Lèngyán jīng yuántōng shū 楞嚴經圓通疏
Commentary on Perfect Penetration in the Śūraṃgamasūtra by 惟則 (會解), 傳燈 (疏)
About the work
A ten-fascicle (10卷) two-author composite commentary on the Śūraṃgamasūtra (KR6j0118) consisting of (a) the Yuán-period Huìjiě 會解 (“comprehensive interpretation”) of Tiānrú Wéizé 天如惟則 惟則 (1286? – 1354), the principal Yuán-Linji master and abbot of the Sīzǐlín 師子林 (Lion-Grove Garden) at Sūzhōu, and (b) the Míng-period Shū 疏 (“sub-commentary”) by Yōuxī Chuándēng 幽溪傳燈 傳燈 (1554 – 1628), the principal late-Wànlì restorer of the Tiāntái lineage at the Yōuxī Gāomíngsì 幽溪高明寺 (Mt. Tiāntái). The compound title Yuántōng shū refers to the sūtra’s central ěrgēn yuántōng 耳根圓通 doctrine. Preserved as X12 no. 281 in the Xùzàngjīng and reprinted in the Jiāxīng Tripiṭaka 嘉興藏. The work is the principal late-Yuán to mid-Míng Tiāntái reading of the Lèngyán and the dominant target of the late-Wànlì Zhèngmài shū polemic (KR6j0683).
Prefaces
The work opens with a substantial preface that surveys the Lèngyán commentarial tradition in remarkable detail: “Tiāntái [Zhìyǐ], at a distance, paid reverence to the Śūraṃgama and prayed to be able to come quickly to this land. Then, when forced to die-westwards, he said: ‘Lèngyán — I shall not have got to see it!’ Soon there must be a zǎiguān púsà (chief-minister bodhisattva) who through literary skill would translate it; and there must be a flesh-bodied bhikṣu who would explain the sūtra by my teaching. And so it came that Chief Minister Fáng [Fáng Róng] complied with the zǎiguān-prophecy. Generally those who through dyed-and-luminous qīngbái 青白 writings or chìqīng 赤青 chapters dye Western threads and make them brilliant — they all attach themselves to the zǎiguān tradition. As for sūtra-explainers among the bhikṣus — like Yuán [Chángshuǐ Zǐxuán] and Yuè [Gūshān Rényuè] — they seem to fulfill the second half of Tiāntái’s expectation, also rebutting the shānwài miscellaneous transmissions. Are these not the bodhisattvas of this Land? Until Jiāoguāng’s [真鑑’s] repudiation of the three contemplations, Shùnzhēng’s [Mèngshàn or another?] mixing of the five-lamp[s], Yíqīng’s praise of the deaf and silent, Chéngyìn’s [a Yuán-Míng commentator?] meeting of the yìrén — zǎiguān? bhikṣu? Dharma-master? Chán-master? As for Chán: there is the Tiāntái Tiānrú [Wéizé], who already has the Huìjiě …” (天台遙禮楞嚴願早至此土。既而迫於西邁則曰楞嚴吾不得而見之矣。當有宰官菩薩以文章翻譯。復有肉身比丘以吾教釋經。而房相國遂應宰官之記。凡以青白之文赤青之章。染西線而爛然者皆得附於宰官。而釋經比丘若圓若岳似副天台之望又斥山外雜傳。果此土之菩薩非耶。迨交光之撥三觀。舜徵之混五燈。儀卿之贊聾莫。澄印之遇異人。宰官乎。比丘乎。法師乎。禪師乎。禪則天台之天如。有會解矣。 …).
Abstract
The Huìjiě of Tiānrú Wéizé is the foundational text of the dominant late-Yuán-Míng Lèngyán commentarial tradition: a synthesis-and-comprehensive-arrangement of nine earlier SòngYuán commentaries on the sūtra, presented as a unified Huìjiě (“collected explanation”) that became the standard reading-text of the Lèngyánjīng through the early Míng. Wéizé, who died in 1354, never composed a free-standing shū (commentary proper) on the sūtra; his Huìjiě circulated independently for some 250 years until Yōuxī Chuándēng undertook to provide a Tiāntái-doctrinal shū that would draw out the meditative-doctrinal implications of the Huìjiě in alignment with Zhìyǐ’s 智顗 own articulation of the Lèngyán as a Tiāntái sūtra (a project that Tiāntái Zhìyǐ himself had projected but, by his own report, did not live to undertake). The combined Yuántōng shū is therefore a late-Wànlì Tiāntái restoration project that explicitly aims to reclaim the Lèngyánjīng for the Tiāntái lineage against the late-Míng reform commentaries of 真鑑 (the Zhèngmài shū) and 德清 (the Tōngyì).
The dating bracket is set broadly to 1324 – 1628: 1324 as a plausible terminus a quo for Wéizé’s Huìjiě productive years, 1628 as the year of Chuándēng’s death and therefore the terminus ante quem for the combined shū.
Translations and research
- Sheng-yen (Shèngyán) 聖嚴, Míngmò fójiào yánjiū 明末佛教研究 (Taipei, 1987), chap. 2 — discusses Chuándēng’s shū and the late-Wànlì Tiāntái restoration.
- John Jorgensen, Inventing Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch (Brill, 2005) — discusses Wéizé in the context of the Yuán-Míng synthesis of Chán and Tiāntái.
- Shēn Hǎibō 沈海波, “天如惟則《楞嚴經會解》研究” (PhD thesis, National Taiwan University, 2012) — comprehensive treatment of the Huìjiě.
- No complete Western-language translation located.
Other points of interest
The preface’s enumeration of late-Wànlì Lèngyán commentators (“Jiāoguāng’s repudiation of the three contemplations”, Shùnzhēng’s mixing of the five lamps, etc.) is one of the most useful single sources for the prosopography of the late-Wànlì Lèngyán commentarial network — a topic that has only recently begun to receive systematic scholarly attention.