Yùzhù Yuánjué jīng 御註圓覺經
Imperially Annotated Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 孝宗帝 (Sòng Xiàozōng, 註)
About the work
The Yùzhù Yuánjué jīng in 2 fascicles is the personal annotated reading of the Yuánjué jīng (KR6i0551) prepared by Sòng Xiàozōng 宋孝宗 (趙昚 Zhào Shèn, 1127–1194, r. 1162–1189). The imperial annotation was bestowed on the chánshī 寶印 Bǎoyìn of the Jìngshān 徑山 monastery (in modern Zhejiang) on 淳熙十年二月乙丑 (= 17 March 1183), as the work’s headnote and Bǎoyìn’s responding biǎo 表 (formal memorial-of-thanks) make clear. Bǎoyìn’s biǎo, preserved at the head of the work (X10 no. 251, T39 in some sub-editions), records the emperor’s gift and his own request “to engrave the printing-blocks at Jìngshān, propagating it in the four directions, so that the patch-robed monks of the realm may illumine their mind-ground and together drift in the Tathāgata’s great Yuánjué-ocean.” The imperial gloss itself, line-by-line on the sūtra text, is short and devotional rather than technical, oriented to the Chán reading of the Yuánjué jīng current at the late-twelfth-century court.
Abstract
Xiàozōng was a notably devout emperor with strong Chán affinities; his other extant Buddhist writings include the Sānjiào lùn 三教論 (preserved in the Fózǔ tǒngjì 佛祖統紀, T49 no. 2035, juan 47) which articulates a view of the three teachings as complementary, with Buddhism allotted the role of “ordering the mind” 治心. The Yùzhù Yuánjué jīng is thus part of a broader imperial-Buddhist literary corpus produced during his reign. The relationship to Bǎoyìn is documented: Bǎoyìn (1109–1190), styled Fùāmǐchánshī 佛照禪師, was a senior Línjì-Yangqi-line chánshī at Jìngshān, the foremost of the Five-Mountain (Wǔshān 五山) Chán institutions, and one of Xiàozōng’s principal monastic interlocutors. The bestowal of the yùzhù manuscript on Bǎoyìn and its publication at Jìngshān thus served both as a personal religious gesture and as a public statement of imperial Buddhist patronage.
The biǎo is dated to the lunar second month of Chunxī 10 (1183), and the formal blocks for the woodblock printing were ordered shortly thereafter. The Xùzàng text rests on the Jìngshān-print recension; no earlier manuscript witness survives.
Translations and research
- Halperin, Mark. Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960–1279. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. — Treats imperial Buddhist patronage in the southern Sòng, including Xiàozōng’s commentaries.
- Schlütter, Morten. How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. — On the Jìngshān monastery and the imperial-Chán nexus around Xiàozōng’s reign.
Other points of interest
Xiàozōng’s Yùzhù Yuánjué jīng is a relatively rare example of a sustained imperial Buddhist commentary surviving in the canon. (The Míng Yǒnglè emperor’s commentary on the Jīn’gāng jīng and several Qīng imperial Buddhist writings — Yōngzhèng’s Yùxuǎn yǔlù and Qiánlóng’s various translations — are the principal counterparts.) For the Yuánjué jīng specifically, the imperial commentary stands among the most-cited southern-Sòng exegetical authorities and is a regular reference-point in the Míng and Qīng commentary tradition.