Jīngāng jīng jiěyì 金剛經解義
The Meaning-Explication of the Diamond Sūtra attributed to 慧能 (Huìnéng, 解義, attributed)
About the work
A two-juan Diamond Sūtra commentary attributed to Huìnéng 慧能 (638–713), the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Chán Buddhism and the foundational figure of the Southern Chán school. The Huìnéng attribution is disputed by modern scholarship — the text is more likely a Northern-Sòng-period composition attached to Huìnéng’s name to lend authority — but the work has been transmitted under his name within the Chán-school commentarial tradition. Preserved in the Wànzì xùzàngjīng at X24 no. 459. notBefore = 700, notAfter = 900 (broadly post-Huìnéng but before the Sòng cataloging cutoffs; the text’s exact dating remains unsettled).
Abstract
The work — together with KR6c0048 Jīngāng jīng kǒujué (also attributed to Huìnéng) — represents the Chán-school Vajracchedikā commentarial tradition as transmitted under the foundational Sixth Patriarch’s name. Whether or not these works originate with the historical Huìnéng, they preserve the Southern Chán-school doctrinal-meditative reading of the Vajracchedikā — which is foundational for subsequent Chán doctrinal-commentarial practice (cf. Liùzǔ tánjīng 六祖壇經, the Platform Sutra, in which Huìnéng’s Vajracchedikā enlightenment is the foundational narrative).
Translations and research
- Yampolsky, Philip B. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. Columbia University Press, 1967.
- McRae, John R. Scholarship on Chán historiography.
- Faure, Bernard. Scholarship on Chán-tradition pseudepigraphy.