Qǐxìn lùn jiéyào 起信論捷要
Essential Digest of the Awakening of Faith by 正遠 (Zhèngyuǎn / Yànmén, 註)
About the work
A two-juǎn late-Ming digest-commentary on the Awakening of Faith by the Mount Lú monk 正遠 Zhèngyuǎn (zì Yànmén), in the jiéyào 捷要 (“essential digest”) genre. Composed at the Shízhào shānfáng 石照山房 on Mount Lúshān 廬山 in summer of Wànlì 萬曆 42 / 1614 (“Wànlì bǐngchén spring”: the front matter), under the direction of Zhèngyuǎn’s teacher 開先 Kāixiān Mèishī. The Wànxùzàngjīng prints the text with two prefaces: a 1616 dedication by the jūshì 居士 layman 李騰芳 of Xiāngzhōu 湘洲, and Zhèngyuǎn’s own autobiographical zìxù 自序.
Structural Division
CANWWW does not register Xùzàngjīng entries; the parent text is KR6o0078 (T32n1666).
Abstract
The dedicatory preface by Lǐ Téngfāng 李騰芳 frames the rationale of the jié-yào genre: “the three realms are illusory, made by mind alone; depart from mind and there is no Dharma; depart from Dharma and there is no mind. Hence within the gate of zhēn-rú one is freed from the marks of names, of speech, and of mental conditions… When the World-Honoured at the moment of his Nirvāṇa held up the flower and showed it to the assembly, he was demonstrating that he who preaches the Dharma has no Dharma to preach. How much less, then, can wide reliance on the verbal vehicle establish a treatise? And yet within the gate of expedient means nothing is set aside…”
Zhèngyuǎn’s own preface narrates how, after years of fruitless study under various lecture-masters, he was directed by his teacher Kāixiān to spend ten days alone with the Qǐxìn lùn until its meaning “shone clearly as if on his palm”. The Jiéyào is the resulting compressed reading: a topical digest designed to “remove the verbose ornament and grasp the master-key”, in opposition to the prolix Tang and Sòng commentaries. The text was composed at the height of the late-Ming Buddhist textual surge, and circulated through the Wànxùzàngjīng tradition. Composition window: 1614–1620.
Translations and research
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia UP, 1981.
- Shèngyán 聖嚴. Míng-mò fó-jiào yán-jiū 明末佛教研究. Taibei: Dōngchū, 1987.
- No further substantial secondary literature located on this specific text.
Other points of interest
The jiéyào genre is characteristic of late-Ming popular Buddhist scholarship: the educated lay readership for whom these texts were produced wanted compact, immediately usable reading-keys to canonical works that the older commentaries had buried in apparatus. Zhèngyuǎn’s preface is one of the most articulate statements of the rationale for the genre.
Links
- CBETA
- DILA Authority (Zhèngyuǎn): A000275