading (an old-age realization in the 1630s–40s, inside the Takuan association). Under the census identification (亡父 = Sekishūsai), the coinage predates Takuan’s Yagyū contact entirely and that channel drops out: Takuan’s documented role narrows to re-explication of an inherited term — the 1637 inka episode reading as commentary in the term’s original Chan idiom, not as its source. This is consistent with the crediting pattern in 4.1: the text scrupulously credits Takuan for what is his, and 西江水 is presented as the house’s own.
  • Either way, this affects only how the Yagyū side acquired the name, not the Jikishinkage-ryū question — on which the route is Yagyū → Ippūsai regardless.

The residual alternative is independent Zen borrowing: the kōan is ubiquitous (CBETA corpus of the Buddhist canon has 463 occurrences across 247 works) and any Zen-practicing swordsman could have adopted it.

What weighs against it is the co-occurrence: Jikishinkage-ryū did not merely adopt the phrase, it adopted it (a) at exactly the Ippūsai horizon, (b) in a recension family that explicitly discusses Yagyū, (c) with the same mind-placement operationalization, and (d) alongside other demonstrably Yagyū-contact material (kodachi/habiki). Independent borrowing explains (a) at most, not (b), (c) and (d).

It is more likely an Ippūsai import to Jikishinkage-ryū from the Edo Yagyū line and not Kamiizumi-original due to the Yagyū tradition’s own coinage testimony. Independent Zen borrowing is the remaining live alternative.

The black-ink gloss on 西江水 in the JSKR densho ke05_01032_0001 (the 1768 mokuroku copy, Waseda Kotenseki collection; transcribed here) reads:

西江水ト申文字ハ、仏語〔ニテ〕世界中ニアル水ノ事〔ナリ〕。十分ノ体ヲ捨テ仕廻ヒ、西江水ヘ打入リ、気海丹田ニ治メ入ル事也。

“The characters seikōsui: in Buddhist usage (butsugo 仏語), it means the water that exists throughout the whole world. Casting off the full body entirely, plunging into the West River water, and settling it into the kikai-tanden (気海丹田; qìhǎi dāntián; the sea-of-qi cinnabar-field / lower dantian) — that is the matter.”

This black-ink gloss has two components: (a) the generic Chan boundless-water sense (世界中ニアル水), and (b) a somatic instruction — cast off the body and settle into the lower dantian (気海丹田ニ治メ入ル).

The Yagyū Seikōsui no koto likewise places the mind below the waist (腰より下ニ可得心). So both traditions locate 西江水 in the lower body — a shared somatic element, which revises the earlier “generic-only / points negative” reading of the red crop.

Dantian-settling is a pervasive Daoist / mikkyō commonplace, so the parallel may be convergent rather than evidence of direct Yagyū to Jiki transmission. But, use of the dantian is considered an upper-level internal martial arts practice and this gokui was considered the capstone gokui by the Edo line of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū.

The commonplace has a specific proximate source worth naming: 気海丹田 as a set phrase is the signature vocabulary of Hakuin’s naikan (内観) practice — the recitation formula 我此氣海丹田、 腰脚足心、總是本來面目… of the Yasen kanna (夜船閑話, 1757) — which diffused through late-Edo and Meiji lay-Zen literature (e.g. the recitation, the susokukan-before-kōan pedagogy, and a 気海/丹田 taxonomy are all reproduced in Katsumine Daitetsu’s 1907 Zen to chōju-hō (Katsumine Daitetsu 1907)).

The stratigraphic question this raises — whether 気海丹田 occurs in the Heihō zakki itself or only in the later gloss stratum — is now answered against Karukome’s dissertation (Karukome Yoshitaka 2013):

気海丹田 occurs in the Heihō zakki

in the 修行ノ工夫 note explicating the rika’s whole-body teaching — 修行ノ工夫云、理歌ニ惣体ヲ満ル ト云ハ、両眼ト、艮背敵応、気海丹田。伝曰、惣体ヲ〆ルモ、三ヶ所ヲ本ニ立ルトモ、修行体也 — the three-anchor scheme 両眼・艮背・気海丹田. (The fuller navel-centered passage — 理歌ニ惣体ノ〆ト教ヘシ、 六根ノ其大本ハ気海丹田トア附名ニテ、ホゾノ処ヘ気ヲ盛レハ、惣体ハシマルモノ也 — belongs to the 1764 mokuroku kudensho’s 惣体ノ〆 entry, not the zakki: the attributions are disambiguated by Karukome and Sakai’s Hōjō study (Karukome Yoshitaka and Sakai Toshinobu 2013), whose footnotes assign the 惣体ノ〆 block to the kudensho and the 修行ノ工夫 passage to the zakki.) A further stratigraphic pointer sits inside the wording itself: both passages cite the 理歌 — Takahashi Shigeharu’s 1686 Keiko hōjō jo narabini rika — as the source of the whole-body teaching (理歌ニ…ト云ハ), so the doctrine is claimed for the 1686 stratum, with 気海丹田 as the zakki’s (1708) explication vocabulary.

The compound is therefore in Jikishinkage-ryū’s own textual stratum from the Ippūsai horizon (1686/1708), half a century before the Yasen kanna — the post-Hakuin-accretion hypothesis fails in its strong form, and the pre-Hakuin medical currency of the compound (気海 and 丹田 are both old kanpō/acupuncture loci) is confirmed as the operative background. The revised reading is stronger for the adaptation argument, not weaker: in the mokuroku structure Karukome reproduces, 西江水 sits adjacent to 惣体之〆 — so the ke05 gloss’s 気海丹田ニ治メ入ル (1768 witness) reads as in-house doctrinal cross-linking. The imported Yagyū gokui is glossed in the school’s own established somatic idiom, rather than as an external import of Hakuin vocabulary.

(Hakuin’s diffusion remains relevant background for the glossators’ era — the annotated copies are 1768 and 1800, both post-Yasen kanna — and an NDL Ngram run on 気海丹田 would still trace the popular curve.)

A further datum from the same passage: the zakki’s third anchor 艮背 is Yijing vocabulary — 艮其背, hexagram 52 (“keeping still: his back”) — an I-Ching term seated in Jikishinkage-ryū body doctrine at the founding stratum.

The red-ink shusho (朱書) interlinear commentary from the Jikishinkage-ryū densho ke05_01032 (Waseda Kotenseki collection), on the gokui 西江水 (Seikōsui; xī jiāng shuǐ; West River water) — ke05-sekkoSui:

西海ヲ呑テ〔…〕ト／〔従?〕行深遠／廣大ナルヲ云

“To swallow the western sea (seikai wo nomu 西海ヲ呑む); 〔practice/conduct?〕 deep and far (shin’en 深遠; shēnyuǎn); vast and great (kōdai 廣大; guǎngdà) — this is what it denotes.”

This densho glosses 西江水 in the generic Chan-kōan sense — the boundless, all-swallowing mind (深遠・廣大) — not with the Yagyū technical apparatus (置所・越所・腰より下・神所・捧心) seen in the Tsuki no Shō Seikōsui no koto.

The annotation writes 西海 (western sea), a variant of 西江 (western river); 呑ム (swallow) parallels the Mazu (馬祖) / Layman Pang (龐居士) kōan 一口吸盡西江水. The canonical noun is 西江水 (West River water); “the sea” is a loose gloss. The distinct phrase 吸盡滄溟 (“drink up the ocean”) is rare (7 corpus hits in the Chan canon) and not related.

In the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku: 可虞にも置いれば我身に一ぱいに行きわたりて一全體に延ひひ.²

densho 心妙剣	Fudōchi Shinmyōroku
動カサル気味	不動智
何レモ惣身〔ニ〕マシ	總身に廣ごりて全體に行渡る心を無心と申す也
抜目〔なく〕	一所に置けば餘の方の用は皆缺ける／偏に落つる

On the graph 心妙剣: the graph is unstable across the JSKR witnesses — most mokuroku write 神妙剣, matching the Yagyū founder-set (手字手利剣・水月・神妙剣), while the 1805 copy writes 心. The two are homophonous (shinmyōken), so scribal substitution costs nothing phonetically; but given that this entry’s content is precisely mind-distribution (惣身, the 抜目 negation), the heart-mind graph reads less like a slip than an in-house reinterpretation — the graph drifting toward the sense the school had come to give the gokui. On present evidence it is a late, single-copy development rather than a line-level convention, and its interest lies exactly there: a small, datable instance of a transmitted name evolving inside the school over time, the same house-level adaptation argued above for 西江水’s operationalization, here operating at the level of a single graph.

The 抜目 correspondence is the one I’d underline. Takuan’s argument is that localizing the mind makes every other function 缺ける — deficient, gapped. 抜目なく is precisely the negation of that: no place where it lapses. The densho isn’t echoing a mood; it’s stating Takuan’s conclusion in Takuan’s terms, with 惣身/總身 as shared vocabulary.

On マシ: Takuan’s verbs here are 行きわたり, 廣ごり, のびひろがり, 満ち — none of them マシ. So the graph stays unresolved; what’s now corroborated is the sense (distribution, not localization). 増し remains the least strained of the candidates. The 惣-body idiom itself has a further JSKR attestation at the founding stratum: the Heihō zakki’s 惣体之〆 teaching (惣体ヲ満ル・惣体ハシマルモノ也, 1686/1708, quoted in Karukome) — the same vocabulary family as the densho’s 惣身, forty years after Takuan’s death.

What’s still not established is directionality. The channel is plausible — the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku was addressed to Munenori, and JSKR descends from Shinkage-ryū — so influence has a route. But this vocabulary may simply be common Edo sword-mind currency that both drew on, and a single entry can’t distinguish those. The mokuroku’s date does bear on it (Takuan d. 1645), as does whether 惣身 appears in Shinkage-ryū material independent of Takuan. On the latter: 惣身 is now attested inside the Yagyū corpus itself — 惣身ニテ取 (Tsuki no Shō p. 30, in the Munenori oral stratum) — but that stratum is Takuan-adjacent by date (1637), so it attests circulation, not independence; a clean test would need pre-1632 Shinkage material.

In Takuan’s Zenshu.txt we find:

由なる位に行く事にて候、右の應無所住の位は向上至極の位にて候、敬 つ居ても捕へぬやうにするが、應無所住而生其心の文の心に

The scriptural genealogy connects Takuan’s philosophical framework directly to Diamond Sutra doctrine:

應無所住而生其心 (ō mu shojū ni shō go shin; “give rise to the mind that abides nowhere”) is from the 莊嚴淨土分 chapter of the 金剛般若波羅蜜經, in Kumārajīva’s translation — and it’s the line that, in the Platform Sutra narrative, awakens Huineng. It’s the canonical root of the entire 心の置所 argument. Takuan’s chain of 敵の太刀に心を置けば…心をとらるる is a vernacular unpacking of no-abiding, and his gloss here says so outright — 捕へぬやうにするが、應無所住而生其心の文の心に.

The mind that isn’t caught is the mind that doesn’t abide. He calls it 向上至極の位, placing it at the top of the scheme.

Yagyū reaches the delusion-cutting sword “via Takuan’s Zen adaptation of Fudō” but more specifically what the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku actually delivers under Fudō’s name is Prajñāpāramitā no-abiding plus Chan no-mind (總身に廣ごりて全體に行渡る心を無心と申す也).

Fudō supplies the title, the fudō immovability figure, and the martial-devotional authority; the doctrinal content is 般若. So the appropriation is strong in that Takuan is not transmitting mikkyō content to Munenori but instead is using a mikkyō deity’s name as a vehicle for sutra doctrine. The Shugendō proclamation and the Yagyū line diverge by the time of Takuan.

Hikita Contrast

Seikō-sui is not present in the Hikita Kage-ryū densho set from Kyushu I analysed previously.

Hikita Bungorō (疋田文五郎/豊五郎) is a first-generation Kamiizumi student — arguably the transmission line closest to the founder outside the Yagyū grant and independent of the Edo Yagyū house entirely. If 西江水 were a Kamiizumi original, Hikita is precisely where one would most expect it to surface: a direct disciple’s line, preserved in Kyushu at a remove from Edo developments, with no reason to have shed a founder-level gokui. Its absence there is therefore the strongest kind of evidence available against the Kamiizumi-original hypothesis — much stronger than absence from a later collateral branch would be.

Combined with the Tsuki no Shō’s own coinage testimony (今此ヲ西江水ト秘シテ…ト号ス) and the p. 69 founder-set (手字手利剣・水月・神妙剣, no 西江水), this yields convergence from two independent directions: the Yagyū tradition says the name is post-Kamiizumi, and a non-Yagyū first-generation line doesn’t have it.

This also sharpens the geography of the term: on current evidence 西江水 exists in exactly two places — the Edo Yagyū line (as a secret, named, in-house gokui) and the Jiki line (from the Ippūsai horizon, with the shared mind-placement operationalization). A term found in the Edo Yagyū house and in the one school whose founder trained in the Edo Yagyū house, and nowhere else in the Shinkage family, is about as clean a conduit-isolation as documentary evidence gets.

Falsifiability

Tests that would affect this conclusion include:

1. Any Kamiya- or Takahashi-era document — if 西江水 appears there, the Ippūsai thesis fails;
2. Edo Yagyū densho of the Munefuyu generation — 西江水 there would confirm it was in the curriculum Ippūsai actually encountered;
3. The 亡父/老父 crux — now census-resolved as a strong working hypothesis (亡父 = Sekishūsai; 2026-07). The remaining documentary steps are Imamura’s apparatus (kaidai/headnotes to the Tsuki no Shō) and, decisively, collation of Sekishūsai’s extant 没滋味手段口伝書 against the p. 41 亡父-record grouping (没茲味手段・西江水・越所) — a match dates 西江水 before 1606 and closes the Takuan-coinage window;
4. Owari-line densho — the 伝書篇 of Yagyū Toshinaga’s 正伝新陰流 prints Kamiizumi, Sekishūsai, Nyoūnsai, and Renya autograph transmissions: 西江水 present there would complicate the Edo-conduit isolation (§ Hikita Contrast) by putting the term in a second branch; its absence would sharpen the Edo-only geography to three independent negative witnesses (Hikita, Ogasawara-1670, Owari).

In summary, the evidence examined to date is most consistent with 西江水 entering Jikishinkage-ryū through Yamada Ippūsai’s Edo Yagyū study. The term is internally attested within the Yagyū line as a coinage of the Sekishūsai generation (per the deixis identification — at latest Munenori’s), not of Kamiizumi — with the four falsifiability tests listed above.

Corpus findings

Full-text search of the CBETA P5 corpus (tags stripped, CJK-only stream):

• 一口吸盡西江水 (full form): 463 occurrences; 吸盡西江水: 509; 吸盡西江 (broad): 653; the paired question 不與萬法為侶 (“not a companion to the myriad dharmas”): 632. Present in 247 works — one of the most-diffused kōan tags in the canon.
• A bare-string census of 西江水 alone (a broader net that also catches non-kōan and toponym uses) returns ~238 works and ~572 raw occurrences — a partly-overlapping but distinct set from the 吸盡-based counts above, not directly comparable to them. The bare string additionally picks up unrelated fragments to be filtered: 一口吸盡西江月 (moon, not water) and 吸盡西江難下口 (a separate dhāraṇī-offering verse, 「吸盡西江難下口，遍為甘露潤群生」).
• Earliest extant occurrence: Zutang ji (祖堂集; Sodōshū, 952; CBETA B25n0144), in the Layman Pang entry.
• Source-specific records: Mazu Daoyi chanshi guanglu (馬祖道一禪師廣錄, X69n1321, in the Sike yulu 四家語錄) and Pang jushi yulu (龐居士語錄, X69n1336).
• Canonical transmission: Jingde chuandeng lu (景德傳燈錄, 1004; T2076).
• Most influential later vehicle: Biyan lu (碧巖錄, 1128; T2003), Case 42.

Original context — Layman Pang and Mazu

The exchange is between Layman Pang (龐蘊, Páng Yùn; also 龐居士, J. Hōkoji; c. 740–808), the paradigmatic lay Chan adept, and Mazu Daoyi (馬祖道一; J. Baso Dōitsu; 709–788), founder of the Hongzhou school.

Zutang ji (952), earliest form:

龐居士…因問馬大師：「不與萬法為侶者，是什摩人？」馬師云：「待居士一口吸盡西江水，我則為你說。」居士便大悟。

“Layman Pang asked Master Ma, ‘What sort of person is the one who is not a companion to the ten thousand dharmas (不與萬法為侶)?’ Ma said, ‘Wait until you have swallowed all the water of the West River in one gulp — then I will tell you.’ At this the Layman had a great awakening.”

Jingde chuandeng lu (1004) gives 待汝一口吸盡西江水即向汝道 and adds 居士言下頓領玄要 (“at these words he suddenly grasped the essential mystery”).

Shitou precursor. Per the Biyan lu commentary, Pang first put the identical question to Shitou Xiqian (石頭希遷; J. Sekitō Kisen), who covered the layman’s mouth (掩却口) — occasioning Pang’s first verse, 日用事無別…神通并妙用，運水及搬柴 (“my daily affairs are nothing special… supernatural power and wondrous function: hauling water and carrying firewood”). Only then did he ask Mazu.

Pang’s awakening verse (after the West River reply):

十方同聚會，箇箇學無為。此是選佛場，心空及第歸。

“From the ten directions we gather in one assembly; each studies non-doing (mui 無為; wúwéi). This is the hall where Buddhas are selected; mind emptied, one passes the exam and returns home.” (senbutsujō 選佛場 casts the training hall as the imperial-examination hall — one “passes” by emptying the mind.) Zutang ji variants: 同一會 / 各各 / 選佛處.

Commentary

The question 不與萬法為侶 asks after the absolute subject — the “one” that keeps company with nothing, unconditioned by any of the myriad dharmas; it is itself a stock huatou. Mazu declines to answer it as a proposition: such a “one” cannot be pointed at as an object among objects without contradicting the question. He substitutes an impossible physical demand. Swallowing an entire great river in one mouthful cannot be parsed into a subject performing an act on an object — the image forces a totality taken whole, non-dually; one does not drink the river cup by cup. The impossibility is the teaching: it jams conceptual grasping (a “live word,” katsugo 活句), and in the collapse of the subject/object frame Pang awakens. Read positively, to “swallow the West River” is to be non-separate from the whole, so there is no longer a “one” standing over against “the ten thousand” — which is exactly what “not companioned by the myriad dharmas” names.

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Biyan lu Case 42 — 碧巖錄・第四十二則「龐居士好雪片片」

Yuanwu Keqin (圜悟克勤; J. Engo Kokugon; 1063–1135), with verse by Xuedou Chongxian (雪竇重顯; J. Setchō Jūken; 980–1052). Text: Taishō vol. 48, no. 2003. Translations below are working translations.

垂示 (Pointer)

垂示云。單提獨弄，帶水拕泥，敲唱俱行。銀山鐵壁。擬議則髑髏前見鬼，尋思則黑山下打坐。明明杲日麗天，颯颯清風匝地。且道古人還有誵訛處麼。試舉看。

“Holding it up alone, playing it solo; or else trailing through water, dragging through mud, striking and singing at once. A silver mountain, an iron wall. Hesitate and deliberate — you see ghosts before the skull; ponder and reflect — you sit under the black mountain. Bright, bright, the blazing sun rides the sky; rushing, rushing, the pure wind circles the earth. But say: did the ancients have any slippery point (誵訛)? Try looking at the case raised here.”

本則 (Main case)

舉。龐居士辭藥山，山命十人禪客相送至門首。居士指空中雪云：「好雪片片，不落別處。」時有全禪客云：「落在什麼處？」士打一掌。全云：「居士也不得草草。」士云：「汝恁麼稱禪客，閻老子未放汝在。」全云：「居士作麼生？」士又打一掌，云：「眼見如盲，口說如啞。」

“Raised: Layman Pang, taking leave of Yaoshan (藥山; J. Yakusan [Weiyan 惟儼]), was seen off to the gate by ten Chan monks Yaoshan had ordered to escort him. Pointing at the snow in the air, the Layman said, ‘Good snow — flake after flake, it falls in no other place.’ A monk named Quan (全禪客) said, ‘Where does it fall, then?’ The Layman gave him a slap. Quan said, ‘Layman, don’t be so careless.’ The Layman said, ‘Calling yourself a Chan monk like that — Old Yama (閻老子; King of Death) won’t let you off.’ Quan said, ‘And what about you, Layman?’ The Layman slapped him again and said, ‘Your eyes see as if blind, your mouth speaks as if mute.’”

Xuedou’s alternate word (別語): 初問處，但握雪團便打。 — “At the first question, I’d just have grabbed a snowball and hit him.” (In the Taishō text, Yuanwu’s capping phrases, jakugo 著語, are interlined throughout the case; they are omitted from the clean transcription above.)

評唱 (Yuanwu’s commentary) — the West River passage

龐居士參馬祖、石頭，兩處有頌。初見石頭，便問：「不與萬法為侶，是什麼人？」聲未斷，被石頭掩却口，有箇省處，作頌道：「日用事無別，唯吾自偶諧。頭頭非取捨，處處沒張乖。朱紫誰為號，青山絕點埃。神通并妙用，運水及搬柴。」後參馬祖，又問：「不與萬法為侶，是什麼人？」祖云：「待爾一口吸盡西江水，即向汝道。」士豁然大悟，作頌云：「十方同聚會，箇箇學無為。此是選佛場，心空及第歸。」…到藥山盤桓既久，遂辭藥山。山至重他，命十人禪客相送。是時值雪下，居士指雪云：「好雪片片不落別處。」

“Layman Pang studied under both Mazu and Shitou, and has verses from both. First, meeting Shitou, he asked, ‘What sort of person is the one not a companion to the myriad dharmas?’ Before the words were out, Shitou covered the layman’s mouth — and he had an insight, making the verse, ‘My daily affairs are nothing special…​ supernatural power and wondrous function: hauling water and carrying firewood.’ Later, with Mazu, he asked again, ‘What sort of person is the one not a companion to the myriad dharmas?’ Mazu said, ‘Wait until you swallow all the water of the West River in one gulp — then I’ll tell you.’ The Layman was thoroughly, greatly awakened (豁然大悟), and made the verse, ‘From the ten directions we gather in one assembly… mind emptied, one passes the exam and returns home.’… Having lingered long at Yaoshan’s, he took his leave; Yaoshan, esteeming him greatly, ordered ten monks to see him off. Snow was then falling, and the Layman, pointing at it, said, ‘Good snow — flake after flake, it falls in no other place.’”

The remainder of the pingchang (評唱) glosses the snow exchange: Quan’s “Where does it fall?” takes the bait; Pang’s two slaps enact what cannot be said; Xuedou’s “just grab a snowball and hit him” is judged apt but a half-beat slow (機遲) — the reply should meet the sound as it sounds (和聲便應、和聲便打). Yuanwu then reads the whole as “one-color” (一色) ground — the Samantabhadra (普賢) realm, “made into one seamless piece” (打成一片) — cautioning that resting in uniform whiteness is only “half-raising” (半提); full-raising (全提) requires the upward road (向上一路), where great function appears and no needle enters. He closes: even Bodhidharma could scarcely tell it apart.

Iro (one color) is found in Jikishinkage-ryū mokuroku commentary as well, for Metsuke no Koto (目付之事; “Matter of the Gaze”) in the phrase Gan nari. Metsuke no Shiyō, Iro o Miru, Kokoro no Kagami (眼ナリ 目付ノ仕用 色ヲ見ル 心ノ鏡).

頌 (Xuedou’s verse)

雪團打，雪團打，龐老機關沒可把。天上人間不自知，眼裏耳裏絕瀟灑。瀟灑絕，碧眼胡僧難辨別。

“Snowball smack! Snowball smack! — Old Pang’s device, there’s no grabbing hold of it. Gods above and humans below don’t know it themselves; in the eye, in the ear, utterly unfettered (瀟灑). Utterly unfettered! — even the blue-eyed foreign monk (碧眼胡僧; Bodhidharma, 達磨) could hardly tell it apart.”

Corpus access (downloads)

• CBETA XML P5 (full canon, the corpus searched here): https://github.com/cbeta-org/xml-p5 · tarball ~530 MB: https://codeload.github.com/cbeta-org/xml-p5/tar.gz/refs/heads/master
• DILA CBETA-txt (Taishō, plain text): https://github.com/DILA-edu/CBETA-txt
• CBETA download hub / offline reader: https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/static_pages/download_fulltext · https://www.cbeta.org

References

primary

secondary

End Notes