Zhèngfǎ niànchù jīng 正法念處經
Sūtra on the Establishment of Mindfulness of the True Dharma (Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra) translated by 瞿曇般若流支 (Gautama Prajñāruci, 譯)
About the work
T721 in seventy fascicles is the massive Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra — the longest of all Indian smṛtyupasthāna (mindfulness-establishment) sūtras and one of the largest single sūtras in the Chinese canon — translated into Chinese by 瞿曇般若流支 (Gautama Prajñāruci) at the Eastern Wèi capital Yè 鄴 in the late 530s. The catalog assigns this to 元魏 (Northern / Eastern Wèi); historically Prajñāruci arrived at Yè in 538 and the translation was completed in the early 540s. The 70-juan extent makes this one of the principal Mahāyāna doctrinal compendia of the Chinese canon.
Abstract
The Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna-sūtra is structurally a vast cosmological-doctrinal encyclopedia organized as a meditation manual on the four smṛtyupasthāna (mindfulness of body, feeling, mind, and dharmas). Each section expounds in elaborate detail the cosmic architecture relevant to the meditation: the body section treats the body’s anatomical and karmic structure; the feeling section the various pleasant, painful, and neutral sensations and their karmic origins; the mind section the structure of mental phenomena; and the dharmas section the entire Buddhist cosmology of gati (rebirth-destinies — hells, preta, animals, humans, asura, gods).
The cosmology section is the most influential portion of the text in East Asian Buddhism: its detailed mapping of the hells, the preta realm, the heavens, and the cosmological geography of Mount Sumeru became one of the principal Chinese sources for medieval Chinese Buddhist cosmology. The text systematically pairs each cosmic location with the karmic actions that lead to rebirth there, providing the elaborate karma-cosmology synthesis that became foundational for East Asian Buddhist popular literature, art, and liturgy.
The text was much cited in Tang and Sòng commentaries and is one of the principal scriptural sources for the Chinese Buddhist hell-cosmology elaborated in such later texts as the Shíwáng jīng 十王經 and the various yúlánpén 盂蘭盆 traditions. The Tibetan parallel translation is preserved in the bKa’-‘gyur and the Sanskrit fragments have been studied by Lin Li-kouang and Mizuno Kōgen.
Translations and research
- Lin Li-kouang. L’aide-mémoire de la vraie loi: Saddharma-smṛtyupasthāna-sūtra. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1949. The principal modern monograph; partial French translation and study.
- Mizuno Kōgen 水野弘元, “Shōbō nenjo kyō no kenkyū” 正法念處經の研究, Bukkyō kenkyū 31 (2002).
- Stuart, Daniel M. A Less Traveled Path: Saddharmasmṛtyupasthānasūtra Chapter 2, Critically Edited with a Study on Its Structure and Significance for the Development of Buddhist Meditation. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2015. Critical edition of chapter 2 with English translation.
- Stuart, Daniel M. A Less Traveled Path: Meditation and Textual Practice in the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna(sūtra). Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming. (Major monograph in English.)
- Demiéville, Paul. “Bombai,” Hōbōgirin 2 (1930), 93–113. (On the cosmological cycles in the text.)
Other points of interest
The text’s enormous extent (70 juan) and rich cosmological content made it a workshop for medieval Chinese Buddhist art: the imagery of the hells, the preta realm, and the heavens in Tang and Sòng Buddhist painting and sculpture is heavily indebted to the Saddharmasmṛtyupasthāna’s descriptions. The hells in Dūnhuáng wall-paintings and in the Shíwáng jīng tradition draw directly on this text. It is one of the few cases where a single Indian sūtra translation can be shown to have shaped a substantial portion of East Asian Buddhist visual culture.