Lèngyán jīng lüèshū 楞嚴經略疏
Abridged Commentary on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra by 元賢 (述)
About the work
A ten-fascicle (10卷) abridged commentary (lüèshū 略疏) on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra (KR6j0118) by Yǒngjué Yuánxián 永覺元賢 元賢 (1578 – 1657), the late-Míng / early-Qīng Cáodòng-line Chán master of the Gǔshān Yǒngquánsì 鼓山湧泉寺 in Fújiàn. Preserved as X15 no. 302 in the Xùzàngjīng. The work is the abridged successor to Yuánxián’s earlier Lèngyán jīng yìjiě 楞嚴經翼解 (楞嚴經翼解) (two fascicles, drafted 1624) and was completed at the end of Chóngzhēn 11 / 1638, after a multi-year drafting period split between Quánzhōu Kāiyuánsì 泉州開元寺, Gǔshān, and the Zhēnjì 真寂 retreat near Tiáoxī 苕溪.
Prefaces
The Lèngyán lüèshū yuánqǐ 楞嚴略疏緣起 (“Origins of the Abridged Commentary on the Śūraṃgama”) opens the work, dated Chóngzhēn wùyín 戊寅 / Mid-Autumn (1638) and signed Zhēnjì Shì Yuánxián tí yú Jìdēngtáng 真寂釋元賢題於繼燈堂. Yuánxián recounts the genesis: he had earlier (Tiānqǐ jiǎzǐ 甲子 / 1624) composed a two-fascicle Yìjiě 翼解 (楞嚴經翼解) to “uncover the cardinal points” of the sūtra. In Chóngzhēn bǐngzǐ 丙子 (1636), while teaching at the Quánzhōu Kāiyuánsì, the prefect Zēng Èryún 曾二雲 (曾櫻 Zēng Yīng, fēnxiàn of southern Quánzhōu) — exasperated by the proliferation of conflicting Lèngyán commentaries — asked him to compose an account of the sūtra’s dàzhǐ 大旨 (“cardinal purport”). Yuánxián replied that dàzhǐ alone could not dispel the residual doubts of attentive students; he therefore expanded the Yìjiě into the present Lüèshū, “broadly drawing on the various commentaries and synthesizing them into a single voice” (bócǎi zhòngshuō, róng wéi yījiā zhī yán 博採眾說融為一家之言), without prejudice toward Tiāntái or Xiánshǒu. The first three fascicles were drafted at Kāiyuánsì in summer; he returned to Gǔshān in mid-autumn and completed three more there; the final four were written during a subsequent residency at Zhēnjì-yuán in western Zhèjiāng. The block-cutting was undertaken at the request of Cáo Yúgōng 曹愚公 (曹愚公, the shìyù 侍御).
Abstract
The Lüèshū represents Yuánxián’s mature and expressly non-sectarian reading of the Śūraṃgama: he positions himself outside both the Tiāntái-school and Huāyán/Xiánshǒu-school commentarial lineages and seeks a single synthetic voice. The work was rapidly recognized within the seventeenth-century Cáodòng commentarial sphere and circulated alongside Yuánxián’s other major exegetical contributions (the Jìdēng lù 繼燈錄 (KR6q0038) and the Yǒngjué Yuánxián chánshī guǎnglù 永覺元賢禪師廣錄 (永覺元賢禪師廣錄) in the Jiāxīng canon). Dating bracket: 1624 (the earliest Yìjiě draft, which the Lüèshū incorporates) – 1638 (completion of the present recension, per the colophon).
Translations and research
- Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford University Press, 2008) — extensive treatment of Yuánxián and the seventeenth-century Cáodòng commentarial scene.
- No complete Western-language translation of the Lüèshū located.