Púsà jièběn chífàn yàojì 菩薩戒本持犯要記
Essential Records on Keeping and Violating the Bodhisattva Precepts by 元曉 (Wǒnhyo, 述)
About the work
A single-fascicle Silla bodhisattva-precept treatise by Wǒnhyo 元曉 (元曉, 617–686), the foundational Korean Buddhist philosopher. Author signature: 新羅國沙門元曉述 (Composed by the Silla monk Wǒnhyo).
Prefaces
The work opens with Wǒnhyo’s distinctive doctrinal xù: 菩薩戒者。返流歸源之大津。去邪就正之要門也 (“The bodhisattva-precepts are the great ford for turning back the stream and returning to the source; the essential gate for forsaking the wrong and pursuing the right”). The preface introduces the work’s central problematic — xiézhèng zhī xiàng yì làn 邪正之相易濫 (“the marks of right and wrong are easily confused”) — and proceeds to expound the gradations under four heads: outer-conduct conformity with hidden-internal violation, outer-action defilement with internal purity, action-merit producing major harm, action-conformity with deeper disharmony.
Abstract
The Chífàn yàojì is one of Wǒnhyo’s most distinctive Vinaya works and presents his programmatic intentionality-centred analysis of the bodhisattva precepts: outer compliance is not sufficient; the precepts are kept and violated fundamentally at the level of inner intention (xīn 心) and contextual interpretation. The work is closely related to Wǒnhyo’s broader bodhisattva-bhūmi commentarial programme and, alongside KR6k0197 Dàshèng liùqíng chànhuǐ on Mahāyāna repentance, represents his contribution to the ethical-meditational integration of Mahāyāna practice. Composition belongs to Wǒnhyo’s mature productive period after his famous turn-back from the Tang pilgrimage with Ǔisang 義湘.
Translations and research
- Buswell, Robert E. Jr. Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wǒnhyo’s Exposition of the Vajrasamādhi-Sūtra (2007).
- Park, Sung-bae (ed.). Wonhyo: Selected Works (Korean Classics Library, 2012).
- Forte, Antonino. Studies on Wǒnhyo and Korean Buddhism.