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妙法蓮華經玄義

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Text ID
KR6d0006
Date
593–593
Dynasty
隋

Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng xuányì 妙法蓮華經玄義

The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra spoken by 智顗 (Zhìyǐ / Tiāntái dàshī, 說); recorded by 灌頂 (Guàndǐng).

About the work

The principal xuányì 玄義 — “profound meaning” or systematic doctrinal exposition — of the Lotus Sūtra in the Tiāntái 天台 tradition; the foundational doctrinal work of pre-modern Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism’s most fully developed scholastic system. Ten juan (subdivided in the printed canon into twenty fascicles, each juan in 上 / 下 halves), based on lectures delivered by Zhìyǐ 智顗 (538–597) at Yùquánsì 玉泉寺 in Jīngzhōu 荊州 in Kāihuáng 開皇 13 (= 593 CE) and recorded, redacted, and given final literary form by his disciple Guàndǐng 灌頂 (561–632). Together with the Fǎhuá wénjù 法華文句 (T1718, the phrase-by-phrase commentary on the same sūtra) and the Móhē zhǐguān 摩訶止觀 (T1911, the Tiāntái meditation manual), this work constitutes one of the Tiāntái sān dà bù 天台三大部 (“Three Great Treatises of Tiāntái”), the foundational triad of the Tiāntái system.

Prefaces

The text opens with the Origin of the Private Notes on the Lotus (《法華私記緣起》), Guàndǐng’s autobiographical preface — one of the most important narrative documents of the Tiāntái tradition’s formation. Guàndǐng writes: “From the eastward spread of the Great Dharma, as recorded in the Sēngshǐ, how few have not listened to the lectures and yet of themselves understood the Buddha-vehicle? Even if they had aroused awakening, could they enter samādhi and obtain dhāraṇī? … Only our Zhìzhě [Master Zhìyǐ] possessed all these merits. Fortunate I, Guàndǐng, in former times at Jiànyè first listened to the sūtra-text; next at Jiānglíng I respectfully received the Profound Meaning; later, returning to the Tiāntái peaks, I again attended at the Crane Grove [his teacher’s death-bed]. Going back and forth between Jīng and Yáng, the road was nearly ten thousand lǐ; the supplements I received before and after, I just barely heard once through. Not only had what was unheard not been heard, even what had been heard was not yet fully understood. Rolling and unrolling [the texts], I delved more deeply, the more I felt them firm and lofty — but I always regretted that the conditions were thin, the lectures not heard a second or third time, and there was no place to inquire further, like a calf yearning for milk. Reflecting that if these words were lost, future ages would have cause to grieve, I followed the holy texts and wrote out and transmitted them, the Profound and the Phrase-by-Phrase each in ten juan.”

Abstract

The Xuányì applies Zhìyǐ’s distinctive wǔzhòng xuányì 五重玄義 (“five-fold profound meaning”) schema — míng 名 (name), tǐ 體 (essence), zōng 宗 (purport), yòng 用 (function), jiào 教 (teaching-classification) — exhaustively to the Lotus Sūtra, producing what is in effect a comprehensive systematic theology of Mahāyāna Buddhism using the Lotus as its organising scripture.

The work is the principal source for the major doctrinal innovations associated with Tiāntái: (1) the wǔshí bājiào 五時八教 classification of the Buddha’s teaching into five chronological periods (Huāyán, Lùyuàn / Āhán, Fāngděng, Bōrě, FǎhuáNièpán) and eight modes (four of huàyí 化儀 — sudden, gradual, secret, indeterminate — and four of huàfǎ 化法 — zàng 藏, tōng 通, bié 別, yuán 圓); (2) the yīxīn sānguān 一心三觀 (“threefold contemplation in a single mind”) meditative method; (3) the doctrine that the Lotus Sūtra represents the unique yuánjiào 圓教 (“perfect teaching”) which is kāiquán xiǎnshí 開權顯實 (“opening the provisional to disclose the real”) and fājì xiǎnběn 發跡顯本 (“revealing the trace to disclose the original”) — the dual hermeneutic that organises Tiāntái Lotus exegesis; and (4) the famous formulation zhūfǎ shíxiāng 諸法實相 (“the real characteristics of all dharmas”) as the central doctrinal commitment of the Lotus.

The work develops Zhìyǐ’s polemic against the southern jiàopàn 教判 (doctrinal-classification) traditions of the Liáng masters Fǎyún 法雲 (KR6d0005), Sēngmín 僧旻, and Zhìzàng 智藏, and against the northern Dìlùn 地論 and Shèlùn 攝論 schools’ interpretations of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha. Zhìyǐ’s critique replaces these earlier classifications with his own integrated five-period eight-teaching system, in which the Lotus and the Mahāparinirvāṇa together represent the consummation of the Buddha’s kerygma.

The textual history is complex. Guàndǐng’s preface presents the work as based on Zhìyǐ’s Yùquánsì lectures of 593, but Linda Penkower’s research has demonstrated that significant portions of the text reflect Guàndǐng’s later editorial activity in the early 7th century, and that the present 10-juan recension was finalised only after Zhìyǐ’s death. A substantial Sòng commentary tradition developed around the work, beginning with Zhànrán’s 湛然 (711–782) Fǎhuá xuányì shìqiān 法華玄義釋籤 (T1717, KR6d0007), which became the standard subcommentary.

Translations and research

  • Swanson, Paul L. Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989. (The standard English-language study of the Xuán-yì; includes annotated translation of the opening sections.)
  • Hurvitz, Leon. Chih-i (538–597): An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk. Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 12. Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1962. (Foundational treatment of Zhìyǐ’s biography and doctrinal output.)
  • Penkower, Linda L. “T’ien-t’ai during the T’ang Dynasty: Chan-jan and the Sinification of Buddhism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1993. (Crucial for the textual history of the Xuán-yì and Zhànrán’s commentary.)
  • Penkower, Linda L. “In the Beginning … Guàndǐng 灌頂 (561–632) and the Creation of Early Tiāntái.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 23.2 (2000): 245–296.
  • Donner, Neal, and Stevenson, Daniel B. The Great Calming and Contemplation: A Study and Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of Chih-i’s Mo-ho chih-kuan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993.
  • Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendai shisōshi 天台思想史. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1959.
  • Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄. Tendaigaku — kompon shisō to sono tenkai 天台学：根本思想とその展開. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1968.
  • Sekiguchi Shindai 関口真大. Tendai shōshikan no kenkyū 天台小止観の研究. Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin, 1954.
  • Stevenson, Daniel B., and Kanno Hiroshi. The Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra’s Course of Ease and Bliss: An Annotated Translation and Study of Nanyue Huisi’s (515–577) Fahua jing anlexing yi. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2006. (Background on the Tiāntái Lotus tradition before Zhìyǐ.)
  • Tamura Yoshirō 田村芳朗 and Umehara Takeshi 梅原猛. Hokke shisō 法華思想. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1969.
  • Ng Yu-Kwan 吳汝鈞. T’ien-T’ai Buddhism and Early Mādhyamika. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993.
  • Ziporyn, Brook. Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and Its Antecedents. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013. (Important contemporary philosophical reading of Tiāntái doctrine.)

Other points of interest

The Xuányì is traditionally regarded as the most philosophically ambitious work of pre-Tang Chinese Buddhism. Its account of the Buddha’s upāya (方便) and the yuánrì jiào 圓融 (perfect interfusion) of the three thousand worlds in a single thought (yīniàn sānqiān 一念三千) remained the central theoretical apparatus of East-Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism through the medieval period and was carried into the Japanese Tendai 天台 school by Saichō 最澄 (767–822) at the founding of the Hieizan establishment in 805.

Guàndǐng’s authorial role in the production of the Xuányì — a question that troubled the Sòng-period Tiāntái revival under the shānjiā / shānwài 山家山外 controversy — is now understood (following Penkower) as central rather than peripheral: the philological evidence indicates that the Xuányì in its received form is as much a Guàndǐng compilation-with-amplification as it is a transcription of Zhìyǐ’s lectures, though the doctrinal substance is securely Zhìyǐ’s.

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