Jìngxīn jièguān fǎ fāzhēn chāo 淨心誡觀法發真鈔
A Disclosure of Truth Sub-Commentary on the Method of Pure-Mind Admonitory Contemplation by 允堪 (Yǔnkǎn, 述); 慧光 (Huìkō, 合)
About the work
A three-fascicle Northern-Sòng sub-commentary by Tiāntái shāmén Yǔnkǎn 天台沙門允堪 (允堪, 1005–1061) on the Jìngxīn jièguān fǎ 淨心誡觀法 of Nánshān Dàoxuān 南山道宣 (596–667; T1893 / KR6r0014) — Dàoxuān’s latelife thirty-stanza meditationcumadmonition treatise composed for his disciples on the discipline of mindpurification. The Xùzàngjīng witness reproduces the Japanese gappon 合本 collation produced by Huìkō 慧光 (Kanjō Hōshi 觀稱 of the Edo Vinaya revival, 1666–1734; 慧光), in which Yǔnkǎn’s chāo 鈔 is laid out beneath the corresponding sections of Dàoxuān’s source-text.
Prefaces
(A) Jìngxīn jièguān fāzhēn chāo xù 淨心誡觀發真鈔序, signed Tiāntái shāmén Yǔnkǎn shù 天台沙門 允堪 述. The author opens by citing the xuédào / lìyán 學道立言 dichotomy (“for those who study the Way, enlightening oneself is the foundation; for those who establish words, benefitting beings is the cardinal point”), notes that he had “received the great master’s [Dàoxuān’s] way for twenty years” and produced “nearly a hundred fascicles” of kējì 科記 (sub-commentaries), and worried that text-based scholarship had begun to overshadow contemplative cultivation. He therefore wrote the present work as “a method for treating the mind.” He closes with an explicit dating: Shí Qìnglì wǔ nián suìcì yǐyǒu sānyuè jìwàng yú Qiántáng Jìngzhùyuàn jiǎngtáng xù 時慶曆五年歲次乙酉三月既望於錢塘淨住院講堂序 — i.e. 1045, the day after full moon of the third month, in the lecture hall of Jìngzhùyuàn 淨住院 in Qiántáng (Hángzhōu).
(B) Jìngxīn jièguān fǎ xù 淨心誡觀法序, signed Yúhángjùn shāmén shì Yuánzhào shù 餘杭郡沙門釋 元照 述. A second preface added by Yuánzhào (元照, 1048–1116, Yǔnkǎn’s junior and his successor as Sòng Nánshānlǜ leader) for the work’s later printing in Hángzhōu.
Abstract
The Fāzhēn chāo is the principal Sòng running commentary on Dàoxuān’s Jìngxīn jièguān fǎ (T1893; KR6r0014), the thirty stanzas of admonition Dàoxuān composed for his disciples toward the end of his life. The work is precisely datable: Yǔnkǎn’s own preface gives a clean 1045 / Qìnglì 5 date — notBefore and notAfter are both 1045. The choice of the Jìngxīn jièguān fǎ as object reflects Yǔnkǎn’s anxiety, expressed in his preface, that “those who write words and forget the principles of contemplation are themselves diseased” — i.e. that the Sòng Vinaya school’s own great pedagogical productivity (his hundred-fascicle commentary corpus) needed grounding in guānxīn 觀心 practice. The chāo 鈔 supplies a phrase-by-phrase gloss: it expands the yīzhēn (onetruth) framework underlying Dàoxuān’s stanzas, weaves in citations from the Sìfēn lǜ and Móhē zhǐguān, and signals the Língzhī tradition’s fusion of Vinaya scholarship with Tiāntái contemplative method.
The Japanese Huìkō (Kanjō, 1666–1734) of Tōdaiji 東大寺 produced the gappon (combined / interleaved) edition reproduced in the Xùzàng; this is responsible for the catalog’s “日本慧光合” annotation.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
- One of the few preciselydatable Sòng Vinaya commentaries (1045).
- Yuánzhào’s later preface (B) is the principal source for the commentary’s transmission to Língzhīsì, where Yuánzhào used it in his own teaching cycle.
Links
- CBETA online: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/X1096
- 允堪 DILA
- 元照 DILA
- Kanseki DB