Later Zen masters have approached the Record of Linji as a living wellspring of instruction, returning to it again and again to clarify both doctrine and method. In the Chinese Song and later dynasties, masters produced formal commentaries and redactions that organized the text, highlighted key structures such as Linji’s “four shouts,” “three mysteries,” and “four kinds of guest and host,” and harmonized his fierce style with Mahāyāna teachings on emptiness and Buddha‑nature. Verse commentaries and poetic glosses added further layers of interpretation, showing how Linji’s abrupt words could be read as precise expressions of nondual realization rather than mere outbursts. This early work of systematizing and explicating laid the groundwork for how later traditions would receive the Record, treating it less as a random collection of anecdotes and more as a carefully articulated path of practice.

As the text moved into Japan, Rinzai masters made it a touchstone for their own identity and training methods. They developed formal exegesis around phrases such as “the true person of no rank,” “host and guest,” and “kill the Buddha,” mapping these sayings onto stages of practice and insight within kōan curricula. Episodes from the Record were treated as model cases: each shout, blow, or exchange was unpacked to show correct view, appropriate function, and the cutting off of conceptual thinking. Figures such as Hakuin Ekaku and his successors did not always offer line‑by‑line commentaries, yet they repeatedly cited and reworked Linji’s methods, integrating them into elaborate systems of primary kōans, checking questions, and capping phrases. In this way, Linji’s style became normative for Rinzai training, even when the Record itself was filtered through later pedagogical frameworks.

The Record also entered broader Chan and Seon discourse through its incorporation into major kōan collections and through ongoing oral teaching. Dialogues and sayings from Linji were selected for works such as the Blue Cliff Record and the Book of Serenity, where they received extensive prose and verse commentary from later compilers. Subsequent Chinese and Korean masters drew on Linji’s uncompromising critique of “seeking outside,” his emphasis on seeing one’s own nature, and his attacks on clinging to scriptures or meditative states, often using his lines as concise slogans for sudden awakening. In sermons and teisho, teachers elaborated on his “true person of no rank” and his four positions, analyzing even the famous shout as a carefully functioning device rather than a mere display of temperament.

Across these traditions, a shared hermeneutic sensibility emerges. Commentators consistently reframe Linji’s harshness as “great compassion in fierceness,” explaining how cutting words and actions serve to free students on the spot. Key formulae—such as the “true person of no rank” or the “lump of red flesh” in which a “true man” is found—are treated as condensed expressions of Buddha‑nature and the identity of samsara and nirvana, to be unpacked in practice rather than merely admired. At the same time, Linji’s polemics against other approaches become a foil through which later masters clarify their own methods, whether in the Rinzai lineage or in related Chan and Seon streams. Through formal commentaries, kōan systems, and living oral instruction, the Record of Linji thus continues to function not as a relic of the past, but as a mirror in which each generation of practitioners tests and refines its understanding.