Fǎhuá jīng huìyì 法華經會義
Synthetic-Meaning Commentary on the Lotus Sūtra by 智旭 (Zhìxù / Ǒuyì Zhìxù, 述)
About the work
A seven-juan late-Míng running commentary on the Lotus Sūtra by Ǒuyì Zhìxù 蕅益智旭 (1599–1655). The work is the longer companion to Zhìxù’s synoptic Lúnguàn (KR6d0081): the Lúnguàn providing the unifying synoptic framework, the Huìyì providing the comprehensive running commentary on the entire Lotus.
Prefaces
The text in the X32n0616 recension carries Zhìxù’s own framing of the huìyì 會義 (“synthetic-meaning”) genre: a commentary that synthesises the principal interpretive traditions into a unified expository treatment. The work belongs together with the Lúnguàn, the Jiéyào (KR6d0010), and the Yújiā jíyào as Zhìxù’s principal Tiāntái-school productions on the Lotus Sūtra and the broader Tiāntái triple-treatise corpus.
Abstract
The Huìyì is the principal late-Míng Tiāntái-school running commentary on the Lotus Sūtra. Where 智顗 Zhìyǐ’s Wénjù (KR6d0014) and 湛然 Zhànrán’s Wénjù jì (KR6d0015) had established the foundational Tiāntái commentarial apparatus, Zhìxù’s Huìyì provides the late-Míng synthetic re-presentation of that apparatus suitable for late-imperial monastic and lay readership. The work draws on (1) the foundational Tiāntái commentarial corpus; (2) the Sòng shānjiā tradition through Sìmíng 知禮 Zhīlǐ; (3) Hānshān 德清 Déqīng’s Chán-Yogācāra synthetic apparatus; and (4) Zhìxù’s own Pure Land devotional commitments.
The work’s distinctive contribution is its harmonisation of the strict Tiāntái scholastic apparatus with the Pure Land devotional tradition that Zhìxù championed. The result is the principal late-Míng Tiāntái-Pure Land synthetic Lotus Sūtra commentary and one of the most influential late-imperial Buddhist commentaries on any Mahāyāna sūtra.
The composition is bracketed within Zhìxù’s mature productive period after 1641, when he established his retreat at Mount Jiǔhuá 九華 and committed to systematic Tiāntái-Pure Land synthetic exposition. Most plausibly placed in the period 1645–1655.
Translations and research
See KR6d0010 for the principal bibliography on Zhìxù; see KR6d0081 for the synoptic companion Lúnguàn.
- Yu, Beverley Foulks McGuire. Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu (1599–1655). New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
- Shengyen 聖嚴. Mínmò Zhōngguó Fójiào zhī yánjiū 明末中國佛教之研究. Taipei: Dōngchū chūbǎnshè, 1987.
- Shengyen 聖嚴. Mínmò Fójiào yánjiū 明末佛教研究. Taipei: Fǎgǔ wénhuà, 2000.
Other points of interest
The Lúnguàn + Huìyì pair on the Lotus Sūtra is one of Zhìxù’s most ambitious productive achievements and represents the late-Míng Tiāntái tradition’s principal contribution to the Lotus Sūtra commentarial corpus. Together with his abridgement of the Xuányì (KR6d0010) and his various Tiāntái scholastic productions, the Lotus Sūtra apparatus completes Zhìxù’s late-Míng pedagogical project of systematic synthesis of the Tiāntái scholastic tradition with the broader Mahāyāna devotional and meditative apparatus.