Dàfódǐng wànxíng shǒulèngyán jīng huìjiě 大佛頂萬行首楞嚴經會解
“Collected Explanations” of the Great-Buddha-Crown, All-Practices, Śūraṃgama-sūtra by 九師 (釋), 惟則 (會解)
About the work
A twenty-fascicle (20卷) Yuán-dynasty synoptic compilation of nine pre-Yuán commentators on the Śūraṃgama-sūtra (KR6j0118), arranged as a huìjiě 會解 (“collected-explanations”) apparatus by Tiānrú Wéizé 天如惟則 惟則 (1286–1354) at the Shīzǐ lín 獅子林 in Sūzhōu. The work is preserved in the Northern Yǒnglè canon (Vol. 185, No. 1618). The huìjiě genre, codified earlier in the Sòng Yìhǎi (KR6j0727) of 咸輝 Xiánhuī, here reaches its standard mature form: each phrase of the canonical sūtra is followed by the accumulated commentarial responses of nine selected pre-Yuán masters.
Prefaces
The opening Dàfódǐng shǒulèngyán jīng huìjiě xù 大佛頂首楞嚴經會解敘 is signed Shīzǐ lín shāmén Wéizé 師子林沙門惟則 and dated Zhìzhèng 2 rénwǔ 壬午, Buddha-Awakening Day (i.e., 8th of the 12th lunar month, 30 January 1342), and inscribed at the Shīzǐ lín in Gūsū. Wéizé identifies the Lèngyán as “the wisdom-life of all the Buddhas, the highway of all sentient beings, the great net of the [Buddha’s] teaching, the essential gate of the Chán family.” After surveying the proliferation of Lèngyán commentaries in the post-Sòng period — many of which had become inaccessible or partial — he describes his project as a huìjiě gathering the Jiǔshī 九師 (九師 — the “Nine Masters”) — Chángshuǐ 子璿 Zǐxuán, Gūshān 智圓 Zhìyuán, Wúxìng Yuè, Zīzhōng Hóngyuán, Wēnlíng 戒環 Jièhuán, Chángqìng Cǐyǎn, et al. — into a single navigable apparatus for the use of contemporary readers.
Abstract
The Huìjiě is the most consequential Yuán-period Lèngyán commentarial work and was the basis for nearly all subsequent late-imperial commentary: late-Míng commentators (including KR6j0703 Jiāoguāng Zhèngmài shū, KR6j0701 et seq.) explicitly reference Wéizé’s Huìjiě as the standard pre-existing text against which they position their own readings. The work is also the foundation for Wéizé’s broader institutional legacy: his Shīzǐ lín at Sūzhōu became one of the most famous Chán institutions of the Yuán-Míng era, and the Huìjiě gave the Shīzǐ-lín lineage a privileged commentarial presence in the Lèngyán exegetical tradition. Composition: completed Zhìzhèng 2 / 1342.
The work survives in two principal canonical editions: the Northern Yǒnglè canon (P185 no. 1618), which is the source of the present file; and a later edition in the Xùzàngjīng / Jiāxīng-zàng tradition. The two textual lines have been collated in modern scholarly editions.
Translations and research
- Robert H. Sharf and others have noted Wéizé’s Huìjiě as a key Yuán-period synthesis in modern scholarship on Chinese Śūraṃgama exegesis; see the relevant chapters in Charles Muller (ed.), Buddhist Apocrypha in East Asia, and the entries on Wéizé in Foguang dacidian and Zhōngguó fójiào sīxiǎng tōngshǐ 中國佛教思想通史.
Other points of interest
The Huìjiě is paired with Wéizé’s other major published work, the Jìngtǔ huòwèn 淨土或問 (KR6p0053) — together they show his programmatic concern for synthesizing the Chán-school’s zōng with the kyōden exegetical traditions and with Pure Land devotional practice.