Fóshuō jīngāng sānmèi běnxìng qīngjìng bùhuài bùmiè jīng 佛說金剛三昧本性清淨不壞不滅經
Sūtra on the Vajra Samādhi, the Originally-Pure, Unbreakable, Unceasing Nature, as Spoken by the Buddha translator unknown (失譯)
About the work
T644 (one fascicle, alt. title 金剛清淨經) is a short anonymously-transmitted samādhi-sūtra of the jīngāng sānmèi type, presenting the bodhisattva’s vajropama-samādhi — the diamond-like meditative concentration — as an experiential realization of the originally-pure, unbreakable nature of mind. The text is unrelated to the much more famous (and pseudepigraphic) Vajrasamādhisūtra (T273, Jīngāng sānmèi jīng).
Abstract
T644 is classed in the [[KR6s0084|Chū sānzàng jì jí]] (T2145) and subsequent catalogs as 失譯 (“translator unknown”). The Taishō edition follows the convention of dating it to the long span of the Six Dynasties / Northern and Southern dynasties period when the bulk of anonymous samādhi-sūtras were produced. Date bracket: Eastern Jin to early Sui (317–581) on stylistic grounds. The doctrinal core — that the buddha-nature is vajropama (diamond-like), originally pure, and immune to corruption — is consonant with mid-fifth-century tathāgatagarbha literature, which would suggest a date in the latter half of that bracket, but no firm placement is possible.
This text should be carefully distinguished from the much larger and more famous Jīngāng sānmèi jīng (T273), an eighth-century Korean composition.
Translations and research
- Buswell, Robert E. Jr. The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra, a Buddhist Apocryphon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. — primarily on T273, but provides comparative context for the vajra-samādhi literature including T644.
No book-length Western translation of T644 located.
Links
- CBETA T15n0644
- Kanseki DB
- Dazangthings date evidence (245, 417) — Fèi Chángfáng 費長房. Lìdài sānbǎo jì (LDSBJ) 歷代三寶紀 T2034. T2034 (XLIX) 55b7, 58a22.