Fǎhuá jīng jījié 法華經擊節
Beating-Time Notes on the Lotus Sūtra by 德清 (Déqīng / Hānshān Déqīng, 述)
About the work
A single-juan late-Míng synoptic commentary on the Lotus Sūtra by 德清 Hānshān Déqīng 憨山德清 (1546–1623), one of the Míngmò sìdà gāosēng 明末四大高僧 (“four great monks of the late Míng,” with 祩宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng, 達觀 Zǐbǎi Dáguān, and 智旭 Ǒuyì Zhìxù). The genre — jījié 擊節 (“beating-time” / “striking the rhythm”) — is drawn from the classical Chinese musical metaphor of marking time at the climactic moments of a performance, and indicates a commentary that focuses on the most striking and rhetorically forceful passages of the sūtra rather than providing continuous exposition.
Prefaces
The text in the X31n0610 recension carries Déqīng’s own brief framing of the jījié genre. The work belongs together with the longer Fǎhuá jīng tōngyì (KR6d0077, X31n0611, 7 juan) as Déqīng’s two principal Lotus Sūtra commentaries: the Jījié providing the synoptic accent on selected passages, the Tōngyì providing the comprehensive running commentary.
Abstract
The Jījié belongs to Hānshān Déqīng’s substantial Mahāyāna sūtra commentarial corpus, which also includes major commentaries on the Avataṃsaka, the Lèngyán, the Yuánjué, the Vimalakīrti, and the Awakening of Faith. Déqīng’s distinctive method combines (1) Chán-experiential reading of the sūtra-text; (2) integration of Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha doctrinal frameworks; and (3) sustained philological attention to the Sanskrit-Chinese translation issues. The jījié genre — focusing on selected striking passages — allows Déqīng to demonstrate his interpretive method on the central nodes of the Lotus’s doctrinal structure without requiring the comprehensive coverage of the longer Tōngyì.
The work is consequently of substantial value as a witness to Déqīng’s mature reading of the Lotus and as one of the principal late-Wànlì Lotus Sūtra commentaries by a major monastic figure. Together with Zhìxù’s Lúnguàn (KR6d0081) and Huìyì (KR6d0082), Déqīng’s Jījié and Tōngyì represent the principal late-Míng monastic Lotus Sūtra exegesis.
The dating is bracketed within Déqīng’s productive period c. 1590–1623, with the work most plausibly placed in his mature exile period in Léizhōu 雷州 (Guangdong, after his exile in 1595) or in his late period at Cáoxī 曹溪.
Translations and research
- Hsu Sung-peng. A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-shan Te-ch’ing. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1979. (Standard English-language biography of Hānshān Déqīng.)
- Yu, Beverley Foulks McGuire. Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu (1599–1655). New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. (For comparison with Zhìxù’s late-Míng Lotus reading.)
- Wu, Jiang. Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Eichman, Jennifer. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- 聖嚴 Shèngyán. Mínmò Zhōngguó Fójiào zhī yánjiū 明末中國佛教之研究. Taipei: Dōngchū chūbǎnshè, 1987.
Other points of interest
The jījié genre is one of the most literarily inflected late-Míng commentary genres, drawing the technical Buddhist exegetical tradition into close engagement with classical Chinese musical-aesthetic vocabulary. Its adoption by Hānshān Déqīng — one of the most literarily accomplished of the late-Míng monastic intellectuals — reflects the broader late-Wànlì cultural integration of the monastic and literati intellectual worlds.