ABSTRACT

The Chinese title of our next selection is 永嘉證道歌 (yǒngjiā zhèngdào gē; T48:2014) often translated as ‘The Song of Enlightenment’. This text is said to have been written during the Tang dynasty by the monk Yǒngjiā Xuánjué (永嘉玄覺; c. 665–713 ce), who was from Yongjia, which is now part of Wenzhou county in Zhejiang province. As is the case here, sometimes monks are given the name of a place as a form of respect. So the author of this selection is normally referred to as Yongjia. The Song of Enlightenment was written immediately after his enlightenment ‘to spontaneously express the inexpressible while in a playful samadhi’ (Hsuan, 1983, p. 1).