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佛說法華三昧經

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Text ID
KR6d0108
Date
396–427
Dynasty
宋

Fóshuō Fǎhuá sānmèi jīng 佛說法華三昧經

Sūtra of the Lotus Sūtra Samādhi (Taught by the Buddha) by 智嚴 (Zhìyán, 譯)

About the work

A short single-juan sūtra translated by Zhìyán 智嚴 (350–427), preserved in the Taishō at T9n0269. Body attribution: Sòng Liángzhōu shāmén Zhìyán yì 宋涼州沙門智嚴譯. The work is associated with the Lotus Sūtra tradition through the Fǎhuá sānmèi 法華三昧 (“Lotus Sūtra samādhi”) in its title — a distinctive meditative-devotional practice whose theoretical and practical apparatus was systematised by Zhìyǐ 智顗 in his Tiāntái productions.

Prefaces

The text in the Taishō recension carries the standard front matter; the body opens with the standard Lotus-style opening Fó zài Luóyuèqí Qíshéjuéshān zhōng 佛在羅閱祇耆闍崛山中 (“The Buddha resided at Rājagṛha on Mount Gṛdhrakūṭa”) and proceeds with a brief account of the Lotus Sūtra samādhi as the meditative-devotional means by which one attains the realisation of the Lotus’s teaching.

Abstract

The Fǎhuá sānmèi jīng is one of several short Lotus-related sūtras that circulated in the early Chinese Buddhist canon and that contributed to the development of the Fǎhuá sānmèi meditative-devotional tradition. The Fǎhuá sānmèi practice — concentrated repetition and meditation on the Lotus Sūtra — became a central practice of the Tiāntái school under 智顗 Zhìyǐ, who systematised it in the Móhē zhǐguān 摩訶止觀 (KR6d0130, T1911) as one of the “four kinds of samādhi” (sì zhǒng sānmèi 四種三昧). The present sūtra is one of the canonical authorities for the practice.

The attribution to Zhìyán is contested in the textual tradition: some scholars argue that the work is in fact a Chinese composition rather than a translation from an Indic source, possibly produced in the early-fifth-century LiúSòng productive context. The work’s brevity and its substantial Sinitic literary diction are consistent with such a Chinese-composition hypothesis.

The dating is bracketed within Zhìyán’s productive period c. 396–427.

Translations and research

  • Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Tiāntái Four Forms of Samādhi and Late North–South Dynasties, Sui, and Early T’ang Buddhist Devotionalism.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1987.
  • Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T’ien-t’ai Buddhism.” In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory, 45–97. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986.
  • Magnin, Paul. La vie et l’œuvre de Huisi (515–577). Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1979.
  • Stevenson, Daniel B., and Kanno Hiroshi. The Meaning of the Lotus Sūtra’s Course of Ease and Bliss: An Annotated Translation and Study of Nanyue Huisi’s (515–577) Fahua jing anlexing yi. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University, 2006.
  • Lancaster, Lewis R. The Korean Buddhist Canon: A Descriptive Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Other points of interest

The Fǎhuá sānmèi meditative-devotional practice — concentrated meditation on and recitation of the Lotus Sūtra — became one of the most widely practised forms of Chinese Buddhist devotional cultivation through the medieval period, particularly in the Tiāntái school. Its institutional development is documented through 智顗 Zhìyǐ’s systematisation in the Móhē zhǐguān (KR6d0130) and through subsequent Sòng-period repentance liturgies (the Fǎhuá sānmèi chànyí 法華三昧懺儀 of Zhìyǐ, KR6d0191, T1941, and parallel productions). The present sūtra (T269) is one of the early canonical authorities for the practice.

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