Bōrě xīnjīng jiěyì 般若心經解義
“Glossing the Meaning” of the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra by 徐槐廷 (解義, sobriquet Lèjìng jūshì 樂淨居士)
About the work
A one-fascicle late-Qīng (Dàoguāng-Tóngzhì era) Heart Sūtra commentary by 徐槐廷 Xú Huáitíng (1800–1873), the late-Qīng jūshì lay devotee of Pure Land orientation. Preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng / Manji zoku-zō as X570. One fascicle. Companion to his Diamond Sūtra commentary Jīngāng jīng jiěyì 金剛經解義 (X509 = KR6c0097, dated 1858).
The genre marker — jiěyì “glossing the meaning” — signals an explicitly jūshì-oriented exegetical reading, with the integrated zhù-lùn (annotation-and-treatise) format that the work uses throughout: each phrase of the sūtra is given a zhù (annotation) and then framed within a brief lùn (treatise discussion).
Prefaces
No formal preface in the surviving witness. The work opens directly with the title-gloss in the zhù-lùn paired format:
- Zhù (Annotation): “Prajñā: in Chinese, wisdom — that is, the original nature of a person. Surpassing emotion, leaving views; the appellation of quiescent-and-clear, round-and-bright. The substance-and-function of Prajñā is pure: as if (rúrú), perfectly complete. Subdivided, it has three: First, shíxiàng (true-characteristic) Prajñā — the unmarked mark, called true-characteristic — i.e. the sūtra’s unborn-and-unextinguished. Second, guānzhào (illuminative-contemplation) Prajñā — the mark-leaving illumination, called guānzhào — i.e. the sūtra’s practising deeply, illumining-and-seeing. Third, wénzì (textual) Prajñā — i.e. spoken-words and chapters-and-phrases capable of expressing Prajñā…”
- Lùn (Treatise): “This sūtra in general is for the worldly people who indulge in present phantom-objects, creating various karmas, deluding the true and losing the original, falling for ten-thousand kalpas, turning around to receive suffering with no exit-period. The Buddha, in the midst of awakening, sorrowfully and pitifully — wishing people through words to awaken to the way and escape the bitter sea — specially preached this guānzhào miào-fǎ (illuminative-contemplation wondrous dharma), revealing the true realm of no-mind-obstruction great-self-mastery. The doctrinal essentials of the six hundred fascicles of Prajñā are all encompassed within these two-hundred-sixty characters. The general meaning grasps the six-as contemplation-wisdom, sweeps away the empty-blossom of the five aggregates, manifests the suchness of sentient-beings-and-Buddhas, penetrates the true-characteristic of zhēnrú, encompasses the profound aim of the Diamond Sūtra and returns to the simple — this sūtra is precisely so.”
The body of the commentary then proceeds in this paired zhù-lùn format throughout, providing both phrase-level gloss and theme-level theological-philosophical reflection.
Abstract
X570 is one of the few late-Qīng Heart Sūtra commentaries by a non-clerical author preserved in the Wàn xù-zàng. Doctrinally Xú Huáitíng’s reading is broadly Pure-Land-oriented (the kǔ-hǎi / bǐ’àn metaphor and the yáo qǔ far-shore-pull idiom characteristic of late-Qīng Pure Land discourse), with substantial doctrinal apparatus drawn from the standard Tang-Sòng Madhyamaka-Yogācāra synthesis (the three-mode Prajñā, the zhēnrú-shíxiàng axiom, the liù-rú contemplation).
The pairing with Xú’s Diamond Sūtra commentary (X509 = KR6c0097, dated 1858) gives him the same paired Prajñāpāramitā commentary output as the earlier mid-Qīng lay commentators (王起隆 Wáng Qǐlóng, 仲之屏 Zhòng Zhīpíng, 孫念劬 Sūn Niànqú, 王澤泩 Wáng Zéshēng).
For the wider history, X570 is a primary witness to the survival of jūshì Buddhist scholarship through the late-Qīng period of dynastic crisis (the Tàipíng war of 1850–1864, the second Opium War, etc.) — Xú lived through these crises and his commentary is a small documentation of the continued lay-Buddhist textual production despite the institutional disruption.
Composition date: no internal dating in the work itself. The bracket notBefore 1840 (allowing for mature middle-life work) / notAfter 1873 (Xú’s death) reflects the late-Dàoguāng / Xiánfēng / Tóngzhì-era window. The Diamond Sūtra companion is dated 1858; the Heart Sūtra commentary may be slightly later (1860s).
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- For late-Qīng lay Buddhism, see Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism: 1900–1950 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1967) — though primarily about the early-twentieth century, the immediate precursors are Xú’s generation.
- Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) — for the late-Qīng religious context.
- Modern Chinese scholarship on late-Qīng lay Buddhism: 鄧子美 and others.
Other points of interest
The liù-rú 六如 (six-as) reference in the lùn paragraph alludes to the famous Diamond Sūtra concluding gāthā: 「一切有為法。如夢幻泡影。如露亦如電。應作如是觀。」 (“All compounded dharmas are like dream, illusion, bubble, shadow, like dew and like lightning — one should make such a contemplation.“) — the six similes (六如) of compounded existence. Xú’s invocation of this gāthā in his Heart Sūtra commentary explicitly links the Prajñāpāramitā short sūtras (Diamond + Heart) as a unified contemplative programme — paralleling the late-Qīng pattern of paired Prajñāpāramitā commentary output.
The Pure Land-influenced sobriquets (Lèjìng, Jìngrú) place Xú in the dominant late-Qīng lay-Buddhist movement, but his choice to write Heart Sūtra and Diamond Sūtra commentaries (rather than Pure Land scriptures) is interesting — it suggests that even Pure-Land-oriented late-Qīng jūshì recognised the Prajñāpāramitā short sūtras as foundational doctrinal scripture.