Jīngāng sānmèi jīng zhùjiě 金剛三昧經注解
Annotated Interpretation of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra by 圓澄 (Yuánchéng / Zhànrán Yuánchéng / Yúnmén Chéng, 註)
About the work
A four-juan late-Míng commentary on the Jīngāng sānmèi jīng (KR6d0112, T273) by the Cáodòng 曹洞 Chán master 圓澄 Zhànrán Yuánchéng (1561–1626) of Yúnménsì 雲門寺. Yuánchéng’s other major commentary in the canonical apparatus is the Fǎhuá jīng yìyǔ (KR6d0079, X31n0613).
Prefaces
The text opens with the Jīngāng sānmèi jīng zhùjiě xù 金剛三昧經註解敘. The opening passage is one of the more ambitious literary-doctrinal openings in the late-Míng commentarial tradition: “Now the true mind alone manifests, like the bright moon shining on the great empty; the dharma-nature without diminishment, like the dragon’s pearl gleaming in the deep ocean. Lucid and unobscured — daily-use bright. Birthless yet birthing; due to tathatā not preserving its own nature and manifesting following conditions, [it] is birth-yet-birthless. Because real-characteristics are originally without a single thing — and not the slightest dust is received — seeking it [yields] difficulty in obtaining…”
Abstract
Yuánchéng’s Zhùjiě belongs to the late-Wànlì Cáodòng Chán productive engagement with the Mahāyāna scriptural tradition outside the Tiāntái scholastic apparatus. The work draws on the strong Chán-experiential reading of the Vajrasamādhisūtra that was characteristic of Yúnménsì pedagogical practice, integrating this with the Tathāgatagarbha doctrinal apparatus that the Vajrasamādhisūtra itself articulates.
The composition is bracketed within Yuánchéng’s productive period c. 1581–1626; the work most plausibly belongs to his mature productive years at Yúnménsì (c. 1600–1626).
Translations and research
- Wu, Jiang. Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, A Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.
- Eichman, Jennifer. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship. Leiden: Brill, 2016.