Fó shuō zhōngxīn jīng 佛說忠心經
The Buddha’s Sūtra on Loyal-Heartedness translated by 竺曇無蘭 (Zhú Tánwúlán, 譯)
About the work
T743 in one fascicle is the third of 竺曇無蘭’s clustered Eastern Jìn brief moral-doctrine sūtras (alongside KR6i0435 and KR6i0436). The title-phrase zhōngxīn 忠心 “loyal-heartedness” or “sincere heart” is a calque of an Indian Buddhist term — possibly adhyāśaya (sincere intention) or kṣama (forgiving heart) — adapted to the Chinese moral vocabulary in which zhōng “loyalty” was a cardinal Confucian virtue.
Abstract
The text expounds zhōngxīn — sincerity, loyal-heartedness — as a Buddhist virtue. The Buddha teaches that the sincere heart is the foundation of right intention (samyak-saṃkalpa), without which the precepts cannot be kept and meditation cannot succeed. The exposition pairs zhōngxīn with its opposite — duplicity, hypocrisy, two-facedness — and exposes how the duplicitous mind is incompatible with the path of liberation.
The lexical choice zhōngxīn — drawing on the Confucian moral lexicon for a Buddhist concept — is a typical instance of the early Chinese Buddhist translation strategy of using existing Chinese moral vocabulary to render Indian Buddhist concepts. This géyì 格義 approach made the texts accessible to Chinese readers but at the cost of some doctrinal precision, since the Confucian zhōng (loyalty in the relational-political sense) is not exactly the same as the Buddhist sincerity-of-intention (adhyāśaya).
Related: KR6i0435, KR6i0436 — Tánwúlán’s cluster of brief moral-doctrine sūtras.
Translations and research
- Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (rpt. 2007). (On géyì and the early Chinese Buddhist translation strategies.)