Qǐxìn lùn shū 起信論疏
Commentary on the Treatise on the Awakening of Faith by 元曉 (Yuánxiǎo / Wǒnhyo, 撰)
About the work
A two-juǎn commentary on the Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn 大乘起信論 (KR6o0078, the LiángParamārtha translation, T32n1666), composed by the Silla Buddhist master 元曉 (Wǒnhyo, 617–686). Together with the Qǐxìn lùn yìjì of 法藏 KR6o0105 and the lost commentary of Huìyuǎn 慧遠, this is one of the so-called běnlùn sānshī 本論三師 — the three foundational commentaries of the Awakening of Faith tradition. The Sònggāosēng zhuàn 宋高僧傳 attributes Wǒnhyo’s reputation in Tang China largely to this very text: 法藏’s pupil 澄觀 is said to have learned the Qǐxìn tradition through Wǒnhyo’s shū in the Huáinán region, and to have remarked that “this writing rises above all other masters’” (個書高出于諸師上者).
Structural Division
CANWWW (T44N1844) lists no internal sub-divisions for this two-juǎn commentary, but registers a related-text pointer to the parent treatise KR6o0078 (T32n1666, the LiángParamārtha Qǐxìn lùn).
Abstract
The Taishō text is prefaced by an Edo-period 元祿 9 (1696) reprint preface, the Qǐxìnlùn hǎidōngshū kānxíng xù 起信論海東疏刊行序, signed by Juéyǎn 覺眼 of the Luòdōng Zhìjīmén 洛東智積門下 in Japan, who notes that of the three major commentaries on the Qǐxìn lùn — those of 法藏 Fǎzàng, Huìyuǎn, and Wǒnhyo — only the first two had circulated freely, while Wǒnhyo’s was known only by name and reputation; the present 1696 edition was prepared from a manuscript that “some person” had brought to be carved and circulated.
The body of the shū opens with a famously elegant prologue of three “gates” (三門): (1) declaring the doctrinal substance (標宗體), (2) explaining the title (釋題名), and (3) elucidating the sense following the text itself (依文顯義). The opening characterization of the Mahāyāna (“luminously empty and still… so dark and so deep that it transcends the surface of myriad images, so still and still that it is yet found within the speech of the hundred schools…”) is one of the most-quoted Buddhist passages in Korean literary history.
Wǒnhyo’s interpretive program is to show that the Qǐxìn lùn synthesises Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha doctrine through the device of the “one mind opening into two gates” (一心開二門 yīxīn kāi èrmén) — the gate of true thusness (心真如門) and the gate of arising-and-perishing (心生滅門). This reading became canonical for the East-Asian Qǐxìn tradition; Fǎzàng’s later Yìjì KR6o0105 explicitly builds on Wǒnhyo’s framework. The composition window is bracketed by Wǒnhyo’s career, c. 650–686.
The Taishō establishes the text from the 元祿 9 / 1696 Japanese edition (原 = 原本), collated against the 大正 base.
Translations and research
- Park, Sung-bae. Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment. Albany: SUNY Press, 1983. — Discusses Wǒnhyo’s Qǐ-xìn exegesis at length.
- Muller, A. Charles, ed. Wonhyo’s Philosophy of Mind. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012. — Includes a partial English translation of the Qǐ-xìn lùn shū and the Bié-jì.
- Lee, Peter H., ed. Sourcebook of Korean Civilization, vol. 1. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. — Translates the prologue.
- Ishii Kōsei 石井公成. Kegon shisō no kenkyū 華嚴思想の研究. Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 1996. — Treats the relation between Wǒnhyo’s and Fǎzàng’s Qǐ-xìn commentaries.
- Cho, Eun-su, ed. Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen. Albany: SUNY, 2011. (Background.)
- Buswell, Robert E., Jr. The Formation of Ch’an Ideology in China and Korea: The Vajrasamādhi-sūtra. Princeton, 1989. — Treats Wǒnhyo’s place in the Qǐ-xìn lineage.
Other points of interest
The text is paired with KR6o0104, the Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn biéjì 大乘起信論別記 (“Separate Notes”), also by Wǒnhyo: a supplementary set of glosses that the tradition treats as the second half of a single exegetical project. The Edo reprint preface remarks that the shū and biéjì circulated separately precisely because the manuscript tradition had been broken in China.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Wǒnhyo): A001056