Yuánjué jīng jìnshì 圓覺經近釋
Recent Explication of the Sūtra of Perfect Enlightenment by 通潤 (Yīyǔ Tōngrùn, 述)
About the work
A 6-fascicle commentary on the Yuánjué jīng (KR6i0551) by the late-Míng exegete 通潤 Yīyǔ Tōngrùn 一雨通潤 (1565–1624). Tōngrùn — zì Yīyǔ 一雨, self-style “Master of the Two-Lèngyán” 二楞主人 — was a Sūzhōu-area Buddhist scholar, native of Dòngtíng Xīshān 洞庭西山 (the Lake Tài region), best known for his major Lotus Sūtra commentary the KR6d0080 Fǎhuá jīng dàkuǎn 法華經大窾. The present Yuánjué jīng jìnshì is one of his sūtra-commentary cycle, and was composed during his active scholarly period at Dòngtíng. The title jìnshì 近釋 (“recent explication”) signals the work’s pedagogical aim: a contemporary, accessible reading of the sūtra adapted to late-Míng monastic and lay readership, complementing the SòngYuán Zōngmì-tradition apparatus.
Abstract
Tōngrùn’s exegetical method blends the zhíjiě 直解 (“direct explication”) approach pioneered by his slightly older contemporary 德清 Hānshān Déqīng (1546–1623, KR6i0569) with a more philological and outline-oriented apparatus reminiscent of the Sòng jíjiě 集解 tradition. The work proceeds line-by-line through the sūtra, supplying brief paraphrastic explanation, technical-term glosses where needed, and topical-outline (kē 科) markers; it does not engage in the elaborate doxographical comparison-work that dominated the Zōngmì commentary apparatus. Like other late-Míng sūtra commentaries, it is oriented to a generally educated Buddhist readership, a substantial portion of whom would have been laypeople studying the scriptures privately.
The work has no surviving autograph preface fixing its date of composition, and the catalog record is silent on the date. The active scholarly period of Tōngrùn (between approximately 1590 and his death in 1624) provides the bracketing window. The work was integrated into the Wànzì xùzàngjīng in the early twentieth century and circulates today exclusively in that recension (X10 no. 259).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
Tōngrùn’s late-Míng Yuánjué commentary stands together with Hānshān Déqīng’s near-contemporary Yuánjué jīng zhíjiě (KR6i0569) as one of the two principal WǎnMíng readings of the sūtra. The two works represent contrasting tonal modes — Tōngrùn the patient classroom-paraphrase mode, Hānshān the brief and rhetorically vigorous zhíjiě mode — and were sometimes paired together in late-Míng and Qīng monastic study editions of the Yuánjué jīng.