Record of the Transmission of the Lamp

This compilation of Buddhist biographies, teaching and transmission stories of

Indian and Chinese Chan (Japanese ‘Zen’) masters from antiquity up to about the

year 1008 CE is the first mature fruit of an already thousand year-long spiritual

marriage between two great world cultures with quite different ways of viewing

the world. The fertilisation of Chinese spirituality by Indian Buddhism fructified

the whole of Asian culture. The message of this work, that Chan practice can

enable a free participation in life’s open-ended play, seems as necessary to our own

time as it was to the restless times of 11th century Song China.

Volume I (Books 1 - 3) is the first of a full translation of this work of thirty books.