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法華宗要

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Text ID
KR6d0032
Date
650–686
Dynasty
新羅

Fǎhuá zōngyào 法華宗要

The Doctrinal Essentials of the Lotus Sūtra by 元曉 (Yuánxiǎo / Wŏnhyo, 撰)

About the work

A single-juan doctrinal exposition of the Lotus Sūtra by the Silla-period Korean master Wŏnhyo 元曉 (Yuánxiǎo, 617–686) — the central figure of seventh-century Korean Buddhism and one of the most significant East-Asian Mahāyāna systematic theologians. The work is preserved in the Taishō at T34n1725 and is the principal Korean contribution to the pre-modern East-Asian Lotus Sūtra commentarial tradition. Its body attribution: Yuánxiǎo shī zhuàn 元曉師撰 (“composed by Master Yuánxiǎo / Wŏnhyo”).

Prefaces

The text in the Taishō recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens with Wŏnhyo’s structural framing of the discussion: “About to explain this sūtra, I will briefly open six gates of distinction.” The six are listed in the interlinear note: (1) shù dàyì 述大意 (relating the great purport); (2) biàn jīngzōng 辨經宗 (clarifying the sūtra’s purport); (3) míng quányòng 明詮用 (clarifying the application of the [doctrinal] terminology); (4) shì tímíng 釋題名 (explaining the title); (5) xiǎn jiàoshè 顯教攝 (revealing the doctrinal classification); (6) xiāo wényì 消文義 (resolving the textual meaning).

Abstract

Wŏnhyo’s exposition opens with one of the most celebrated framings of the Lotus Sūtra in pre-modern East-Asian Buddhism: “The Wonderful-Dharma Lotus Sūtra — this is the great purport of the appearance-in-the-world of all the Buddhas of the ten directions and three times; the broad gate through which the nine paths and four births enter and merge into the one path. Its prose is artful and its meaning deep; no marvel is not exhausted. Its diction is unfurled and its principle expansive; no dharma is not propagated. The artful unfurling of prose flowers and embraces fruit; the deep expansion of doctrinal principle is fruit and bears provisional. The deep expansion of principle is no-two-ness, no-difference. The artful unfurling of diction is opening the provisional and showing the real.”

The work then explicates the dual hermeneutic of kāiquán shìshí 開權示實 (“opening the provisional and showing the real”): “Opening the provisional means: opening that the three carriages outside the gate are provisional; that the treasure-city in mid-route is a transformation; that achieving the Way under the [bodhi] tree is not the beginning; that parinirvāṇa in the [Sāla] grove is not the end. Showing the real means: showing that all sentient beings are my sons; that the two vehicles will all become Buddha; that calculation is insufficient to measure the [Buddha’s] life; that the kalpa fire cannot burn his establishment.”

Wŏnhyo’s Zōngyào is one of the principal pre-Tang non-Sinitic interpretations of the Lotus Sūtra and represents the distinctive Silla synthesis of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and Awakening-of-Faith hermeneutics that Wŏnhyo developed across his prolific corpus of more than 80 works (most lost) and that became the foundation of the subsequent Korean Hwaom 華嚴 and Beopsangjong 法相宗 traditions. His Zōngyào is consequently the most significant East-Asian non-Chinese Lotus Sūtra commentary preserved in the Chinese canon.

The work’s distinctive doctrinal contribution is its sustained integration of the Lotus’s ekayāna (一乘) doctrine with the Awakening of Faith’s yīxīn 一心 (one-mind) doctrine — a synthesis that anticipates and grounds Wŏnhyo’s later systematic Awakening of Faith commentary (the Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn shū 大乘起信論疏, T1844) and his celebrated hézhěng 和諍 (harmonising-disputes) hermeneutic that became the principal interpretive framework of subsequent Korean Buddhist scholasticism.

The dating is uncertain; Wŏnhyo’s productive period spans c. 650–686, and the Zōngyào is generally placed in his mature period after his return from his abortive Tang-China pilgrimage (the famous “skull-water” episode of 661 that turned him from textual study to direct experiential awakening) and before his death in 686.

Translations and research

  • Buswell, Robert E., Jr. Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wŏnhyo’s Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra (Kŭmgang Sammaegyŏng Non). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. (Standard English-language treatment of Wŏnhyo’s mature thought.)
  • Buswell, Robert E., Jr., ed. Currents and Countercurrents: Korean Influences on the East Asian Buddhist Traditions. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005.
  • Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
  • Charles Muller, A., trans. Wŏnhyo’s Philosophy of Mind. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012.
  • Eun-su Cho 曺恩秀. “The Letter of the Hwaengyo-Mun: Wŏnhyo’s Apologetic for the Hwaeom Tradition.” In Currents and Countercurrents, ed. Buswell, 116–144.
  • Park, Sung-bae. One Korean’s Approach to Buddhism: The Mom/Momjit Paradigm. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009.
  • Lee Sang-Yil 李相日. “Wŏnhyo’s Hwajaeng (Reconciliation) Thought.” Korea Journal 21.1 (1981): 4–17.
  • Hyo-Bong Lee. A Study of Wŏnhyo’s “Outline of the Lotus Sūtra”. Master’s thesis, Dongguk University, 1985. (In Korean.)

Other points of interest

Wŏnhyo’s Zōngyào is one of the few works of pre-Tang Korean Buddhism preserved in the Chinese canon (the others being his Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn shū 大乘起信論疏 [T1844], the Wúliàngshòu jīng zōngyào 無量壽經宗要 [T1747], and a few others). Its inclusion in the Taishō reflects the Korean Goryeo Tripiṭaka (高麗藏) tradition’s preservation of Wŏnhyo’s corpus and its subsequent transmission into the standard East-Asian Buddhist canonical apparatus. Wŏnhyo’s broader corpus of more than eighty works is largely lost; the surviving fraction (perhaps twenty-three works) represents only a small portion of his original productive output but is sufficient to establish him as one of the half-dozen most significant figures in pre-modern East-Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism.

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