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佛說見正經

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Text ID
KR6i0501
Date
381–395
Dynasty
東晉

Fó shuō jiànzhèng jīng 佛說見正經

The Buddha Speaks: The Sūtra of [the Bhikṣu] Jiànzhèng (also titled Shēng-sǐ biàn-shí jīng 生死變識經, “On the Transformation of Consciousness in Death and Rebirth”) translated by 竺曇無蘭 (Zhú Tánwúlán, 譯)

About the work

T796 in one fascicle is a short doctrinal sūtra in dialogue form translated by the Eastern Jìn translator 竺曇無蘭 Zhú Tánwúlán at the Xièzhènxī 謝鎮西 Monastery in Yángdū 揚都 (Jiànkāng 建康) between Tàiyuán 6 (381) and Tàiyuán 20 (395). The text takes its title from the principal interlocutor, the bhikṣu 見正 Jiànzhèng (“Right View”), a newly ordained monk who voices a sceptic’s question about the doctrine of rebirth. The alternate title 生死變識經 (“Sūtra of the Transformation of Consciousness in Birth-and-Death”) accurately describes the doctrinal content: the sūtra is a sustained treatment of the metaphor-laden problem of how the vijñāna (識神, “consciousness-spirit”) transmigrates between lives without retaining the memories of the previous existence.

Abstract

The narrative frame is set at Rājagṛha (羅閱祇 Luóyuèqí) in a grove outside the city, where the Buddha has just sat down with his disciples beneath a great fragrant tree (甘香樹). A newly ordained monk named Jiànzhèng silently doubts the doctrine of post-mortem continuity: if there is rebirth, why do the dead never return to inform the living of their fate? The Buddha, knowing his thought, opens with a parable on the seed and the tree: the great tree before them grew from a single seed, and once grown the seed-form cannot be reconstituted from the tree’s parts. By analogy, the consciousness (識神) propelled forward by the twelve causal links (pratītya-samutpāda: 癡 → 行 → 識 → 名色 → 六入 → 更樂 → 痛 → 愛 → 受 → 有 → 生 → 老死) cannot return to its prior form because it has been irreversibly transformed by karma.

The exposition then proceeds through a sustained sequence of seven similes for the irreversibility of the vijñāna’s transition between lives: (1) ore smelted into iron and cast into a vessel; (2) clay fired into pottery; (3) a tree carved into figures; (4) sand fired to glass; (5) water taking the shape of its container; (6) the cicada’s emergence from its pupal form; (7) fresh meat decaying into worm-infested flesh. Each simile illustrates a different aspect of the six obscurations (六繫蔽) that prevent the consciousness from returning to its former state: residence in the antarābhava (中陰); enclosure in the new womb; the pain of birth; the resetting of memory; the attachment to nourishment; the formation of new mental habits. The sūtra closes with the Buddha enjoining the cultivation of the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment (三十七品 sānshíqī pǐn) — the four smṛty-upasthāna, four prahāṇa, four ṛddhi-pāda, five indriya, five bala, seven bodhy-aṅga, and the āryāṣṭāṅga-mārga — as the means to acquire the divya-cakṣus by which past and future lives become directly visible.

The text is one of the most accomplished short doctrinal sūtras in the Eastern Jìn translation corpus: tightly structured, rhetorically elegant, and addressing a problem that recurred throughout the early Chinese Buddhist apologetic tradition (cf. the contemporary debate over shénbùmiè 神不滅, the survival of the spirit). The translator’s preference for semantic gloss (識神 for vijñāna) is characteristic of his idiom.

Translations and research

No standalone Western translation located. On the doctrine of post-mortem continuity in early Chinese Buddhism see:

  • Lai, Whalen. “The Mirror Symbol Revisited: Taoist and Buddhist Use of the Mirror Image.” In Buddhist and Taoist Studies in Chinese Religion, ed. Michael Saso. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1977.
  • Liebenthal, Walter. “The Immortality of the Soul in Chinese Thought.” Monumenta Nipponica 8 (1952): 327–397.
  • Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China. Leiden: Brill, 1959 (3rd ed., 2007).

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