Fǎhuájīng shì 法華經釋
Exegesis of the Lotus Sūtra (J. Hokekyō shaku) by 空海 (Kōnghǎi / Kūkai, 撰)
About the work
A short single-juan doctrinal exegesis (shì 釋 / shaku) of Kumārajīva’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng 妙法蓮華經 (KR6d0001, T262) under the name of 空海 Kūkai (774–835), preserved in the Taishō at T56n2190C. Within the Taishō group of seven Kūkai-attributed Lotus pieces (T2190A–G; see KR6d0036), the Hokekyō shaku is distinct from the four kaidai (A, B, D, G) in form: it presents itself not as a topical title-analysis (kaidai) but as a doctrinal commentary with sustained discussion of selected Lotus chapters.
Prefaces
The recension opens directly with a doctrinal frame: the Lotus is to be understood from the viewpoint of two truths (二諦, èrdì) and three secrets (三密, sānmì), the latter being the Shingon doctrinal framework of body-speech-mind correspondences in Esoteric ritual practice.
Abstract
The Hokekyō shaku is the most expository of Kūkai’s seven short Lotus pieces and represents the closest he comes to a sustained doctrinal commentary on the text. The work organises the Lotus’s content through the Shingon hermeneutic framework of the three secrets (sānmì 三密 — body / kāya, speech / vāc, mind / citta) and develops at length the Esoteric reading of the fāngbiàn 方便 (upāya / skilful means) chapter (chapter 2) and the shòuliàng 壽量 (long-life) chapter (chapter 16) — the two canonical Tiāntái loci classici of the Lotus ekayāna and parinirvāṇa doctrines, here reread through the Esoteric framework of Mahāvairocana’s eternal cosmic body and the practitioner’s mandalic identification with it.
The doctrinal centerpiece of the work is the integration of the Lotus’s ekayāna with the Shingon doctrine of sokushin jōbutsu 即身成佛 (becoming a Buddha in this very body) — a theme Kūkai develops at length in his major treatise of the same name (the Sokushin jōbutsu gi 即身成佛義). The Hokekyō shaku extends that doctrine to the Lotus by reading the Lotus’s universal Buddha-attainment (the one-vehicle-for-all 一乘) as the doctrinal-Mahāyāna form of the Shingon sokushin jōbutsu: the Lotus does not differ from the Esoteric scriptures in what it teaches; it differs only in the mode (xiǎn / xiàn — apparent versus mì — esoteric) of the teaching.
Modern scholarship is somewhat more confident in the Kūkai-attribution of the Hokekyō shaku than of the four Hokekyō kaidai (T2190A, B, D, G), since the shaku is closer in doctrinal style to Kūkai’s authenticated major treatises (the Jūjūshin-ron 十住心論, the Sokushin jōbutsu gi, etc.). Watanabe Shōkō, Yamamoto Chikyō, and others have generally accepted the shaku as authentic Kūkai work.
Translations and research
- Kōbō Daishi zenshū 弘法大師全集.
- Abé, Ryūichi. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
- Hakeda, Yoshito S. Kūkai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. — Includes English translation of the Sokushin jōbutsu gi and other Kūkai treatises that frame the doctrinal context of the Hokekyō shaku.
- 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).
Links
- CBETA online: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2190c
- Kanseki DB