Chéng wéishí lùn yǎnmì 成唯識論演祕
Esoteric Elaboration of the Demonstration of Consciousness-Only by 智周 (Zhìzhōu, 撰)
About the work
A seven-fascicle commentary on KR6n0016 Chéng wéishí lùn 成唯識論 (T31n1585) by 智周 (678–733), the third patriarch of the Cí’ēnzōng. With Kuījī’s KR6n0029 zhǎngzhōng shūyào and Huìzhāo’s KR6n0030 liǎoyì dēng, the yǎnmì completes the canonical Cí’ēn “three commentaries” (sān shū 三疏) on T1585. The “yǎnmì” 演祕 (“elaborating the recondite”) title indicates that the work focuses specifically on the doctrinally and textually difficult passages — the “esoteric” technical questions of the master treatise that the more general commentaries had passed over briefly.
Structural Division
CANWWW (T43N1833) lists KR6n0016 Chéng wéishí lùn 成唯識論 (T31n1585) as the principal related text. Internally the seven juǎn track the structure of T1585 with focused commentary on philosophically demanding sections.
Abstract
The yǎnmì is the principal early-eighth-century Cí’ēn commentary and the most complete extant work of 智周. Where 慧沼’s KR6n0030 is structured polemically against rival readings, Zhìzhōu’s yǎnmì is more textual and doctrinally constructive: it identifies and resolves the technical cruces of T1585 — particularly on the doctrines of the manas, the seed-actuality (xiànxíng 現行 / bīja 種子), and the relations among the three natures — drawing on both 窺基’s shùjì (KR6n0026) and Huìzhāo’s liǎoyì dēng but supplementing them with Zhìzhōu’s own analyses.
The dating window adopted (700–733) covers Zhìzhōu’s productive teaching period at Púyángsì 濮陽寺 in Sìzhōu and at Cháng’ān before his death. The text was the principal Cí’ēn study-commentary in Heian Hossō and is the immediate doctrinal source of much of the early Japanese Hossō commentarial corpus, including the canon of Genbō 玄昉 (?–746), Zhìzhōu’s principal Japanese student. The companion sub-commentary KR6n0039 Chéng wéishí lùn yǎnmì shì (X50n0816) by 如理 continues the work into the early ninth century.
Translations and research
- Sponberg, Alan. Meditation in Fa-hsiang Buddhism. PhD diss., Princeton, 1979.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠. Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013. (Includes detailed treatment of Zhìzhōu and the yǎnmì.)
- Cook, Francis H. Three Texts on Consciousness Only. Berkeley: Numata Center, 1999.
- Weinstein, Stanley. Buddhism Under the T’ang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Other points of interest
智周’s teaching marks the institutional consolidation of the Cí’ēnzōng as the dominant Yogācāra school in early-eighth-century China — and, simultaneously, the beginning of its decline as the rising tide of Tiāntái, Huáyán, and Chán schools eclipsed Yogācāra in cultural dominance through the second half of the eighth and ninth centuries. The yǎnmì is in this sense the “high-water mark” of mature Tang Cí’ēn doctrinal scholarship.