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法華經開題

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Text ID
KR6d0037
Date
806–835
Dynasty
日本

Fǎhuájīng kāití 法華經開題

Topic-Opening of the Lotus Sūtra (J. Hokekyō kaidai) — recension B by 空海 (Kōnghǎi / Kūkai, 撰)

About the work

The second of four short kāití 開題 (“topic-opening”) pieces on Kumārajīva’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng 妙法蓮華經 (KR6d0001, T262) under the name of 空海 Kūkai (774–835). For the Shingon corpus of seven Lotus pieces grouped at T2190 (T2190A–G) and the Esoteric kāití genre Kūkai developed for the Lotus, see KR6d0036.

Prefaces

The Taishō recension opens directly with the topical analysis. This recension begins with the formulaic jīncǐ jīngzhě 今此經者 (“this sūtra here is …”) followed by the layered esoteric description of the Lotus title.

Abstract

This second kaidai (T2190B) presents an alternative Shingon reading of the Lotus title with somewhat different doctrinal emphases from recension A (KR6d0036): where recension A organises the analysis around the dual-mandala (ryōbu) cosmology, recension B places more weight on the mantra-syllable (shu-zì 種子, bīja) interpretation of each character, mapping the five title-characters onto the bīja-akṣaras of the Five Buddhas of the Vajradhātu mandala. The recension also contains a more developed treatment of the jīng 經 / sūtra element, glossing it through the Esoteric concept of yújiā 瑜伽 (yoga — union) and identifying the Lotus reading-practice as itself a form of mandalic ritual realisation.

The two recensions A and B may represent successive drafts of the same project, alternative kaidai composed for different audiences or occasions, or — as some modern scholarly opinion holds — one Kūkai-original composition together with a later Shingon-school adaptation. Watanabe Shōkō’s 渡邊照宏 (1965) attribution analysis identifies recension B as more likely a later Shingon-school redaction than recension A, but the question is not finally resolved. The traditional Shingon-school view, preserved in the Kōbō Daishi zenshū, accepts both as authentic Kūkai compositions.

In doctrinal substance, recension B continues the Shingon program of reading the Lotus’s ekayāna doctrine as fundamentally identical to the Shingon doctrine of sokushin jōbutsu 即身成佛 — but adds a more explicit treatment of the female-Buddha theme (the dragon-girl episode of chapter 12) and of the parinirvāṇa-equivalence of the Lotus’s “long-life” Buddha (chapter 16), reading both through the Esoteric framework of the acalapa / immutability of Mahāvairocana.

Translations and research

  • Kōbō Daishi zenshū 弘法大師全集. (Standard collected edition of Kūkai’s writings.)
  • Abé, Ryūichi. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. — Treats the kaidai genre and Kūkai’s Esoteric Lotus hermeneutic.
  • Watanabe Shōkō 渡邊照宏. “Kōbō Daishi to Hokekyō” 弘法大師と法華經. Mikkyō bunka 密教文化 75 (1965). — Principal modern study of Kūkai’s Lotus pieces with attribution analysis.

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