Guān Léngqié jīng jì 觀楞伽經記
Notes on Contemplating the Sūtra of Laṅkā composed by 德清 (Déqīng / Hānshān, 筆記)
About the work
X326 in eight fascicles is 德清 (Hānshān Déqīng, 1546–1623)‘s major commentary on [[KR6i0327|Léngqiéābáduōluó bǎo jīng 楞伽阿跋多羅寶經]] (T670). The work belongs to the late-Míng monastic-Buddhist revival of the Laṅkāvatāra — a project Hānshān shared with his contemporaries 智旭 (cf. KR6i0345, KR6i0346) and 通潤 (KR6i0348).
Prefaces
The Taishō / Xuzangjing preserves at the head Hānshān’s own Lüèkē tící 略科題辭 (“Brief Topical Outline Postface”), in which he explicitly defends the kējīng (科經, dividing-and-rubricating-the-sūtra) genre against the anxiety — going back to the early Buddhist exegete Dào’ān 道安 — that division might fragment the meaning. Hānshān’s defense draws on the Indian commentarial tradition (Qīnguāng lùn 親光論, the Mahāyānābhidharmasamuccayavyākhyā) which divided the entire sūtra into three parts (三分): the introduction, the main discourse, and the propagation. Hānshān argues that division is not “speaking by leaves” but rather raising the gist (綱要) so that the contemplator may attain the meaning beyond the words.
Abstract
Date bracket follows Hānshān’s late productive period (post-1606 partial rehabilitation, pre-death 1623); the consensus dating among modern scholars (Sung-peng Hsu 1979, Wu Jiang 2008) is during his Cáoxī period in Guǎngdōng. The commentary is doctrinally syncretic in the late-Míng manner: Chán meditative applications, Yogācāra eight-consciousness analytics, Tiāntái doctrinal categories, and Pure-Land devotional interpretations are all drawn upon as the parent sūtra warrants. As a working jì commentary on T670, X326 is roughly contemporaneous with 智旭’s X328 (xuányì) and X329 (yìshū); the three together (with 通潤’s X331 and 曾鳳儀’s X330) constitute the late-Míng commentarial canonisation of the Laṅkāvatāra.
Related canonical texts: parent sūtra KR6i0327 (楞伽阿跋多羅寶經 / T670); Hānshān’s supplementary KR6i0344 (楞伽補遺); contemporaneous commentaries KR6i0345, KR6i0346, KR6i0347, KR6i0348.
Translations and research
- Hsu, Sung-peng. A Buddhist Leader in Ming China: The Life and Thought of Han-shan Te-ch’ing. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979. The standard English study; treats the commentarial corpus.
- Wu Jiang. Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Sets Hānshān’s Laṅkāvatāra commentary in its late-Míng context.
- Tokiwa Gishin 常盤義伸. Ryōgakyō no kenkyū. Tokyo: Daitō, 1976.