Xiūxí yúqié jíyào shīshí tányí 修習瑜伽集要施食壇儀
Practiced-and-Cultivated Yoga-Compendium Food-Bestowal Altar-Ritual by 法藏 Sānfēng Hànyuè Fǎzàng (著)
About the work
A two-fascicle (2卷) practical altar-ritual manual for the yànkǒu food-bestowal liturgy, by 法藏 Sānfēng Hànyuè Fǎzàng 三峰漢月法藏 (1573–1635). Preserved as X59 no. 1083 in the Xùzàngjīng. Companion volume to Yúmìshèn shīshí zhǐgài 於密滲施食旨槩 (KR6j0755) (the doctrinal cardinal outline) — together they constitute the Sānfēng-school food-bestowal liturgy, programmatically distinct from the Yúnqī Zhūhóng Pure-Land-aligned reform (KR6j0753 / KR6j0754).
Abstract
The work opens with the standard fàngyànkǒu preliminary instruction: “Whoever wishes to broadly offer-and-relieve [the hungry ghosts] must with most devout sincerity sublime-and-decorate the dàocháng 道場 (ritual ground); according to his power, prepare incense, flowers, offerings of food and pure water; perform the ritual at the xūhài 戌亥 hour [7–11 PM]; the hungry ghosts will receive food, the donor will obtain merit. If past the appointed hour, then [one] vainly wastes spiritual energy, and there will be no benefit. This comes from the original teaching, not from my private opinion. If today there are violations, the locality will not be at peace — that is the [resulting] transgression.”
The manual then sets out the full liturgical sequence: lúxiāng zhàrè 爐香乍爇 (“the censer’s incense is just lit”) opening zàn 讚; the assembly’s jídìng 集定 (gathering and settling); the threefold yúnlái jí púsà móhēsà invocation; and the lengthy mantra-and-mudrā sequences of the Císhàn 自善 bēijí 悲集 (transferring-merit-to-all) liturgy. Fǎzàng’s lineage is firmly Línjì-Chán-school, and the Tányí reflects his characteristic zōngzhǐ doctrinal program: the ritual is read not as a bare apotropaic procedure but as a vehicle for the yúqié 瑜伽 (yoga / “resonance”) of the practitioner’s three karmas with the realized Dharma. Composition: 1620s–1635.
Catalog correction: the meta entry assigns the work to dynasty 清, but Fǎzàng’s death in 1635 places it firmly in the Míng (Chóngzhēn era). The dating is corrected here.
Translations and research
- Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Other points of interest
The Sānfēng-school yànkǒu tradition transmitted through Fǎzàng’s principal Dharma-heir 弘儲 Tuìwēng Hóngchǔ 退翁弘儲 (1605–1672) and into the broader Sūzhōu–Hángzhōu monastic network until the Yōngzhèng emperor’s 1733 imperial proscription of the Sānfēng-school led to its formal suppression. The works survived in Jiāxīngzàng circulation despite the imperial ban.