The Mind Pervades All Realms (心遍萬境)

1 July 2026

心遍萬境 (Shin-hen Bankyō; xīn biàn wàn jìng; “the mind pervades all realms”), is a gokui (極意; inner teaching) recorded in a Kyūshū Shinkage-ryū densho.

The exact four-graph string 心遍萬境 is not attested in the transmitted Chinese Buddhist canon, nor in searchable Japanese Buddhist or Edo-period printed corpora. It is internally attested only in the densho under study.

On present evidence it is most economically read as a recasting of the ubiquitous Chan gāthā Shin zui bankyō ten (心隨萬境轉; xīn suí wàn jìng zhuǎn; “the mind turns following the myriad realms”) attributed to Manura (摩拏羅), substituting 遍 (“pervade”) for the passive 隨…轉 (“be turned by”), and drawing conceptually on Huayan mind-only doctrine (三界唯心 / 一切唯心造) without quoting any single sutra.

Method. Full-text search / grep using AI (Opus 4.8) across (a) the transmitted Chinese canon; (b) the open web index; (c) modern Japanese printed corpora; (d) Edo-period kotenseki full text. Controls were run in each interface; a target null is reported only where controls fired.

Findings

  • CBETA, whole canon (~240 million CJK characters), controls fired. 心遍萬境 = 0. Controls: 心隨萬境轉 = 136 occ / 100 works; 萬境 = 1210 / 535; 心遍 = 761 / 362; 遍一切境 = 30 / 23; 心遍一切處 = 39 / 20. The nearest canonical idioms use 一切 where the densho uses 萬. → hard null.
  • Avatamsaka (華厳経) attribution — claimed and rejected. A web/AI explainer sourced the phrase to the Kegon-kyō; 心遍萬境 is absent from T278/T279/T293 (all within the CBETA scan). The genuine Huayan mind-only doctrine is worded 三界唯心 (十地品) and 一切唯心造 (覚林菩薩偈, 八十華厳 巻19; Taishō vol. 10, 102a) — neither is this string. → refuted; conceptual pedigree only.
  • Open web index (Google-backed), three exact-phrase probes (plain, OR-variant, Zen/bugei context). 0 exact hits; only 心隨萬境轉 surfaces. → soft, index-limited.
  • SAT2018. Not independently re-run: shares the Taishō base text with CBETA-T, so it is not an independent witness for this query.
  • NDL Ngram Viewer (modern printed books/magazines). Blank; subject to an LFU frequency floor that can suppress near-hapax n-grams, so weaker than absence.
  • NDL 次世代デジタルライブラリー (Edo woodblock kotenseki). 心遍萬境 and 心遍万境 both blank; subject to kuzushiji-OCR error → soft null, needs image confirmation.
  • NDL Digital Collections (broad full-text). 心遍 returns hits; 心遍萬 and 遍萬境 both return none, forcing the 4-gram to 0 by substring monotonicity; the 萬 leg independently confirmed present (e.g. in 武術名家傳, 1902). → hard null.
  • Hanazono IRIZ Denshi Daruma / Zenseki. NOT YET SEARCHED — no public search interface located; curated Edo Rinzai/Ōbaku transcription with no OCR discount; the single corpus most able to overturn the null.
  • Takuan Sōhō corpus (沢庵和尚全集) — NOT YET SEARCHED. NDL-digitized (pid 1218309 ff.) but released only via 図書館・個人送信 (no open view; 個人送信 excludes overseas residents); its clean movable-type text is nonetheless indexed by NDL full-text search, so the phrase check is runnable there. Prime Edo Zen/bugei candidate alongside IRIZ (Fudōchi shinmyōroku, Taiaki).

Residual limitation. Genuinely vernacular Japanese bugei/Zen manuscript material (the Fudōchi shinmyōroku register, Yagyū Heihō *kadensho, Shinkage-ryū densho) is not comprehensively searchable, so *the affirmative “Japanese coinage” reading cannot be proven the same *way; only the canonical/print null half is established.

Manura gāthā — first occurrence and context

The verse is the transmission gāthā (fugeju 付偈) of Manura (摩拏羅), the 22nd Indian patriarch, spoken to his successor Heikḷanna (鶴勒那). In the corpus its earliest extant occurrence is the Zutang ji (祖 堂集; Sodōshū, 952; CBETA B25n0144), whose Manura chapter opens with “具如寶林傳也” (“as fully given in the Baolin zhuan”), crediting the now largely-lost Baolin zhuan (寶林傳, 801) as its source. (靜筠二禪師 (Jing and Yun, comp.) 952 AD)

The most-diffused version is the Jingde chuandeng lu (景德傳 燈錄, 1004; T2076); across the corpus the gāthā recurs in ~90 works (lamp records, Dahui yulu T1998A, Biyan lu T2003, and much of the Zokuzōkyō / Jiaxing Chan literature). (道原 (Daoyuan) 1004)

Text (earliest witnesses agree): 心隨萬境轉／轉處實能幽／隨流認得 性／無喜復無憂 — the earliest reading is 無喜復無憂 (fù), not the later-circulating 無喜亦無憂 (yì).

Narrative frame:

Manura entrusts Heikḷanna with the shōbōgenzō (正法眼藏; treasury of the true dharma eye) — “guard it, let it not be cut off” — and speaks the verse; the Jingde chuandeng lu recension ties it to liberating a flock of cranes (鶴眾, former disciples reborn in avian form), after which Manura enters final quiescence.

The verse is therefore a transmission teaching on the mind–object relation: the mind is carried through the myriad realms (境), yet one who recognises [self-]nature within the flux is beyond joy and sorrow — the passive “turned by” polarity that the densho phrase 心遍萬境 inverts. In the Xu chuandeng lu (續傳燈錄, T2077) a Song-court speaker even cites the verse and misattributes it to the third patriarch’s Xinxin ming (信心銘) — evidence it circulated detached from its Manura source.

Contrast to the Avatamsaka (華厳経)

The Avataṃsaka-sūtra (大方廣佛華嚴經; Daihōkō butsu Kegon-kyō; “Flower-Ornament Sutra”) is a large composite Mahāyāna scripture assembled in Central Asia by c. the 4th century from originally independent texts. Three Chinese recensions are standard: the 60-fascicle (T278, trans. Buddhabhadra, 418–420), the 80-fascicle (T279, trans. Śikṣānanda, 695–699), and the 40-fascicle (T293, the Gaṇḍavyūha alone).

Its cosmology centres on Vairocana (毘盧遮那) and the mutual interpenetration of all phenomena — ichi-soku-issai (一即 一切; “one is all”) and hokkai engi (法界縁起; dharmadhātu dependent-arising). Its two oldest and most influential chapters are the Jūji-hon (十地品; Daśabhūmika, the ten bodhisattva grounds, source of 三界唯心 “the three realms are mind-only”) and the Nyū-hokkai-hon (入法界品; Gaṇḍavyūha, the pilgrim Sudhana / 善財童子 visiting fifty-three teachers).

It is the doctrinal basis of the Huayan (華厳宗) / Kegon school (historically at Tōdai-ji). The mind-only line 一切唯心造 — belongs to the Yuishin-ge (唯心偈) of the Kakurin Bosatsu ge (覚林菩薩偈), 80-fascicle, fasc. 19 (Taishō vol. 10, 102a) but the phrase 心遍萬境 does not occur in it. (實叉難陀 (Śikṣānanda, trans.) 699 AD)

References

Primary Sources

實叉難陀 (Śikṣānanda, trans.). 699 AD. 大方廣佛華嚴經 (Daihōkō butsu Kegon-kyō; 80-fascicle Avataṃsaka). 大正新脩大藏經 (Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō). T10, no. 279 · Open full-text via CBETA and SAT2018. The string 心遍萬境 is absent from all Avatamsaka recensions (T278/T279/T293) within the CBETA scan, and the genuine Huayan mind-only doctrine is worded 三界唯心 (十地品) and 一切唯心造 (覚林菩薩偈, fasc. 19, T10.102a), not as this phrase, so it supplies conceptual pedigree only, not attestation.
靜筠二禪師 (Jing and Yun, comp.). 952 AD. 祖堂集 (Sodōshū; Zǔtáng jí). 大藏經補編 (Dazangjing bubian). B25, no. 144 · Open full-text via CBETA. Earliest extant witness of the Manura gāthā in the corpus; its Manura chapter cites the fragmentary Baolin zhuan (寶林傳, 801) as source with the note 具如寶林傳也, so the ultimate origin is the lost 801 text.
道原 (Daoyuan). 1004. 景德傳燈錄 (Keitoku Dentōroku; Jǐngdé chuándēng lù). 大正新脩大藏經 (Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō). T51, no. 2076 · Open full-text via CBETA and SAT2018. Standard, most-diffused version of the Manura gāthā 心隨萬境轉 (earliest extant witness is the Zutang ji, 952); attests the variant the densho phrase recasts, and does not contain 心遍萬境.
契嵩 (Qisong). 1061. 傳法正宗記 (Denpō Shōshūki; Chuánfǎ zhèngzōng jì). 大正新脩大藏經 (Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō). T51, no. 2078 · Open full-text via CBETA and SAT2018. Second canonical witness carrying the same Manura gāthā 心隨萬境轉; corroborates the variant's wide circulation, not the four-graph target.
大慧宗杲 (Dahui Zonggao). 1171. 大慧普覺禪師語錄 (Daie Fukaku Zenji Goroku; Dàhuì Pǔjué chánshī yǔlù). 大正新脩大藏經 (Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō). T47, no. 1998A · Open full-text via CBETA and SAT2018. Later Chan recorded-sayings text quoting the same gāthā; evidences the phrase's circulation in Chan pedagogy, not the origin of 心遍萬境.

Corpora consulted (with result and independence limits)

CBETA 財團法人佛教電子佛典基金會. n.d. CBETA XML P5 電子佛典集成 (CBETA XML P5 corpus). https://github.com/cbeta-org/xml-p5. Full-text digital canon (Taishō, Zokuzōkyō, Jiaxing and ~20 further collections; ~240M CJK characters); markup- and punctuation-normalised grep returned 0 hits for 心遍萬境 against 136 for the control 心隨萬境轉, comprehensive for the transmitted Chinese canon but bounded by CBETA coverage.
DILA 法鼓文理學院 (Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts). n.d. CBETA-txt (plain-text Taishō corpus). https://github.com/DILA-edu/CBETA-txt. Taishō-only plain-text export used for the first-pass canon grep; superseded for comprehensiveness by the P5 corpus, which adds Zokuzōkyō and Jiaxing.
SAT 大藏經テキストデータベース研究会. n.d. SAT 大正新脩大藏經テキストデータベース 2018 (SAT Daizōkyō Text Database). https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/. Full-text of all 85 Taishō volumes incl. the Japanese-composition section; shares the Taishō base text with CBETA-T, hence not an independent witness for this query.
国立国会図書館 (National Diet Library). n.d. 次世代デジタルライブラリー (Jisedai Digital Library). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/. Full-text OCR search of ~350k public-domain items incl. ~80k premodern kotenseki; 心遍萬境 and 心遍万境 both returned no hits, but kuzushiji-OCR error renders this a soft null requiring image confirmation.
国立国会図書館 (National Diet Library). n.d. NDL Ngram Viewer. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/ngramviewer/. Frequency visualiser over modern printed books and magazines (mainly pre-1960s); phrase blank, but an LFU frequency floor can suppress near-hapax n-grams, so the null is weaker than true absence.
国立国会図書館 (National Diet Library). n.d. 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション (NDL Digital Collections). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/. Full-text OCR over ~2.47M items; 心遍 returns hits while 心遍萬 and 遍萬境 return none, forcing the four-graph string to zero by substring monotonicity, with the 萬 leg independently confirmed present (e.g. in 武術名家傳, 1902).
国文学研究資料館 (National Institute of Japanese Literature). n.d. 国書データベース (Kokusho Database; Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts). https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/. ~950k bibliographic records and ~300k images with partial transcription-based full text; a discovery and reading tool for Edo editions rather than a whole-text sweep.
花園大学国際禅学研究所 (International Research Institute for Zen Buddhism, Hanazono University). n.d. 電子達磨#3 / 禅学総合資料庫・禅籍データベース (Denshi Daruma; Zengaku Sōgō Shiryōko). http://saku.hanazono.ac.jp/database. Curated full-text transcription of Edo Rinzai/Ōbaku recorded-sayings and shōmono (no OCR discount); NOT YET SEARCHED, as no public search interface was located; the single corpus most able to overturn the null.
禅文化研究所 (Institute for Zen Studies). n.d. 禅文化研究所デジタル公開資料 (Zen Bunka Kenkyūjo digital materials). https://www.zenbunka.or.jp/. Publisher of authoritative critical editions and yakuchū cross-referenced by IRIZ; consulted as an edition source, not a full-text search corpus.

Edo-period primary corpus (open test)

宗彭 (Takuan Sōhō). 1928. 沢庵和尚全集 (Takuan Oshō Zenshū). 沢庵和尚全集刊行会. 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション (NDL Digital Collections). 請求記号 635-3; pid 1218309 (vol. 1), NDLBibID 000000762171 · 図書館・個人送信 (library / personal transmission); remote copy available; not open internet-public. Collected works (6 vols, 1928–1930) including the bugei-relevant 不動智神妙録 and 太阿記; the prime Edo Zen/bugei corpus for the phrase but NOT YET SEARCHED — viewing is 図書館・個人送信-restricted and 個人送信 excludes overseas residents, though its clean movable-type text is indexed by NDL full-text search, so the existence check is runnable there.

Source under investigation

〔著者未詳 / author undetermined〕. 〔年代未詳 / date undetermined〕. “〔九州新陰流傳書 (Kyūshū Shinkage-ryū densho)〕 — gokui 心遍萬境.” 〔年代未詳 / date undetermined〕. 〔所蔵機関 / holding institution〕. 〔請求記号 / shelfmark〕 · 〔閲覧状態 / access state〕. Source under investigation; 心遍萬境 is internally attested here but, per this dossier, externally unattested in the transmitted Chinese Buddhist canon and in searchable Japanese Buddhist and Edo-period print corpora.

Corpus access (downloads)

  • CBETA XML P5 — full canon, all collections (Taishō, Zokuzōkyō, Jiaxing, Bubian, etc.); the corpus searched in this dossier. Repo: 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 only, plain text. Repo: https://github.com/DILA-edu/CBETA-txt · tarball (~325 MB): https://codeload.github.com/DILA-edu/CBETA-txt/tar.gz/refs/heads/master
  • CBETA text-analysis data / download hub: https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/static_pages/download_fulltext
  • CBETA offline reader (CBReader) and site: https://www.cbeta.org
  • SAT Daizōkyō (online search; Taishō): https://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/
  • NDL Ngram datasets (PDM ngram dumps): https://github.com/ndl-lab/ndlngramdata
  • NDL classical-OCR text datasets: https://lab.ndl.go.jp/data_set/ocr/

Conventions

  • Tier in keywords: primary = classical text / archival document; secondary = modern reference, database, or scholarship.
  • reliability = one-sentence provenance/evidentiary note stating independence limits.
  • archive / shelfmark / access on primary entries only.