CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 0Indian and Buddhist StudiesChinese history and philosophyMindfulness and Compassion Interventions

The DOI matches its Crossref record; none of the 47 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Calibrating and Adjudicating [Appraising the Level of Understanding and Rendering a Judgment]1

Broughton, Jeffrey L., Watanabe, Elise Yoko·2012·The Record of Linji
DOI 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199936410.003.0003
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This part consists of short episodes in which the participants “calibrate and adjudicate” each other’s level of beholding reality as it truly is. This part could be called “investigating the person and distinguishing his faults.” A primary fault is falling into dualities, such as “much” or “little.” The crazy trickster Puhua, an associate of Linji, expresses a repudiation of any sort of either/or in colorful episodes. Puhua calibrates and adjudicates Linji: “Linji is a crafty little gofer, but he’s only got the one eye.” This part concludes with Puhua’s climbing into a plain wooden coffin and asking a passerby to nail it up. He thus achieves liberation from samsara. Some episodes are followed by the comments of two masters, Guishan and Yangshan.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This chapter of *The Record of Linji* presents a sequence of short encounter episodes (sections 14–37) in which Linji and his associates "calibrate and adjudicate" one another's level of understanding, most memorably Puhua's verdict that "Linji is a crafty little gofer, but he's only got the one eye." The episodes dramatize the repudiation of dualities such as "much/little," "crude/fine," and "worldling/ārya," and culminate in Puhua's self-liberation by climbing into a plain wooden coffin.

Key findings

  • The chapter's organizing theme is "calibrating and adjudicating" (*kanben* 勘辨) — testing another's grasp of reality — with a primary fault identified as "falling into dualities, such as 'much' or 'little.'"
  • Puhua's assessment of Linji: "Linji is a [cagey] little gofer, but he's [only] got the one eye"; the notes record that commentators disagree on whether this is praise (Myōō: "'Endowed with the single eye' is praise") or not (Kassan: "not fully complimentary"; Iriya: "but he's only got the one eye").
  • Puhua's death episode: after three days of announcing he would die at the East, South, and other gates with no one following, "alone he went outside the town walls, got into the coffin by himself, and asked a person walking by to nail it up"; when opened, "they saw total mokṣa" — no corpse — and heard his rattle "receding into the sky/śūnyatā."
  • Some episodes are followed by the comments of two masters, Guishan and Yangshan (e.g., 14.2), and the chapter closes with Puhua's "two-in-one monk's costume" (a non-duality costume) episode.

Methods

  • Design: an annotated translation of the *Linjilu* (Record of Linji), sections 14–37, "in the light of ten Japanese Zen commentaries," with the translators' notes keyed to numbered phrases in the translation.
  • Sources/analysis: the translation is supported by extensive philological notes citing Japanese Zen commentators (Eishu, Dōchū, Kassan, Dōkū, Kōunshi, Myōō, Shukitsu, Anonymous) and Chinese sources (e.g., *Jingde chuandeng lu*, *Wudeng huiyuan*, *Biyanlu*, *Lotus Sutra*, *Vimalakīrti Sūtra*), glossing terms, textual variants, and interpretive disputes.

Limitations

  • Not stated in the paper. The text makes evident that the chapter is a translation-with-commentary rather than an empirical study, and that interpretation is contested: the notes repeatedly record divergent readings (e.g., whether "one eye" is praise or disparagement; whether the "second ladle of sewage" line is a "second offense" or a mistaken old interpretation; the double meaning of *wu zushi yi* 無祖師意).

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199936410.003.0003

Cites

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 47 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

    • Probably not a substantial claim. 56
    • It may state two separate claims as one. 9
    • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
    56 of 56

    • The paper relies on this without support.

      Longya Judun was in the Qingyuan line.

      “Longya Judun ( 龍牙居遁 ; 835-923) was in the Qingyuan 青原 line”

    • The paper relies on this without support.

      Longya Judun was a successor of Dongshan Liangjie.

      “he was a successor of Dongshan Liangjie ( 洞山良价 )”

    • The paper relies on this without support.

      Dongshan Liangjie was a fountainhead of the Caodong/Japanese So ̄ to ̄ lineage.

      “a fountainhead of the Caodong/Japanese So ̄ to ̄ lineage”

    • The paper relies on this without support.

      The all-purpose negative wu 無 means both meiyou 没有 (negative form of 'have' or 'possess'/negative form of 'existence') and fei/bu shi 非 / 不是 ('x is not y').

      “The double meaning depends upon the fact that the all-purpose negative wu 無 means both meiyou 没有 (negative form of 'have' or 'possess'/negative form of 'existence') and fei/bu shi 非 / 不是 ('x is not y').”
    4 of 4

    Citations

    Metadata

    Authors
    Broughton, J. L., & Watanabe, E. Y.
    Venue
    The Record of Linji
    Publisher
    Oxford University Press
    Published
    2012-12-07
    Pages
    78-87
    DOI
    10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199936410.003.0003
    OpenAlex
    W2481416350
    Cited by
    0
    References
    0
    FWCI
    0.00
    Type
    book chapter
    Language
    en
    Open access
    closed
    Locations
    Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
    Topics
    • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Indian and Buddhist Studies
    • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Chinese history and philosophy
    • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
    Keywords
    Linji Yixuan, dualistic thinking

    About these checks

    Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

    A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-21, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).

    A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-21 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

    Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

    Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

    What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

    Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review