Bōrě xīnjīng zhǐzhǎng 般若心經指掌
“Pointing to the Palm” Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra Commentary by 元賢 (述, sobriquet Yǒngjué 永覺)
About the work
A one-fascicle Heart Sūtra commentary by Yǒngjué 元賢 Yuánxián (1578–1657), the leading early-Qīng Cáodòng-school revivalist and abbot of Gǔshān Yǒngquán-sì 鼓山涌泉寺 in Fújiàn. Preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng / Manji zoku-zō as X558. Composed in the jiǎ-wǔ year (= 1654, Shùnzhì 11), the Buddha’s Joy Day (15th of the seventh lunar month, Yúlánpén festival), at Gǔshān, when Yuánxián was in his late 70s.
The genre marker — zhǐzhǎng “pointing to the palm” — alludes to Lúnyǔ 3.11 (Confucius gestures to his palm to indicate that something is as easy to comprehend as pointing to one’s own palm); Yuánxián’s title-allusion frames his commentary as making the Heart Sūtra’s profound doctrine as immediately graspable as one’s own palm — a deliberately accessible pedagogical orientation. One fascicle.
Prefaces
The work opens with Yuánxián’s own self-preface (No. 558-A), a polished piece of late-life Buddhist literary writing:
- “Prajñā is without knowing, and all dharmas are originally quiescent. Their cause is the wondrous substance of the One True; their image is the floating name of the Two Truths. Seeming real and seeming empty, they cannot be approached by either real or empty; both separated and joined, they cannot be made clear by either separation or joining. Therefore empty yet not empty, existing yet not existing, mutually composing without obstruction to mutually depriving, both standing and both also extinguished, quiescent-and-established without obstruction, hidden-and-manifest in self-mastery — this is the xuán-zōng (mystical thesis) of Prajñā.”
- “But the ordinary mind is easily deluded, and the wisdom-fire is hard to ignite — like raising a net to spread the wind, like following the wave to grasp the moon. Vainly traversing hardships and toils, it conversely becomes obstruction. From this hundreds of sufferings inter-twine and a thousand calamities collect together — all from the grasping of this single thought.”
- “The Heart Sūtra: text concise but meaning truly rich; words manifest but principle especially profound. It first opens the two gates of emptiness-and-form, specifically breaking the two graspings of being-and-non-being. When being-and-non-being are exhausted, the true characteristic can be manifested; when form-and-emptiness are united, the wondrous meaning becomes complete and round. To clarify this Prajñā path in daily use is more than half [the work].”
- “I once observed that the various commentators rarely arrive at its profundity. Only the two subcommentaries of Xián-shǒu (= 法藏 Fǎzàng) and Gū-shān (= 智圓 Zhìyuán) — the seasoned generals of the dharma-altar — broadly cite the sūtras and treatises and lavishly arrange the rope-and-trap, but they are not what the beginning student can penetrate. Therefore I have specially made this zhǐzhǎng, to make it easy for the beginning student to see. The journey of ten thousand miles begins with a half-step; observers, please do not overlook it.”
- Dated and signed: 「歲在甲午孟秋佛歡喜日 ／ 鼓山比丘元贒稽首和南序」 — “Year jiǎ-wǔ (= 1654), early autumn, Buddha’s Joy Day / The bhikkhu Yuánxián of Gǔshān bows in respectful preface”.
A short verse follows the preface: 「老漢行年今八十 世間事事皆收拾 唯這影子遍諸方 敗露重重遮不及」 — “This old fellow’s age has now reached eighty; the affairs of the world are all gathered up. Only this shadow pervades everywhere — its bared exposure layer-on-layer cannot be covered.” The verse is a poignant late-life self-portrait of the seventy-six-year-old abbot at the conclusion of his commentarial work.
The body of the commentary then proceeds line-by-line through the Heart Sūtra in clear, accessible Chinese explicitly oriented toward “the beginning student”.
Abstract
X558 is the principal Heart Sūtra commentary by Yuánxián, who together with 弘贊 Hóngzàn (KR6c0172, KR6c0173) and 弘麗 Hónglì (KR6c0169) constitutes the leading triad of the early-Qīng Cáodòng-school revival in southeastern China. Doctrinally Yuánxián’s reading is broadly Cáodòng-Chan (the jiàn xìng frame, the Vinaya commitment) with substantial doctrinal apparatus drawn from Tang and Sòng Madhyamaka and Huáyán literature. The opening preface’s xuán-zōng formulation of the Heart Sūtra’s zhēnkōng-miàoyǒu synthesis (空而非空有而非有互成不妨互奪並存亦可並亡) is one of the more elegant late-Míng / early-Qīng statements of the standard zhēnkōng-miàoyǒu doctrine.
The pedagogical orientation — the explicit critique of Fǎzàng’s and Zhìyuán’s commentaries as too dense for beginners, the explicit zhǐzhǎng (palm-pointing) framing — places X558 alongside Hānshān’s Zhíshuō (X542) and Hóngzàn’s Tiānzú (X553) as Heart Sūtra commentaries explicitly designed for non-specialist readers and ordinary monastic students.
Composition date: 1654 (Shùnzhì 11), per the dated self-preface — Yuánxián’s late-life work, three years before his death in 1657.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- For Yuánxián and the early-Qīng Cáodòng revival, see Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (Oxford, 2008) — extensive treatment of Yuánxián as the principal Cáodòng counterweight to the Mìyún-圓悟-通容 Línjì revival.
- Ya-Hwei Tu (杜雅芬) and other modern Chinese-language scholarship on Gǔshān Yǒngquán-sì and the Yuánxián textual production.
- Yǒngjué Yuánxián chánshī guǎnglù 永覺元賢禪師廣錄 (his collected works in 30 juan).
Other points of interest
The verse appended after the preface is one of the small pearls of Yuánxián’s late-life literary output — 老漢行年今八十 世間事事皆收拾 (“this old fellow’s age has now reached eighty; the affairs of the world are all gathered up”). The line 唯這影子遍諸方 (“only this shadow pervades everywhere”) is a Chan-style figure for the unable-to-cover nature of the awakened mind that Yuánxián is now committing to writing.
The explicit pedagogical orientation — and the explicit critique of the famous Tang and Sòng commentaries (法藏 Fǎzàng’s Lüèshū, 智圓 Zhìyuán’s shū) as inaccessible to beginners — exemplifies the early-Qīng Cáodòng-school revival’s commitment to broad accessibility, in deliberate contrast to the Línjì-school’s polemical and elaborate textual culture.