Bōrě xīnjīng zhù-jiǎng 般若心經註講
“Annotated Lecture” on 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 (floruit mid-seventeenth century), the Línjì-school dharma-heir of 通容 Fèiyǐn Tōngróng. Preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng / Manji zoku-zō as X568. Companion to his Rúshì jīngyì (X567 = KR6c0186). One fascicle.
The genre marker — zhù-jiǎng “annotated lecture” — signals the more pedagogically systematic of Xíngmǐn’s two paired Heart Sūtra commentary forms. Each phrase of the sūtra is presented as a lecture-block with substantial doctrinal apparatus and exegetical detail, in contrast to the more compressed immediate-suchness register of the Rúshì jīngyì.
Prefaces
No formal preface; the commentary opens directly with the gloss on 「觀自在菩薩」: 「阿難說。我教有觀自在者。變化從心達觀自得也。」 — “阿難 Ānanda said: in our teaching there is Avalokiteśvara (Observing-Self-Mastery) — transformations follow the mind, penetrating contemplation, self-attaining. Observing and listening, completely clear; wisdom without obstruction. Observing existence, not dwelling in existence; observing emptiness, not dwelling in emptiness. Mind cannot be moved, objects cannot be followed; movement-and-following do not disorder one’s true [nature], attaining great self-mastery and complete-penetration. Bodhisattva is the abbreviated form of Bodhi-sattva. Bodhi means awakening; sattva means sentient — that is, capable of awakening all sentient beings, self-awakening to awaken sentient beings. ‘Bodhisattva’ and ‘Mahāsattva’ are both honorific designations of the Buddha. ‘Avalokiteśvara-bodhisattva’ is precisely ‘Avalokiteśvara Mahāsattva’.”
The body of the commentary then proceeds line-by-line through the Heart Sūtra in the lecture-block format. The opening Ānanda said framing is a distinctive Xíngmǐn move that places the commentary within an implicit Buddhist sūtra-narrative frame — as if the lecture were itself an extension of Ānanda’s role as the canonical prātimokṣa-rememberer of the Buddha’s teaching.
Abstract
X568 is the more pedagogically systematic of Xíngmǐn’s two paired Heart Sūtra commentaries. Doctrinally it presents the Línjì-school standard Chan-style jiàn xìng reading combined with substantive doctrinal apparatus; stylistically it is somewhat more elaborate than the Rúshì jīngyì (X567) and provides more student-oriented exegetical detail.
The pairing of zhù-jiǎng (annotated lecture) and rúshì jīngyì (suchness sūtra-meaning) by the same hand — and the parallel pairing on the Diamond Sūtra (X502 / X501) — gives Xíngmǐn the most systematic Línjì Prajñāpāramitā commentary output of the early-Qīng period.
For the wider history, X568 is a primary witness to the Mìyún-Tōngróng-line Línjì revival’s textual production and to the school’s commitment to providing both immediate-contemplative and systematic-pedagogical versions of its Heart Sūtra teaching.
The opening Ānanda said framing is a distinctive Xíngmǐn move; it appears in his other commentaries as well and is a small but consistent stylistic signature.
Composition date: no internal dating. Same bracket as X567 — Xíngmǐn’s career as Tōngróng’s dharma-heir, c. 1640–1690.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- See the references for KR6c0186 (Xíngmǐn’s Rúshì jīngyì).
- For the broader Línjì-school context, Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute (Oxford, 2008).
Other points of interest
The opening Ānanda said framing is unusual: the Heart Sūtra’s actual narrator is the Buddha (or Avalokiteśvara, depending on recension); Xíngmǐn’s framing of the opening gloss as if delivered by 阿難 Ānanda places the commentary in an implicit canonical-narrative frame. This is in keeping with the rúshì wǒ wén (thus have I heard) opening that anchors Buddhist sūtras in the Ānanda-rememberer tradition, even though the Xuánzàng short-recension Heart Sūtra (T251) does not begin with the evaṃ mayā śrutam formula.
The pair X567 (Rúshì jīngyì) + X568 (Zhù-jiǎng) by the same hand provides students with both the immediate-suchness and the systematic-lecture readings — a pedagogical strategy that anticipates the modern Buddhist instructional pattern of providing both meditation manual and doctrinal exposition on the same core text.