Guānyīn xuányì jì 觀音玄義記
Notes on the Profound Meaning of the Avalokiteśvara [Chapter] by 知禮 (Zhīlǐ / Sìmíng Zhīlǐ / Fǎzhì dàshī, 述)
About the work
A four-juan Northern-Sòng subcommentary on Zhìyǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì (KR6d0046, T1726) by Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮 (960–1028), the central figure of the Sòng shānjiā 山家 Tiāntái revival and the seventeenth patriarch of the Tiāntái school. The work is one of Zhīlǐ’s principal exegetical productions and the standard Sòng-period interpretation of Zhìyǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì. The body attribution: Sòng Sìmíng shāmén Zhīlǐ shù 宋四明沙門知禮述.
Prefaces
The text opens with Zhīlǐ’s autobiographical framing of the work: “Zhīlǐ, prostrate, recalls: in early years, longing for study, I cast my footprints to Bǎoyún 寶雲 [the monastery of his teacher Yìtōng]. There I met the lecture-master who explained this chapter [the Pǔmén]. My faculties were already dull, so I repeatedly inquired about my doubts. The earlier master [Yìtōng], thinking my study was diligent, did not refuse to twist my ear [in correction]. Therefore the meaning he expounded was coarsely recorded in my mind. The fellow-listeners of those days are now each declining and withering. Concerned that my prior insights would not benefit the later sprouts, we together exhorted [our] uncultivated…”
This autobiographical opening — one of the most personal passages in Zhīlǐ’s surviving writings — situates the Guānyīn xuányì jì as a work of memorial preservation: Zhīlǐ records the Pǔmén exegesis he had received from his teacher Bǎoyún Yìtōng 寶雲義通 (927–988) before that exegesis should be lost with the death of his fellow-students.
Abstract
Zhīlǐ’s Xuányì jì is the principal Sòng-period subcommentary on Zhìyǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì and one of the most important Tiāntái productions of the Northern Sòng. The work elaborates Zhìyǐ’s exposition through detailed application of the shānjiā 山家 doctrinal framework: the strict identity of xìngè 性惡 (“buddha-nature inherently includes evil”) with xìngshàn 性善 (buddha-nature inherently includes good), the strict identity of zhēnxīn 真心 (true mind) and wàngxīn 妄心 (deluded mind), and the strict identity of meditative practice (xíng 行) with doctrinal classification (jiào 教).
The work’s principal polemical engagement is with the shānwài 山外 tradition of Gūshān Zhīyuán 孤山智圓 (976–1022) and others, who had argued that Zhìyǐ’s Pǔmén exegesis should be read in a more spiritualised register that dissolved the xìngè doctrine into the broader Mahāyāna yīxīn 一心 framework. Zhīlǐ defends the strict reading of the xìngè doctrine as the orthodox Tiāntái position and as essential to Zhìyǐ’s distinctive contribution to Mahāyāna doctrine.
The composition is dated to Zhīlǐ’s mature productive period at the Yánqìngsì 延慶寺 in Sìmíng (modern Níngbō), c. 996–1028. The work was incorporated into the Sòng Tiāntái scholastic curriculum and remained the standard Sòng subcommentary on the Guānyīn xuányì through the medieval period.
Translations and research
- Getz, Daniel A. “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate.” In Buddhism in the Sung, eds. Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, 477–523. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999. (Standard treatment of Sì-míng Zhīlǐ’s milieu.)
- Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
- 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.
- Brose, Benjamin. Patrons and Patriarchs: Regional Rulers and Chan Monks during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015.
- Stone, Jacqueline I. “By the Power of One’s Last Nenbutsu: Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan.” In Approaching the Land of Bliss, eds. Richard K. Payne and Kenneth K. Tanaka, 77–119. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. (For the broader Tiāntái-Pure Land synthesis.)
- Yang Cengwen 楊曾文. Sòng-Yuán Chánzōng shǐ 宋元禅宗史. Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2006.
Other points of interest
The Guānyīn xuányì jì is one of three principal Zhīlǐ commentaries on the Pǔmén corpus — alongside the Guānyīn yìshū jì (KR6d0049, T1729) on Zhìyǐ’s running commentary, and the lost Guān-yīn lìyì jì 觀音禮儀記 (an Avalokiteśvara liturgy). Together they constitute the most extensive Sòng Tiāntái treatment of any single chapter of the Lotus Sūtra and demonstrate the centrality of Avalokiteśvara devotion in the shān-jiā tradition’s pastoral and devotional practice at Sìmíng.