Chéng wéishí lùn guānxīn fǎyào 成唯識論觀心法要
Essential Method for Mind-Contemplation in the Demonstration of Consciousness-Only by 智旭 (Zhìxù / Ǒuyì, 述)
About the work
A ten-fascicle commentary on KR6n0016 Chéng wéishí lùn by 智旭 (Ǒuyì Zhìxù, 1599–1655) — one of the four great late-Míng masters and the most prolific late-Míng systematic Buddhist scholar. The “guānxīn fǎyào” 觀心法要 (“essential method for mind-contemplation”) title is doctrinally programmatic: Zhìxù reads the Chéng wéishí lùn not as a piece of abstract scholastic philosophy but as a manual for actual meditative-contemplative practice. This frames the work as much within the Tiāntái 天台 guānxīn 觀心 (“mind-contemplation”) tradition — to which Zhìxù was deeply committed — as within strict Cí’ēnzōng exegesis. Preserved in the Xuzangjing (X51n0824).
Structural Division
CANWWW does not assign internal structure for X51n0824.
Abstract
智旭 composed several Yogācāra commentaries during his long career; in addition to the guānxīn fǎyào, he produced KR6n0051 Wéishí sānshí lùn zhíjiě on the Triṃśikā (X51n0828), KR6n0106 Bǎifǎ míngmén lùn zhíjiě on the Mahāyāna-śatadharma (X48n0805), KR6n0115 Guānsuǒyuányuán lùn zhíjiě on the Ālambana-parīkṣā (X51n0831), and KR6n0117 Guānsuǒyuányuán lùn shì zhíjiě (X51n0833). Together they constitute one of the most ambitious individual Yogācāra commentarial projects in late-imperial Chinese Buddhism.
The guānxīn fǎyào is the most substantial of these and is generally regarded as Zhìxù’s principal Yogācāra work. The dating bracket adopted (1640–1655) covers his most active commentarial period, which extended down to his death.
The work’s distinctive contribution is its systematic correlation of the eight-consciousness scheme with the Tiāntái doctrine of the three contemplations (sān guān 三觀) and the three truths (sān dì 三諦). Where the late-Míng commentaries by 明昱, 通潤, 王肯堂, and 大惠 either remain within strict Cí’ēn lineage or eclectically synthesise other doctrines, Zhìxù’s reading is explicitly Tiāntái-doctrinal — a methodological choice that has been controversial in subsequent scholarship but is fully consistent with his broader integrative program of late-Míng Buddhist synthesis.
Translations and research
- Shèng Yán 聖嚴. A Study of Late-Míng Buddhism (Mìng-mò Zhōngguó Fójiào yánjiū 明末中國佛教研究). Tokyo / Taipei, 1975. (Standard modern monograph on Zhìxù and the late-Míng masters.)
- Lin Chen-kuo 林鎮國. Kongxing yu xiandai xing. Taipei: Lìxù wénhuà, 1999.
- Yoshimura Makoto 吉村誠. Chūgoku Yuishiki shisōshi kenkyū. Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 2013.
- McGuire, Beverley Foulks. Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu (1599–1655). New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. (Major recent English monograph on Zhìxù.)
Other points of interest
The guānxīn fǎyào — together with Zhìxù’s other commentaries — is the most influential single body of late-Míng Yogācāra scholarship in subsequent Chinese reception. The Qīng-period and twentieth-century revivals of Cí’ēn studies (especially that of Yáng Wénhuì 楊文會 in the late nineteenth century and the Nèixué yuàn 內學院 group of Lǚ Chéng 呂澂 in the early twentieth) drew systematically on Zhìxù’s commentaries as the principal modern-Chinese reading-bridge to the Tang Cí’ēn corpus.