欲識玄玄公案，黃粱未熟以前：從《谷響集》看明季滇僧徹庸周理的思想淵源與精神境界

To Understand the Mysteriously Abstruse Gong'an, Before the Yellow Millet is Cooked: The Source of the Late-Ming Yunan Monk Cheyong Zhouli's Thought and His Mental State from the Viewpoint of Collection of the Valley's Echo

After the mid-Ming Dynasty, Chinese intellectuals were fond of discussing dreams. Chinese Buddhist monks especially contributed a lot to such discussions; the Discourse of Dream of Clouds and Mountains, a work of Cheyong Zhouli, a Chan monk from Yunnan province, is the foremost among these discussions. Zhouli's Buddhist theories of dreams incorporating confusion and Taoist thought were replete with profundity. In addition to this work, his poetry collection, Collection of the Valley's Echo, which also expounded his Buddhist thought through illustrations of dreams, can be regarded as complementary to the Discourse of Dream of Clouds and Mountains. Collection of the Valley's Echo additionally provides us a vivid picture of Late-Ming Buddhism of the Yunnan region. The work can be seen as an embodiment of Cheyong Zhouli's thought, which is invaluably unique in the context of Buddhist cultural history.
This article begins with Late-Ming Buddhist intellectual history but centers on Collection of the Valley's Echo, endeavoring to explore the inspiration of Zhouli's thought and his spiritual world, which have not been closely studied by scholars to date. A still more specific consideration is an exploration of the various influences he received from Huayan, Pure Land, Chan, and indigenous Yunnan Buddhism, so as to locate his intellectual significance in the context of Buddhist intellectual history in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.