The Blue Cliff Record

The Blue Cliff Record is a revered collection of one hundred Chan koans, built on cases and verses selected by Xuedou and furnished with the layered commentary of the master Yuanwu. It is prized for its literary richness as much as its depth.

Each case stages an exchange between master and student designed to cut through conceptual understanding to immediate realisation; Yuanwu's commentaries both illuminate and deliberately complicate, guarding against any merely intellectual grasp. So wary was the tradition of that danger that Yuanwu's own heir is said to have burned the printing blocks.

Together with the Gateless Gate it forms the classical heart of the koan curriculum in Rinzai Zen.