Yuánjué jīng lüèshū kē 圓覺經略疏科
Outline (kē) for the Abridged Commentary on the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 宗密 (Guīfēng Zōngmì, 製)
About the work
A short single-fascicle outline-text by 宗密 Guīfēng Zōngmì (780–841), giving the topic-tree (kē 科) of his Yuánjué jīng lüèshū 圓覺經略疏 (KR6i0553). It is the working classroom counterpart of the more extensive Dàshū chāo kē (KR6i0556), bearing the same relation to the Lüèshū that the Dàshū chāo kē bears to the Dàshū chāo. Like all the Zōngmì kē texts it survives only through Korean and Japanese transmission and has reached the modern reader through the Wànzì xùzàngjīng.
Abstract
The Lüèshū kē lays out the hierarchical outline of the Lüèshū: the threefold introductory matter (xùfēn 序分 / zhèngzōngfēn 正宗分 / liútōngfēn 流通分) and the twelve bodhisattva-dialogue chapters, each with its inner threefold-and-fourfold subdivision into question, response, gāthā, and concluding injunction. As with the Dàshū chāo kē, the Lüèshū kē is a navigational and didactic apparatus rather than a freestanding doctrinal exposition; its value to the modern reader is to make explicit the chapter-and-section architecture that Zōngmì had embedded in the marginal kēmù of his commentary. It is the pair to the Lüèshū in the same way that the Dàshū chāo kē is the pair to the Dàshū chāo.
Translations and research
- Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄. Shūmitsu kyōgaku no shisō shi-teki kenkyū 宗密教学の思想史的研究. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1975. — On the structure of Zōngmì’s exegetical apparatus.