Lèngyán jīng zhǐzhǎng shū 楞嚴經指掌疏
“Pointing-to-the-Palm” Commentary on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra by 通理 (述)
About the work
A ten-fascicle (10卷) Huáyán-school commentary on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra (KR6j0118) by Dátiān Tōnglǐ 達天通理 通理 (1701–1782), the most authoritative Huáyán commentator of the Qiánlóng era. Preserved as X16 no. 308 in the Xùzàngjīng. The title’s metaphor — “pointing to (one’s own) palm” (zhǐzhǎng 指掌) — signals an exegesis that is meant to be as immediate and self-evident as looking at the palm of one’s hand. The commentary forms the largest of Tōnglǐ’s three-text Zhǐzhǎng shū ensemble (with KR6j0715 Xuánshì and KR6j0717 Shìyì).
Prefaces
The work opens with Xù mèng shǐmò 續夢始末 (“Continuation-Dream from Beginning to End”), Tōnglǐ’s autobiographical preface, which records the personal circumstances of the project. He had earlier (Yōngzhèng 2 jiǎchén 甲辰 = 1724) begun a 法華指掌 Fǎhuá zhǐzhǎng and completed it in Qiánlóng 11 bǐngyín 丙寅 (1746); resources for cutting the blocks were lacking, and the Lèngyán project followed only after his appointment as abbot of the Xiāngjiè sì 香界寺 in Beijing by Héshuò Zhuāng qīnwáng 和碩莊親王 允祿 in xīnwèi 辛未 (1751). The following year (壬申, 1752), the monk 徧空元 Biànkōng Yuán 徧空元 came from Xiùyún 岫雲 to ask Tōnglǐ to lecture on 交光真鑑 Jiāoguāng Zhēnjiàn’s Zhèngmài shū (KR6j0703); Tōnglǐ was dissatisfied with that work’s polemical tone and its departure from 澄觀 Qīngliáng Chéngguān’s jiāfǎ 家法, and so began his own Zhǐzhǎng shū. Drafting consumed three winters and summers; the work was substantively complete by guǐwèi 癸未 (1763) at the Sānshān ān 三山庵 (formerly the Mājiā ān) where Tōnglǐ retreated for the summer.
Abstract
The Zhǐzhǎng shū is the principal eighteenth-century Huáyán-school commentary on the Śūraṃgama: where the Tiāntái-school Dìngjiě of 靈耀 (KR6j0714) reads the sūtra through the sānguān 三觀, Tōnglǐ reads it through 澄觀 Qīngliáng Chéngguān’s fourfold structural division (faith / understanding / cultivation / realization) and the broader Huáyán doctrinal apparatus. His Niānhuásì 拈華寺 lineage identification (“junior disciple of the Xiánshǒu school”) situates the work explicitly within Huáyán jiāfǎ. The work was widely received in late-Qīng Buddhist scholarship and remained the standard Huáyán Lèngyán commentary for the late Qing period; the modern Buddhist publishing tradition has continued to reprint it as a parallel reference to Jiāoguāng’s Zhèngmài shū. Composition: 1752 (initial drafting) – 1763 (substantive completion); refinement and block-cutting continued through 1782.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.