Lèngyán jīng zhèngmài shū 楞嚴經正脉疏
Commentary on the Correct Pulse of the Śūraṃgamasūtra by 真鑑 (述)
About the work
The principal late-Míng commentary on the Śūraṃgamasūtra (KR6j0118), in ten fascicles (10卷), by Jiāoguāng Zhēnjiàn 交光真鑑 真鑑 of the Jīngdū Xīhú 京都西湖 monastic community. The work breaks decisively with the dominant Tiāntái-huìjiě tradition descended from Tiānrú Wéizé 惟則 and proposes a fresh reading grounded in the sūtra’s own Tathāgatagarbha doctrinal grammar. It is the principal target of subsequent Míng-Qing Lèngyán commentary — both supportive (e.g., KR6j0696 Zhèngshū guǎngjiě of 凌弘憲 derives from it) and polemical. Preserved as X12 no. 275 in the Xùzàngjīng.
Prefaces
Substantial self-preface by Zhēnjiàn (signed Jīngdū Xīhú shāmén Jiāoguāng Zhēnjiàn shù 京都西湖沙門交光真鑑述): “The original primal Awakening-Sea under afflictive entanglement is named Tathāgata-storehouse-mind; the zhànjì serene heaven of nature, embodied, is named Śūraṃgama samādhi. How could it be merely worldly-and-supramundane unmoving — even sentient and insentient dharmas are intrinsically birthless. Yet flowers arise in the diseased eye, and dream sinks into the long night. Within the unmoving, one sees qiānliú dòngzhuǎn (drifting-flow rolling-and-turning); within the birthless, one undergoes birth-death-and-rebirth. If so, then not only do the deluded outer crowd run wildly, unable to escape the bàoliú (cataract-flow); even the mature quánxiǎo (provisional small-vehicle) labors — they too cannot avoid the xìzhù (subtle nourishment); all because they have not seen the heaven-true root-fixity, but vainly attack the fùshí kūchán (cognition-binding withered Chán). So-called ‘with origination-and-extinction as cause, ultimately no real fruit’. Therefore our Lord Śākya, in cause-ground, awakened this as secret cause (mìyīn 密因); in fruit-ground, attested it … ” (本元覺海在纏。名如來藏心。湛寂性天當體。號首楞嚴定。豈惟世出世間。從來不動。亦且情與無情。法爾無生。奈何華起翳睛。夢沉長夜。於不動中。而見遷流動轉。於無生內。而受生死輪迴。若是則豈但凡外狂走。不能脫於瀑流。是雖權小劬勞。亦未免於細注。率由未見天真之本定。徒攻縛識之枯禪。所謂生滅為因。終無實果也。故我釋尊。因中悟此為密因。果中證 …).
Abstract
The Zhèngmài shū (“Commentary on the Correct Pulse”) is a fresh, unified, lemma-by-lemma exegesis of the Lèngyánjīng that programmatically rejects what Zhēnjiàn calls the huìjiě school’s “borrowing of Tiāntái sānguān doctrine to gloss a Tathāgatagarbha sūtra” — i.e., the dominant late-Míng synthesis of Tiānrú Wéizé’s Huìjiě and the Tiāntái meditative grammar. In its place Zhēnjiàn proposes a Huáyán-style Tathāgatagarbha reading — though without explicit Huáyán doctrinal-classification overlay — that traces the sūtra’s argument through what he calls its zhèngmài (“correct pulse”), the inherent textual-logical articulation that runs from the title and translator-attribution through the seven-fold examination, the eight-fold reversion, the four cause-and-field-of-perception expositions, the twenty-five attainments of perfection, the seven destinies and three increasing progressions, to the fifty-types-of-demon catalogue at the end. The Zhèngmài is the textual analogue of the kē outline (KR6j0681); the Xuánshì (KR6j0682) is its programmatic prolegomena.
The dating bracket is set to 1576 – 1617, corresponding to Zhēnjiàn’s productive monastic career between his ordination in Wànlì 4 (1576) and his death.
Translations and research
- Shèngyán 聖嚴, Míngmò fójiào yánjiū 明末佛教研究 (Taipei: Dōngchū chūbǎnshè, 1987), chap. 2 — discusses the Wànlì-era Lèngyán commentarial debates, with extensive treatment of the Zhèngmài shū.
- Lín Pótài 林伯泰 / Lin Pin-tai, “明末楞嚴經注疏研究” (PhD thesis, Fúrén University, 2008) — comprehensive treatment of the late-Míng Lèngyán commentarial corpus.
- No complete Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
The Zhèngmài shū and its associated Kē and Xuánshì form a three-part diptych-and-frontispiece arrangement characteristic of Wànlì-era reform commentaries: the structural outline (kē), the doctrinal prolegomena (xuánshì), and the running prose commentary (shū) are produced and read together as a single integrated exegetical instrument. This format, while inherited from Sòng precedent (cf. KR6j0673 / KR6j0674), receives its most fully developed Míng expression in Zhēnjiàn’s Lèngyán corpus and is subsequently imitated by 德清’s Tōngyì corpus (KR6j0685 / KR6j0686 / KR6j0687).