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大日經住心品疏私記

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Text ID
KR6j0665
Date
1060–1115
Dynasty
日本

Dàrì jīng zhùxīnpǐn shū sījì 大日經住心品疏私記

Private Notes on the MahāvairocanaSūtra Stages-of-Mind Chapter Commentary (Jp. Dainichikyō jūshin-bon sho shiki) by 濟暹 (Saisen, 撰)

About the work

A 16-fascicle Late-Heian sub-commentary on the Stages-of-Mind chapter 住心品 — the foundational doctrinal first chapter of the Mahāvairocanasūtra — as treated in Yīxíng’s Dàrìjīng shū (KR6j0662, T39n1796). The work is by Saisen 濟暹 (濟暹, 1025–1115), the great Late-Heian Daigo-ji 醍醐寺 Onoryū Shingon scholar. The Sījì (private notes) is one of Saisen’s principal contributions to the systematic Heian exegesis of the Mahāvairocanasūtra tradition.

Prefaces

The work opens directly with phrase-by-phrase commentary on Yīxíng’s text — there is no separate authorial preface — beginning at fascicle 2 (the surviving text begins at fascicle 2, suggesting that fascicle 1 was either an extended preface now lost, or that the surviving recension is incomplete):

“The commentary says: ‘The Bhagavān-Sūtra original-ground dharmakāya’ — this raises the possessed virtue in order to display the person who possesses this virtue. This is the middle-womb Mahāvairocana Tathāgata. The original-ground dharmakāya is the self-nature dharmakāya. As the commentary’s fascicle 20 says: ‘Then he enters the middle ē-syllable long-tone-pronouncing, which is the expedient means. This is Vairocana’s original-ground body, the lotus-pedestal substance, surpassing the eight-petals, severing direction-and-place — not the domain of objective consciousness; only Buddha-with-Buddha may know it.’ Again as fascicle 3 says: ‘Vairocana’s original-ground constant-mind lotus-pedestal full body’ — this passage, like the Nirvāṇasūtra fascicle 27’s ‘neither cause nor effect — this is named Buddha-nature; not being cause-effect, it is eternal, unchanging’…”

Abstract

The Sījì (Jp. shiki) is the scholastic private-notes genre — a continuous commentary, often working passage-by-passage through a parent text, presenting the author’s lectures, marginalia, and detailed exegetical observations. Saisen’s Sījì on the Stages-of-Mind chapter is the first sustained Late-Heian Japanese sub-commentary on the doctrinal foundation of the Mahāvairocanasūtra: the chapter in which the Esoteric ten-stages-of-mind (十住心) doctrine — Kūkai’s foundational doctrinal framework — is set out by the Tang commentator Yīxíng.

Saisen’s method is dense and citationally rich:

  • He quotes Yīxíng’s commentary segment by segment;
  • For each, he provides further exegesis drawing on the full Esoteric apparatus (the Six Great Elements, the Five Wisdoms, the Three Mysteries, the Four Bodies, etc.);
  • He cross-references comparable passages elsewhere in Yīxíng’s commentary (the source-text contains many explicit “as fascicle 3 says” / “as fascicle 20 says” references), revealing his thorough internal mastery of the Dàrìjīng shū;
  • He cross-references the standard exoteric Mahāyāna corpus (the Nirvāṇasūtra, the Awakening of Faith, the Yogācārabhūmi, the Mādhyamika literature), placing the Esoteric tenets within the broader doctrinal landscape;
  • He invokes the late-Heian Shingon scholastic apparatus — self-nature vs self-receiving vs other-receiving vs transformation-body, etc. — to systematize the doctrinal vocabulary.

The work concludes (per the end of the present text) with a dedicatory verse:

“Through the power of my Esoteric-doctrine exegesis, and the empowering power of all Tathāgatas, and the power of dharmadhātu meritorious-virtue, self-and-other immediately enter the fruit of nature-and-sea.” 以我解釋密教力 及諸如來加持力 及以法界功徳力 自他頓入性海果

After this, Saisen explicitly notes that the Equipment chapter (具縁品) and the following chapters of the Dàrìjīng shū are not treated in this Sījì, “because among them there are only the most secret matters” 其中唯有極祕密事故也 — that is, the ritual-practice chapters require oral transmission rather than written exposition.

Saisen’s composition dates from his mature career at Daigo-ji in the late 11th and early 12th century. His birth in 1025 and death in 1115 bracket the possible window; the citation-density and developed scholarly apparatus suggest the later end (perhaps ca. 1080–1115). The work was a principal reference within the Onoryū tradition for the next two centuries, and remained a key source for the medieval Tō-ji Sanbō (cf. KR6j0666) and Onoryū (cf. KR6j0663) scholastic engagements with the Dàrìjīng shū. A parallel and later Edo-period Sījì on the same chapter by 曇寂 Donjaku is preserved as KR6j0669 (T60n2219).

Translations and research

No substantial secondary literature located.

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