Yǒngmíng Zhìjué chánshī Wéi xīn jué 永明智覺禪師唯心訣
Secret of Mind-Only by Yǒngmíng, the Chán Master of Wisdom-Awakening
“Mind-Only Secret of Yǒngmíng, the Chán Master of Enlightened Wisdom” — the short synthetic doctrinal treatise of Yǒngmíng Yánshòu 永明延壽 (904–975), presenting in concentrated form the yī xīn 一心 doctrinal position elaborated across the 100 juan of his Zōngjìng lù (KR6q0092)
About the work
A one-juan compressed doctrinal treatise on wéi xīn 唯心 (“mind-only”), articulating the central thesis of Yánshòu’s mature doctrinal synthesis in a form suited to rapid reading. Taishō T48 n2018. Non-commentary; commentedTextid omitted. Functions as the shortest and most accessible doctrinal summary of Yánshòu’s position, complementing the encyclopedic Zōngjìng lù and the more pastoral Wànshàn tóngguī jí (KR6q0093).
Tiyao
Not a WYG text; no 四庫 tíyào exists. No editorial preface; the text opens directly on its own doctrinal declaration: “Consider now, the mind is not something that can be distinguished by the categories ‘truth and delusion, being and non-being’; how could it be expressed by written words or phrase-meanings? Yet the sages have sung of it and the old philosophers have classified it — not because they did not deeply understand, but because they worked for the sake of [helping] beings. Therefore thousand-direction divergent teachings, adapting to the capacities, all point back to a single dharma — that is all.”
Abstract
The text proceeds by citing a sequence of canonical Mahāyāna sūtras, each characterised by the single doctrinal formula it emphasises — Prajñāpāramitā 般若 speaks only of non-duality; Fǎhuá jīng 法華經 [Lotus] speaks only of the one vehicle; Sīyì jīng 思益經 of the pínděng rúrú 平等如如 equality-of-suchness; Huáyán 華嚴 of the chún zhēn fǎjiè 純真法界 pure-true dharma-realm; Yuánjuè jīng 圓覺經 of the establishment of all phenomena; Lèngyán jīng 楞嚴經 of the enveloping of the ten directions; Dàjí jīng 大集經 of the fusion of pure and impure; Bǎojì jīng 寶積經 of the extinction of dust-and-roots; Nièpán jīng 涅槃經 of the secret store; Jìngmíng jīng 淨名經 (Vimalakīrti) of the universal-bodhimaṇḍa. These distinct formulations all converge, Yánshòu argues, on the one doctrine of mind-only (wéi xīn 唯心): “one dharma with a thousand names, established according to occasion for response.” The same argument structure is present in expanded form throughout the Zōngjìng lù; the Wéi xīn jué compresses it into a few pages.
The treatise’s rhetorical register is notably different from the Zōngjìng lù’s citation-heavy scholastic prose: the Wéi xīn jué is written in densely-rhymed parallel prose (piánwén 駢文), with visible metrical structure and poetic ornamentation, positioning the text as a doctrinal fù 賦 rather than a lùn 論. The title term jué 訣 (“secret, hidden-teaching”) signals this genre placement: a short, concentrated, aphoristic text intended for memorisation and meditation rather than scholastic reference.
Dating bracket: notBefore 960 (beginning of Yánshòu’s Yǒngmíng abbacy), notAfter 975 (Yánshòu’s death). Composition is probably contemporaneous with the later stages of the Zōngjìng lù compilation — late 960s or early 970s — and the text is best read as a self-commentary on that larger project.
Translations and research
- Welter, Albert. 2011. Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan. Oxford. Includes translation and analysis of the Wéi xīn jué.
- 冉雲華. 1999. 《永明延壽》. Dōngdà túshū. Chapter on the Wéi xīn jué.
- 孔維勤 1983. 《永明延壽宗教論》. Tóngxìn chūbǎnshè. Treatment of the Wéi xīn jué in the context of Yánshòu’s full authorial corpus.
- 鎌田茂雄 1997. 《中国華厳思想史の研究》.
- Welter, Albert. 1993. The Meaning of Myriad Good Deeds. Peter Lang. Background on Yánshòu’s shorter doctrinal writings.
Other points of interest
The Wéi xīn jué was transmitted to Koryŏ at the same time as the Zōngjìng lù, and entered the Korean Sŏn doctrinal curriculum as a companion-text to Yánshòu’s larger compilations. 知訥 Chinul (1158–1210) cites the Wéi xīn jué in his syncretic doctrinal synthesis (see KR6q0095, KR6q0097). In Japan, the text received considerable attention from the Sōtō school’s Edo-period commentarial tradition, though its canonical status in Japanese Zen remains subordinate to the Zōngjìng lù and the Wànshàn tóngguī jí.
The characterisation of the treatise as a jué 訣 (compact instruction-text) aligns it with a small body of similar Chinese Buddhist literature: 智顗 Zhìyǐ’s Xiǎo zhǐguān jué 小止觀訣, the short Tiāntái and Huáyán pedagogical jué-genre manuals. The genre is distinguished by its rhyme-metrical form and its pedagogical compactness — Wéi xīn jué is read aloud in something like 30 minutes and is intended for repeated recitation rather than single-sitting scholarly reading.