Fǎhuájīng kāití 法華經開題
Topic-Opening of the Lotus Sūtra (J. Hokekyō kaidai) — recension D by 空海 (Kōnghǎi / Kūkai, 撰)
About the work
The third of four short kāití 開題 (“topic-opening”) pieces on Kumārajīva’s Miàofǎ liánhuá jīng 妙法蓮華經 (KR6d0001, T262) attributed to 空海 Kūkai (774–835). For the Shingon corpus of seven short Lotus pieces grouped at T2190 (sub-letters A–G), the Esoteric kāití genre, and the broader question of authenticity within this corpus, see KR6d0036.
Prefaces
The recension opens directly with the kaidai analysis. This recension begins with an extended discussion of the doctrinal prajñā / shèngyì 勝義 (ultimate-truth) reading of the Lotus title before proceeding to the character-by-character exposition.
Abstract
This third recension of the Hokekyō kaidai (T2190D) is distinguished within the Kūkai Lotus corpus by its particular emphasis on the kāiquán shìshí 開權示實 (“opening the provisional and showing the real”) hermeneutic — the Tiāntái-school principal interpretive framework for the Lotus, which Kūkai re-reads here in Esoteric terms. On this Esoteric reading, the quán (provisional) is identified with the xiǎnjiào 顯教 (apparent / exoteric Mahāyāna) and the shí (real) with the mìjiào 密教 (esoteric / Vajrayāna); the Lotus’s claim to “open the provisional and show the real” is therefore claim, on Kūkai’s reading, that the Lotus is itself the bridge between the apparent-Mahāyāna and the esoteric-Mahāyāna teachings — that to read the Lotus correctly is to receive the Esoteric transmission through the apparent-Mahāyāna scripture.
This reading is doctrinally significant within the Japanese Buddhist tradition because it provides the conceptual basis for the Tendai-Shingon convergence (taimitsu 台密) that Saichō and Kūkai jointly inaugurated and that became the dominant Heian-period synthesis of Japanese exoteric and esoteric Buddhism. The Hokekyō kaidai (recension D) is one of Kūkai’s most explicit doctrinal-statements of the convergence project.
The recension is generally accepted by modern scholarship as among the more likely Kūkai-original Lotus pieces on grounds of its doctrinal sophistication and its alignment with the major Kūkai treatises (the Sokushin jōbutsu gi, the Ben kenmitsu nikyō ron 辨顯密二教論, etc.). The traditional Shingon-school view, preserved in the Kōbō Daishi zenshū, treats it as authentic.
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.
- 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).
- Stone, Jacqueline I. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999. — Standard English-language treatment of the medieval Japanese Lotus interpretive tradition, including the Tendai-Shingon convergence.
Links
- CBETA online: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2190d
- Kanseki DB