Sānjiào píngxīn lùn 三教平心論
Treatise on the Three Teachings, with a Calm Heart
written by 劉謐 (Liú Mì / Jìngzhāi 靜齋, fl. early Yuán, 撰)
About the work
A 2-juan late-Sòng / early-Yuán 三教合一 (“three-teachings-as-one”) apologetic treatise by the layman scholar 劉謐 Liú Mì 劉謐 (號 Jìngzhāi 靜齋, also Jìngzhāi xuéshì 靜齋學士). Lifedates not transmitted; the author is identified as a SòngYuán transition figure, with the work conventionally dated to the early Yuán (post-1279). The dating bracket is 1300 – 1330. Transmitted in Taishō 52 as T2117.
Prefaces
The opening section of juan 1 frames the work in the canonical irenic mode: “The three luminaries [sun-moon-stars] adorn the heavens — through ten-thousand antiquities they shine long. The hundred streams reach the sea — they share one taste and lose their names. The rise of the three teachings — its origin is far in the past. They go forth together in the world, and shape the empire below. To consider them in their traces, they have always been different; to consider them in their principle, they have never not been one. One and three, three and one — they cannot be discriminated as close or distant.”
Abstract
The work is a sustained argument for the doctrinal compatibility and complementarity of the Three Teachings (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism), framed not as a partisan defence of any one tradition but as an irenic synthesist position. The author’s argumentative strategy:
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The three teachings agree in their fundamental principle: each addresses a different aspect of the human condition (Confucianism the social, Daoism the cosmological, Buddhism the soteriological), but in their deeper principle (lǐ 理) they converge on the same truth.
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Their differences are surface-level only: the traces (jì 跡 — i.e., the institutional / ritual / textual surface) of the three differ, but the principle (lǐ 理 — the underlying doctrine) does not.
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No tradition should attack any other: the polemical literature on either side (Buddhist-against-Daoist, Daoist-against-Buddhist, Confucian-against-Buddhist) is doctrinally misguided and culturally damaging.
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The proper attitude is the píngxīn 平心 (“calm heart”) of the title — a stance of impartial scholarly reception of all three traditions.
The work is one of the principal Sòng-Yuán-transition documents of the sānjiào héyī 三教合一 movement — an irenic-syncretist position that would become the dominant doctrinal frame of late-imperial Chinese popular religion. It is among the most theoretically self-conscious early statements of the position. The work was particularly influential in the late-imperial 居士佛教 lay-Buddhist tradition.
Translations and research
- 賴永海, “宋元時期佛儒交融思想探微,” 中華佛學學報 5 (1992): 109–118 — the principal modern Chinese-language study of the late-Sòng / Yuán Buddhist-Confucian synthesis.
- 潘桂明, 中國居士佛教史 (Běijīng: Zhōngguó shè-huì kē-xué chū-bǎn-shè, 2000) — extended treatment.
- The work is also treated in standard surveys of the sān-jiào héyī tradition (Judith Berling, Edward Davis, et al.).
- David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West — uses the Sān-jiào píng-xīn lùn in tracing the late-imperial Chinese reception of Buddhist-Confucian-Daoist comparative thought.
Other points of interest
Per the 《佛法金湯編》 Fófǎ jīntāng biān j. 15 and the 《居士傳》 Jūshì zhuàn j. 35 traditional placements, Liú Mì is one of the most theoretically prominent SòngYuán sānjiào héyī lay scholars. The work’s incorporation into the 《閱藏知津》 Yuèzàng zhījīn j. 44 of the great Míng bibliographer Zhìxù 智旭 (1599–1655) fixed its position in the late-imperial Buddhist canonical-bibliographic tradition.
Links
- CBETA: T52n2117