Fǎhuá jīng dàyì 法華經大意
The Great Purport of the Lotus Sūtra by 無相 (Wúxiàng / Tàixū, 說)
About the work
A three-juan late-Míng synoptic exposition of the Lotus Sūtra by 無相 Wúxiàng (sobriquet Tàixū 太虛), resident of the Guǎnglíng Bǎochéngsì 廣陵寶城寺 in Yángzhōu. The work belongs to the late-Míng tradition of distinctive personal dàyì 大意 (“great-purport”) commentaries on the Lotus, parallel to 湛然 Zhànrán’s earlier mid-Táng Fǎhuá jīng dàyì (KR6d0060) but expanded to three juan and reflecting late-Míng synthetic interests.
Prefaces
The text in the X31n0609 recension carries the standard front matter and proceeds with chapter-by-chapter exposition. The work is signed Guǎnglíng Bǎochéngsì shāmén Wúxiàng shuō 廣陵寶城寺沙門無相說 (“expounded by the śramaṇa Wúxiàng of the Guǎnglíng Bǎochéng Monastery”).
Abstract
Wúxiàng’s Dàyì applies the dàyì 大意 genre to the Lotus Sūtra at a more substantial scale than Zhànrán’s earlier model: where Zhànrán’s mid-Táng work was a compact one-juan synoptic exposition for advanced Tiāntái students, Wúxiàng’s late-Míng work is a more expansive three-juan accessible exposition suitable for late-Míng monastic and lay readership. The work draws on the Tiāntái scholastic tradition for its doctrinal framework but adopts the more accessible literary register characteristic of late-Wànlì period Buddhist productions.
The dating is bracketed within Wúxiàng’s productive period in the Wànlì 萬曆 era (1573–1620). His institutional affiliation with the Guǎnglíng Bǎochéngsì in Yángzhōu places him in the Jiāngběi (north of the Yangtze) Buddhist establishment, somewhat outside the principal Jiāngnán Buddhist intellectual circles of the period.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The proliferation of late-Wànlì Lotus Sūtra commentaries (KR6d0074, KR6d0075, KR6d0076, KR6d0077, KR6d0078, KR6d0079, KR6d0080, KR6d0081, KR6d0082) — roughly nine substantial productions in a fifty-year period — demonstrates the institutional vitality of late-Wànlì Chinese Buddhism and the centrality of the Lotus Sūtra in the late-Míng monastic-lay devotional renaissance.