Guānyīn yìshū jì 觀音義疏記
Notes on the Doctrinal Subcommentary on 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 yìshū (KR6d0048, T1728) by Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮 (960–1028), the seventeenth Tiāntái patriarch and central figure of the Sòng shānjiā 山家 revival. The work is the companion to Zhīlǐ’s Guānyīn xuányì jì (KR6d0047, T1727) — together they constitute Zhīlǐ’s complete subcommentarial apparatus on Zhìyǐ’s Pǔmén corpus. The body attribution: Sòng Sìmíng shāmén Zhīlǐ shù 宋四明沙門知禮述.
Prefaces
The text in the Taishō recension carries no separate translator’s preface. The work opens with Zhīlǐ’s structural framing of the Yìshū: “[I will] explain the shū [Zhìyǐ’s Yìshū] in two [parts]: first, explaining the title-heading; [the second], explaining the [body of the] shū. The first further has two: first, properly explaining the title; [second, …]. As for yì, it means yí (proper, fitting) — that is, explaining the sūtra-text so as to fit. Also, yì means principle (lǐ 理). This [whole text] is Zhìzhě [Zhìyǐ] entering the Lotus Sūtra samādhi, and at the guānxíng 觀行 stage seeing the first-meaning principle, using this principle of meaning to explain the present sūtra-text. Shū — its meaning is ‘penetrating the meaning’. Also pronounced shū (sparse), [it] is the shū (combing-out)…”
Abstract
The Yìshū jì parallels Zhīlǐ’s Xuányì jì (KR6d0047) in providing detailed Sòng shān-jiā 山家 commentary on Zhìyǐ’s exposition of the Pǔmén chapter. Where the Xuányì jì engages with Zhìyǐ’s systematic doctrinal exposition, the Yìshū jì engages with Zhìyǐ’s running phrase-by-phrase commentary; the two together provide complete Sòng-period treatment of the Tiāntái Avalokiteśvara apparatus.
The work’s principal doctrinal contribution lies in its systematic application of the shān-jiā doctrines — xìngè 性惡 (“buddha-nature inherently includes evil”), guānwàngxīn 觀妄心 (contemplation of the deluded mind), and xíngjiào jíyī 行教即一 (the strict identity of practice and doctrinal classification) — to the salvific narrative of the Pǔmén. Zhīlǐ reads the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara’s assumption of multiple forms (人天 / 鬼神 / 畜生身) as a paradigmatic instantiation of the xìngè doctrine: that the buddha-nature includes the capacity to manifest evil and demonic forms not as an external accident but as an essential feature of its salvific universality.
The Yìshū jì is thus an important Sòng-period polemical instrument in the shānjiā / shānwài 山家山外 controversy, alongside the Xuányì jì. Its detailed engagement with Zhìyǐ’s specific phrasings allowed Zhīlǐ to anchor the xìngè doctrine in close textual reading and to forestall the shānwài counter-claim that the doctrine was a Sòng innovation rather than a strict Sui-period Tiāntái commitment.
The composition is dated, with the Xuányì jì, to Zhīlǐ’s mature productive period at the Yánqìngsì 延慶寺 in Sìmíng, c. 996–1028. The work was incorporated into the Sòng Tiāntái scholastic curriculum and remained the standard Sòng subcommentary on the Guānyīn yìshū through the medieval period.
Translations and research
See KR6d0047 for the full bibliography on Zhīlǐ and the shān-jiā tradition.
- 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.
- Yü, Chün-fang. Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Other points of interest
The doctrinal substance of the Yìshū jì’s analysis of the xìngè doctrine in the context of Avalokiteśvara’s multiform salvific manifestation became the foundation for the shān-jiā tradition’s defense of the doctrine in the subsequent Shíbùèrmén zhǐyào chāo 十不二門指要鈔 (T1937). The combination of the close-textual exegesis of the Pǔmén commentary corpus and the systematic doctrinal exposition of the Shíbùèrmén polemic constitutes Zhīlǐ’s complete defense of the xìngè doctrine and remains the standard shān-jiā statement of the position.