Zhì chánbìng mìyào fǎ 治禪病祕要法
Secret Essential Methods for the Cure of Meditation Maladies translated by 沮渠京聲 (Jǔqú Jīngshēng, 譯)
About the work
The Zhì chánbìng mìyào fǎ (T620, two fascicles) is a unique therapeutic meditation manual translated by 沮渠京聲 (Jǔqú Jīngshēng, fl. 433–464), the Northern Liáng prince who fled to the LiúSòng south after the fall of his house. The text addresses the “meditation maladies” (chánbìng 禪病) — the somatic, psychological and visionary disturbances that a practitioner might encounter in deep meditation — and prescribes counter-meditations to dispel them. It is the earliest Chinese systematization of chán pathology and the foundational source for the entire later “chánbìng” literature in East Asia.
Abstract
The text describes some 72 distinct types of meditative malady — sensations of fire in the head, feelings of being eaten by demons, visionary corpse-imagery, somatic numbness, etc. — and pairs each with a corrective visualization. Modern scholarship, especially Pierce Salguero (2017) and Eric Greene (2021), has shown that the work is among the very earliest documents of Buddhist medical-therapeutic practice in China and reflects a distinctive Central Asian yoga tradition transmitted through the Northern Liáng court. Date bracket follows Jǔqú Jīngshēng’s productive period in the south (455 — when he is securely attested as a translator at Yángdū — to his death c. 464); the text is firmly dated to this LiúSòng phase, not to his earlier life under the Northern Liáng.
The work circulated independently from other meditation manuals and exerted significant influence on later Tiantai exegesis: 智顗 discusses chánbìng in the [[KR6d0130|Móhē zhǐguān]] using vocabulary directly traceable to T620.
Translations and research
- Salguero, C. Pierce. Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. — partial translation and discussion of T620.
- Greene, Eric M. Chan Before Chan: Meditation, Repentance, and Visionary Experience in Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2021.
- Yamabe, Nobuyoshi. The Sūtra on the Ocean-Like Samādhi of the Visualization of the Buddha. PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1999.
Links
- CBETA T15n0620
- Kanseki DB
- 沮渠京聲 DILA
- Dazangthings date evidence (450) — Ono Genmyō 小野玄妙, Maruyama Takao 丸山孝雄, eds. Bussho kaisetsu daijiten 佛書解說大辭典. Tokyo: Daitō shuppan, 1933–1936 [縮刷版 1999]. Vol. 4, p. 294.