Chánfǎ yàojiě 禪法要解
Essential Explanations of the Methods of Meditation translated by 鳩摩羅什 (Jiūmóluóshí / Kumārajīva, 譯)
About the work
The Chánfǎ yàojiě (T616, two fascicles, also styled 禪要經) is a systematic exposition of the four dhyānas, the four formless attainments and the aśubhabhāvanā (impurity-meditation), translated by 鳩摩羅什 and his Cháng’ān team. Of all the meditation works attributed to Kumārajīva’s bureau, T616 is the most overtly Sarvāstivāda in technical vocabulary, and is therefore generally taken to preserve a relatively faithful translation of an underlying Indic yoga manual rather than a Chinese composite.
Abstract
The Chánfǎ yàojiě presents a graduated yoga curriculum: the four immeasurables (apramāṇa), the meditation on the unattractive corpse, the calming of the breath (ānāpānasmṛti), and the four dhyānas with their associated vipassanā contents. The catalogs ascribe it unanimously to Kumārajīva, though the Sanskrit original has not been identified; modern scholarship (notably Lin Li-kouang) has compared it with surviving Indic yoga fragments and concluded that it derives from a Sarvāstivāda Yogācārabhūmi type source closely related to that underlying T618 (the Dámóduōluó chán jīng). Date bracket follows Kumārajīva’s Cháng’ān period (401–413) without further refinement.
The work contains a sustained passage on the aśubha meditation that has long been studied for its detailed list of the nine perceptions of the corpse (navasaññā); this passage is among the most-cited aśubha sources in later Chinese exegesis and is quoted in the [[KR6d0130|Móhē zhǐguān]] of 智顗.
Translations and research
- Lin, Li-kouang. L’Aide-mémoire de la Vraie Loi (Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra): Recherches sur un sūtra développé du Petit Véhicule. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1949. — discusses parallels with T616.
- Yamabe, Nobuyoshi. The Sūtra on the Ocean-Like Samādhi of the Visualization of the Buddha. PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1999.
- Greene, Eric M. Chan Before Chan: Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2021.
Links
- CBETA T15n0616
- Kanseki DB
- 鳩摩羅什 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (405) — Demiéville, Paul. “La Yogācārabhūmi de Saṅgharakṣa.” BÉFEO 44, no. 2 (1954): 339–436. 354 n. 2.