Píní rìyòng lù 毗尼日用錄
A Record of Vinaya for Daily Use by 性祇 Xìng Qí (述)
About the work
A one-fascicle late-Míng daily-use Vinaya manual by Lìguǒ dàorén Xìngzhī 力果道人性祗 (性祇 — DILA A000630 spells 性祇 with the alternate radical, and the source itself uses 性祗; both variants attest the same author), with a final compilation/printing by 隆瑞 Lóngruì of Huángbòshān 黃檗山 (Fújiàn) in Chóngzhēn 崇禎 guǐyǒu 癸酉 (1633). Author signature: Lìguǒ dàorén Xìngzhī shù 力果道人性祗述; final colophon: Chóngzhēn guǐyǒu nián mèngxià Huángbòshān bǐqiū Lóngruì zuǎnjí 崇禎癸酉年孟夏黃檗山比丘隆瑞纂集 (“compiled in the early summer of Chóngzhēn guǐyǒu (1633) by the bhikṣu Lóngruì of Mt. Huángbò”).
Abstract
The Píní rìyòng lù is the principal late-Míng manual of daily-use Vinaya — i.e., the verses (jì 偈), dhāraṇī (zhòu 呪), and short ritual recitations to be performed by an ordinary monk through the events of an ordinary monastic day, from waking to sleeping. The genre is rooted in the Huáyán jīng Jìngxíng pǐn 華嚴經淨行品 of Buddhabhadra’s and Śikṣānanda’s Avataṃsaka recensions, where each daily action is the occasion for a yuàn 願 (“vow that all beings might…”); Xìng Qí’s preface explicitly grounds the project in that scriptural source: “if the bodhisattvas use their minds well, then they obtain all manner of supreme and wonderful merit, and in the dharma of all the Buddhas the mind has nothing it cannot transcend” — citing the Jìngxíng pǐn directly.
The compiler frames the Rìyòng lù as an abridgment-and-augmentation of the existing daily-use Vinaya tradition: “the precept-marks (jièxiàng) of olden times preserve the text adequately, but lack proper sequencing” — the new compilation accordingly orders the materials by the day’s actual sequence of events, and supplies a short dhāraṇī (often from guīfàn 古集密部 mantric sources) for each act. The work expressly notes its parallel to the Kǔhǎi fúnáng 苦海浮囊 (“Floating-bag-on-the-sea-of-suffering”) collected by Xuānchéng Guīshī 宣城圭師 (i.e. 圭峰元周 Guīfēng Yuánzhōu, late-Míng) but with “supplementary additions [making for] some difference in the middle”.
The structural sequence covers, in order: waking and the dhāraṇī for breaking the hells (pò dìyù zhòu 破地獄呪 — Oṃ kālāya svāhā); the kāṣāya-donning verses; ablutions and dhāraṇī for water-purity; the various ablutions associated with the morning practice; verses for opening the doors, walking the cloister, and entering the meditation hall; verses for the bell-tolling, food-receiving, food-eating, and the post-prandial mouth-rinsing; verses for the seasonal events (sutra-recitation, bùsà, zìzì); and verses for retiring at night. The closing fùlù 附錄 contains additional materials: the Tóngjiāng Yīng fǎshī Guānxīn míng 桐江瑛法師觀心銘 (Mind-Contemplation Inscription of the Tóngjiāng Vinaya master 桐江瑛 Yīng) and the Qīngliáng Chéngguān dàshī shíshì zìlì 清涼澄觀大師十事自勵 (the ten-point self-exhortation of the Huáyán patriarch 清涼澄觀 Chéngguān) — both staple texts of the late-Míng Vinaya-school xíngchí 行持 curriculum.
The 1633 final compilation by Lóngruì — a Huángbòshān Wànfúsì 黃檗山萬福寺 monk who in Chóngzhēn 2 (1629) had been instrumental in bringing 圓悟 Mìyún Yuánwù 密雲圓悟 (1567–1642) to the abbacy of Huángbò — places the Rìyòng lù in the late-Míng Línji Chán-Vinaya integrative milieu that would shortly produce the 隱元隆琦 Yǐnyuán Lóngqí emigration to Japan and the founding of the Ōbakushū 黃檗宗.
Translations and research
- The Píní rìyòng lù served as the chief textual source for 讀體 Dútǐ (1601–1679)‘s Píní rìyòng qièyào 毗尼日用切要 (KR6k0224, X1115), the form in which the daily-use Vinaya tradition entered the Qīng-period and modern Chinese Buddhist liturgical mainstream. See Yifa, The Origins of Buddhist Monastic Codes in China: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Chanyuan qinggui (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), with a brief discussion of the late-Míng Vinaya-school daily-use tradition.
- For the late-Míng Línji-Vinaya synthesis at Huángbòshān, see Jiang Wu, Enlightenment in Dispute: The Reinvention of Chan Buddhism in Seventeenth-Century China (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Other points of interest
- The work is the textual ancestor of 讀體 Dútǐ’s much more widely-circulated Píní rìyòng qièyào (KR6k0224, X1115), and of the still more widely-circulated Shāmí lǜyí píní rìyòng hécān (KR6k0259) by 戒顯 Jièxiǎn and 濟岳 Jìyuè.
- The dàorén 道人 self-designation in Xìngzhī’s signature is unusual for a bhikṣu and might reflect a Pure Land lay-Buddhist self-identification of a sort common in late-Míng monastic-lay hybrid practice.