Bōrě xīnjīng rúshì jīngyì 般若心經如是經義
“Suchness Sūtra-Meaning” Reading of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 行敏 (述, sobriquet Duànméi 斷眉)
About the work
A one-fascicle early-Qīng Heart Sūtra commentary by Duànméi 行敏 Xíngmǐn, the Línjì-school dharma-heir of 通容 Fèiyǐn Tōngróng (1593–1661) at Fúyán-sì. Preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng / Manji zoku-zō as X567. One fascicle.
The genre marker — rúshì jīngyì “suchness sūtra-meaning” — places the work in dialogue with the broader late-Míng / early-Qīng Rúshì-jiě tradition, including the well-known Jīngāng jīng rúshì jiě 金剛經如是解 of Wúshì dàorén 無是道人 (KR6c0073). The rúshì (suchness) framing signals a hermeneutical orientation that approaches the sūtra as an immediate suchness of meaning rather than as a system of doctrinal propositions.
This is the second of Xíngmǐn’s two paired Heart Sūtra commentaries — the other being a Bōrě xīnjīng zhù-jiǎng 般若心經註講 (“annotated lecture”) catalogued separately in the X-zàng. The two together parallel his paired Diamond Sūtra commentaries (X502 / X501), giving him a four-piece Prajñāpāramitā commentary cycle that systematically pairs zhù-jiǎng and rúshì jīngyì readings of each of the two short Prajñāpāramitā sūtras.
Prefaces
No formal preface; the commentary opens directly with the title-gloss. The witness shows some textual lacunae in the opening paragraphs (marked by □ characters in the digital text), suggesting damage in the underlying source text.
The opening title-gloss runs in the standard line-by-line zhù-style: “Mahā — Sanskrit, in Chinese great. This great-dharma is the Prajñā-mind commonly possessed by saint and ordinary. Sanskrit Prajñā, in Chinese wisdom — this great-wisdom-substance is fully equipped in saint and ordinary; only there is a difference of delusion-and-awakening within it. The deluded is precisely the foolish; the awakened is precisely the wise. But Prajñā originally has neither delusion nor awakening — if one can clearly understand beyond words, then delusion-and-awakening are originally empty…*”
The body of the commentary then proceeds line-by-line through the Heart Sūtra in the rúshì immediate-suchness register: each phrase is glossed with attention to its immediate contemplative-existential meaning rather than to elaborate doctrinal apparatus.
Abstract
X567 is one of the principal Línjì-school Heart Sūtra commentaries from the early-Kāngxī period and a primary witness to the textual production of the Mìyún-Tōngróng-line Línjì revival. The pairing with Xíngmǐn’s zhù-jiǎng commentary on the Heart Sūtra (and the parallel pair on the Diamond Sūtra) gives Xíngmǐn the most systematic Línjì pedagogical Prajñāpāramitā commentary output of the period.
The rúshì jīngyì genre is one of the more interesting late-Míng / early-Qīng commentary genres, signalling a hermeneutical orientation that treats the sūtra as immediate-suchness teaching rather than systematic doctrine. The Línjì-school’s adoption of this genre (Xíngmǐn here, Wúshì dàorén on the Diamond Sūtra) reflects the school’s broader commitment to bù lì wén zì (“not setting up letters”) epistemology, even as the commentaries themselves are necessarily textual artifacts.
The pair with the zhù-jiǎng (annotated lecture) form provides students with both the immediate suchness reading and the more systematic lecture-style exposition — a pedagogical strategy similar to the late-Míng paired commentary forms employed by Zǐbǎi (X536–539), Hóngzàn (X553+554), and others.
Composition date: no internal dating. Xíngmǐn’s career as Tōngróng’s dharma-heir spans roughly the mid-1640s through to the late 17th century. The bracket notBefore 1640 / notAfter 1690 is conservative.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- For Tōngróng and the Mìyún-line Línjì context, see Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (Oxford, 2008).
- For the rúshì jīngyì genre, see modern studies of Wúshì dàorén and the Diamond Sūtra parallel literature.
- Modern Chinese scholarship on the early-Qīng Línjì revival.
Other points of interest
The textual lacunae visible in the opening paragraphs of the witness (marked □ in the CBETA digital text) suggest that the surviving witness has some damage in its underlying source — perhaps a Japanese manuscript or print whose paper had degraded by the time of the Wàn xù-zàng compilation. This kind of textual degradation is characteristic of late-Míng / early-Qīng works that survived primarily through Japanese channels.
The four-piece zhù-jiǎng + rúshì jīngyì paired commentary structure on each of the Prajñāpāramitā short sūtras (Diamond + Heart) gives Xíngmǐn one of the most systematic Línjì Prajñāpāramitā commentary outputs of the early-Qīng period.