Fó shuō yúlánpén jīng shū 佛說盂蘭盆經疏
Commentary on the Buddha’s Yúlán Bowl Sūtra commentary by 宗密 (Zōngmì, 述)
About the work
T1792 in two fascicles is the most influential Tang Chinese commentary on [[KR6i0364|the Yúlánpén jīng 盂蘭盆經]] (T685), composed by the HuáyánChán synthesizer Guīfēng Zōngmì 圭峰宗密 (780–841), the Fifth Patriarch of the Huáyán school and one of the most important Tang Buddhist intellectuals. The opening preface — “始於混沌。塞乎天地。通人神。貫貴賤。儒釋皆宗之。其唯孝道矣” (“Beginning from primal chaos, filling Heaven and Earth, communicating the human and the spiritual, traversing the noble and the humble — what both Confucians and Buddhists ultimately venerate is filiality”) — is one of the most famous statements of the Tang Buddhist case for the integration of Buddhist soteriology with the Confucian filial-piety tradition.
Abstract
宗密’s personal frame for the commentary is intensely autobiographical: “宗密罪釁早年喪親。每履雪霜之悲。永懷風樹之恨” (“I, Zōngmì, sinful as I am, lost my parents in my early years; whenever I tread on snow or frost I am pierced by sorrow, and forever I cherish the regret of the wind in the trees”). The reference to the fēngshù 風樹 of the Hán shī wàizhuàn — the lament of trees that wish to remain still while the wind blows on — is a classical Confucian topos for the grief of a son whose parents have died before he could fulfill his filial obligations. 宗密 thus presents the Yúlánpén jīng commentary as both Buddhist exegesis and personal xiào (filial-piety) practice. The commentary itself works through the parent text section by section, glossing terminological cruxes, locating the sūtra within the 宗密’s own huìtōng 會通 framework integrating Buddhism with Confucian ethics, and rooting the Yúlán offering in a continuous Buddhist account of fútián 福田 (fields of merit) inherited from the Mahāyāna.
Composition window: 宗密’s most productive period at Cǎotángsì 草堂寺 in the Zhōngnán Mountains and at the Tang capital, c. 820–841. No internal date is preserved, but the commentary cites his already-completed major works and is mentioned in 裴休 Pèi Xiū’s Quánzhōng 圭峰碑銘 (the inscription written shortly after 宗密’s death) as one of his canonical compositions. The work was the source-text for the cluster of Sòng sub-commentaries: KR6i0367 (Xīnjì 新記 by 元照), KR6i0368 (Huìgǔ tōngjīn jì 會古通今記 by 普觀), KR6i0369 (Kē 科 by 遇榮) and the closely-related KR6i0370 (Xiàohéng chāo 孝衡鈔 by 遇榮), plus KR6i0371 (Yúyì 餘義 by 日新) — together comprising one of the densest sub-commentary clusters in the entire Sòng Buddhist exegetical corpus.
Parent sūtra: KR6i0364 (T685). Sòng sub-commentaries on this commentary: KR6i0367 (X372), KR6i0368 (X373), KR6i0369 (X374), KR6i0370 (X375), KR6i0371 (X376).
Translations and research
- Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, 1988. Treats Zōngmì’s commentary in chapter 5 with extensive analysis.
- Gregory, Peter N. Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Princeton, 1991. The standard English-language monograph on Zōngmì.
- Cole, Alan. Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism. Stanford, 1998.
- Yoshida Tomokatsu 吉田友勝. Tōdai bukkyō shisō kenkyū 唐代仏教思想研究. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986.
A complete English translation of the commentary is in preparation but not yet published; partial translations appear in Teiser 1988.
Other points of interest
The preface’s claim that “Confucians and Buddhists alike venerate the way of filiality” is one of the canonical Tang formulations of the sānjiào héyī 三教合一 (“three teachings as one”) synthesis. Zōngmì himself had a Confucian education before he tonsured, and the commentary’s framing of xiào — filial piety — as a concept ut universale common to both traditions is one of the most influential Tang interventions in the Buddhist–Confucian dialogue.