Lüè shì xīn huáyán jīng xiūxíng cìdì jué yí lùn 略釋新華嚴經修行次第決疑論
A Concise Treatise Resolving the Doubts on the Stages of Practice of the New Huáyán Scripture by 李通玄 Lǐ Tōngxuán (撰)
About the work
The Jué yí lùn in 4 fascicles is the practitioner-oriented companion to 李通玄 Lǐ Tōngxuán’s much larger doctrinal commentary [[KR6e0022|Xīn huáyán jīng lùn]] (T1739). Its theme is xiūxíng cì-dì 修行次第 — the stages of contemplative practice — as these are mapped onto the framework of the [[KR6e0010|Huáyán jīng]]‘s ten-stage scheme: the Daśabhūmika, the Shízhù, the Shíxíng, the Shíhuíxiàng, the Shídì, and the consummating Sudhana pilgrimage of the Rù fǎjiè pǐn. The Jué yí (“doubt-resolving”) format is dialogical: the work is structured as a series of doubts or questions about practice that are then resolved through reference to the sūtra’s authoritative description of the bodhisattva path.
Prefaces
The work is preceded by a Huāyán jīng jué yí lùn xù 華嚴經決疑論序 (“Preface to the Treatise Resolving the Doubts on the Huáyán Scripture”), composed by 比丘照明 Bǐqiū Zhàomíng, śramaṇa of the Shìduō-lín-sì 逝多林寺 (“Jetavana Monastery”) on Dōngfāng-shān 東方山. The preface — a hagiographic biography of Lǐ-zhǎngzhě — is the principal contemporary witness to Lǐ Tōngxuán’s life and provides the basis for most of the later biographical tradition. In summary: “Lǐ-zhǎngzhě of the Northern Capital was of imperial Tang collateral [descent], named Tōngxuán. His nature was endowed with heavenly intelligence and his wisdom was clear and concise. He learned not from the regular masters; his deeds were unfathomable. He gave his attention to the Yì-dào 易道 [the Way of the Yìjīng] and exhausted its subtle perfection. Wandering free in the forests and springs, far from the cities — truly he was a wáng-sūn 王孫 (‘royal grandson’) as if having renounced the throne. After his fortieth year he ceased reading any outside book; in the reign of Empress Wǔ Zétiān he turned his heart to the Huáyán jīng and worked through the [old] commentaries of the masters of antiquity. [Then,] closing the volumes, he sighed: ‘The sūtra-text is vast, the commentaries many; alas, later students [merely] follow the words and have no time [for the rest] — how should they ever practice [it]?’ Fortunately he encountered the new [Tang] translation of the Huáyán, complete in doctrine and principle; whereupon he examined the eighty-fascicle sūtra and gathered together [his thoughts]…”
Abstract
The composition is securely datable through the Zhàomíng preface to the period after the new (80-fascicle) translation of the Avataṃsaka (completed 699), and to Lǐ Tōngxuán’s mature years on Mt. Tài-háng 太行山, c. 720 – 740 CE. The bracket adopted here reflects this window. Zhàomíng’s preface notes that Lǐ-zhǎngzhě had “after his fortieth year ceased reading any outside book” — i.e. devoted himself exclusively to the Avataṃsaka — and that his interest in the new translation ignited only after the imperial preface of Wǔ Zétiān had reached him. The intellectual development is thus from a Yìjīng-trained classicist to a Buddhist contemplative whose distinctively syncretic Avataṃsaka exegesis would emerge from the encounter.
The 4-fascicle treatment focuses on practical implementation: how the bodhisattva is to apply the doctrines of the Avataṃsaka in actual contemplative practice, what the relations are between the various stages, how doubts about progress are to be resolved by reference to the textual authority. The work is the principal Tang Buddhist source for understanding the Avataṃsaka as a manual of contemplative practice rather than as a doctrinal treatise.
The Taishō text is established on the Korean Tripiṭaka Koreana (麗) collated against the jiǎ 甲 Japanese alternate witness.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located. The Zhàomíng preface alone has been translated several times.
- Gimello, Robert M. “Li T’ung-hsüan and the Practical Dimensions of Hua-yen,” in Studies in Ch’an and Hua-yen, ed. R. M. Gimello and Peter N. Gregory (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1983), 321–389. — Includes substantial extracts in translation.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
- Cleary, Thomas, tr. Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1983 — substantial extracts.
- Wang, Yumin. Li Tongxuan’s New Hua-yen Treatise: Theory and Practice. Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1999.
Other points of interest
- Bǐqiū Zhàomíng’s preface is the principal hagiographic source for Lǐ Tōngxuán’s life, including the famous “self-illumining lamp” topos and the zǎobǎi dietary regime; subsequent biographers (Sòng gāosēng zhuàn, Yuán Fózǔ tǒngjì) draw on this preface either directly or through derivative sources.
- The phrase 王孫 (wángsūn) in Zhàomíng’s preface — “royal grandson, as if having renounced the throne” — is the principal Tang testimony to Lǐ Tōngxuán’s claimed imperial Tang collateral descent; how literally to take this is debated, but the Yí nián lù 疑年錄 and Sòng gāosēng zhuàn both accept it.