Fànwǎngjīng kāití 梵網經開題
An Introductory Treatise on the Brahmajāla Sūtra by 空海 (Kūkai, 撰)
About the work
A short Japanese-Buddhist introductory exegesis of the Fànwǎng jīng (KR6k0076), composed by Kūkai 空海 (空海, 774–835), founder of the Japanese Shingon school. The kāití 開題 (“opening of the title”) genre — short hermeneutical introductions to the title and central doctrinal content of a sūtra — was a Heian-period Japanese-Buddhist scholastic specialty in which Kūkai was particularly prolific.
Prefaces
Author: 空海 (Kūkai), early 9th c.
Abstract
The Fànwǎngjīng kāití presents Kūkai’s distinctive Shingon-Esoteric reading of the Mahāyāna bodhisattva-precepts as cosmological-soteriological practices grounded in the dharmakāya of Mahāvairocana. The text is one of a series of Kūkai’s kāití introductions to important Mahāyāna sūtras, integrating exoteric (顯教) doctrinal frameworks into his Esoteric (密教) doctrinal vision. As a Japanese scholastic work, it is preserved only in Japanese sources (the Shingon Daihō tōroku / Shingonshū sho) and is not part of the standard Chinese canon.
Translations and research
- Hakeda, Yoshito S. Kūkai: Major Works. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.
- Abé, Ryūichi. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.