Huáyán wǔshí yào wèn dá 華嚴五十要問答
Fifty Essential Questions and Answers on the Huáyán [Sūtra] by 智儼 (Zhìyǎn, 集 / compiled)
About the work
The Huáyán wǔshí yào wèn dá in 2 fascicles is 智儼 Zhìyǎn’s compilation of fifty doctrinally important question-and-answer pairs on the [[KR6e0001|Huáyán jīng (60-fasc.)]]. The format — yào wèn dá “essential question-and-answer” — is a Chinese-Buddhist pedagogical genre in which the principal cruxes of a major scripture are framed as questions and their resolutions provided in compact answers, suitable both for monastic study and as a teaching aid in the lecture-hall.
Prefaces
The work has no separate preface; opens directly with title-line and the work’s first question.
Abstract
The work is conventionally datable to Zhìyǎn’s mature period at the Zhìxiāngsì 至相寺 on Mt. Zhōngnán, c. 627 – 668 CE; the bracket adopted here reflects this window. The fifty topics treated include the cosmology of the Buddha-bodies, the doctrine of the Daśabhūmika, the doctrine of xìng qǐ 性起 (nature-arising), the relation of the Avataṃsaka to the other Mahāyāna scriptures, the doctrine of yī duō xiāng róng (mutual containment), and the doctrinal apparatus of the Six Characteristics — i.e., the same conceptual structures that Zhìyǎn was developing systematically in his major commentary [[KR6e0003|Sōuxuán jì]]. The Wèn dá serves as a pedagogical complement to the Sōuxuán jì, distilling its key doctrinal positions into a question-and-answer format.
The work is one of three doctrinally substantial works of Zhìyǎn that survive (alongside the Sōuxuán jì and the [[KR6e0084|Záyǔ kǒngmù zhāng]] / T1870), and is essential for understanding the formative doctrinal positions of the early Huáyán school.
The Taishō text (T1869) is established on the standard apparatus.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Gimello, Robert M. Chih-yen (602–668) and the Foundations of Hua-yen Buddhism. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia, 1976 — substantial treatment of the Wǔshí yào wèn dá.
- Hamar, Imre, ed. Reflecting Mirrors (2007).
Other points of interest
- The 50-topic format directly anticipates 澄觀 Chéngguān’s later 42-topic [[KR6e0015|Lüè cè 略策]] (T1737) — both works exemplify the yào wèn dá / cè (catechetical-discourse) genre, which became one of the standard formats of Tang Huáyán-school pedagogical literature.