Púsà hē sèyù fǎ jīng 菩薩訶色欲法經
A Bodhisattva’s Method for Reproaching the Desire of Sense-Forms translated by 鳩摩羅什 (Jiūmóluóshí / Kumārajīva, 譯)
About the work
The Púsà hē sèyù fǎ jīng (T615) is a very short single-fascicle meditation tract attributed to 鳩摩羅什 in the Cháng’ān bureau. The alternate title is 菩薩訶色欲法 (i.e. Method without the 經 sūtra-marker), reflecting that the work is a homiletic essay on the dangers of kāmacchanda — sensual desire for visual forms — rather than a sūtra spoken by the Buddha. It is conventionally read together with the [[KR6i0251|Zuòchán sānmèi jīng]] (T614) and the [[KR6i0253|Chánfǎ yàojiě]] (T616) as part of Kumārajīva’s meditation corpus addressing the aśubhabhāvanā — meditation on the impure.
Abstract
T615 is unanimously catalogued in the Sino-Buddhist bibliographies ([[KR6r0011|Lìdài sānbǎo jì]], [[KR6s0093|Kāiyuán shìjiào lù]]) as Kumārajīva’s work; no preface is preserved, and no Sanskrit/Tibetan parallel survives. Datable to Kumārajīva’s Cháng’ān years (401–413), with no internal evidence for a tighter bracket. The text is a Chinese-style exhortation built around well-known Indic similes — desire compared to fire, to a serpent, to the bait that conceals a hook — and was probably composed for the use of monks under Kumārajīva’s direct instruction at the YáoQín capital. Its brevity and its homiletic character have made it a standard component of Chinese monastic vinaya training; it circulates as appended reading in a number of Tang and Song monastic compendia.
Translations and research
- Greene, Eric M. Chan Before Chan: Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2021. — situates T615 within the Kumārajīva meditation corpus.
- Wilkinson, Greg. “Kumārajīva’s Meditation Manuals and the Shaping of Early Chinese Buddhist Practice.” Various studies.
No book-length scholarly study of T615 alone has been published.
Links
- CBETA T15n0615
- Kanseki DB
- 鳩摩羅什 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (405) — Sakaino Kōyō 境野黄洋. Shina Bukkyō seishi 支那佛教精史. Tokyo: Sakaino Kōyō Hakushi Ikō Kankōkai, 1935. 346–350.