Zhéyí lùn 折疑論
Treatise Resolving Doubts
written by 子成 (Zǐchéng / Miàomíngzǐ 妙明子, fl. Yuán Zhìzhèng era 1341–1368, 撰); annotated by 師子比丘 (Shīzǐ bǐqiū, late Yuán, 述註)
About the work
A 5-juan late-Yuán Buddhist apologetic dialogue that defends Buddhism against Confucian and Daoist criticism, framed as a question-and-answer exchange between the monastic author Miàomíngzǐ 妙明子 (= Zǐchéng 子成) and a learned visitor who arrives at his mountain hermitage with a series of doubts (yí 疑). The work’s title — Zhéyí 折疑, “snapping the doubt” — is glossed in the opening interlinear note: “Zhé 折 means to bend and break; yí 疑 means hesitation that cannot be resolved; lùn 論 means a deliberation that adjudicates contested matters.” The text is one of the most theoretically articulated late-Yuán syncretist defences of Buddhism, and is structured into twenty chapters beginning with the Xùwèn 敘問 (the framing question) and ending with the Huìmíng 會名 (the bringing-together of names). Transmitted in Taishō 52 as T2118.
Prefaces
The preface (xù 敘) by the xiāng-gòng jìn-shì Qū Pán of Bái-shuǐ 白水屈蟠, dated 辛卯中秋八日 (8th day of the 8th month of an xīn-mǎo year — most plausibly 1351, mid-Zhì-zhèng), describes the author’s biography (Confucian scholar in youth, monk in middle age, accomplished poet and exegete), gives the genesis of the work (the author “fled to the mountain forest to hide his traces during the chaos of war and fire” and “in his exchange with visitors who came to him with questions and doubts, he turned each one back to its end and beginning, and recorded the conversations in a scroll”), and characterises the work as “twenty chapters in which the language is concise yet the principle is apt, the prose is condensed yet the meaning is rich; bathing in the Six Classics and surveying the various Masters.” The colophon lists the author as the holder of the imperial title 傳大乘戒賜紫閏國師 (“Master-of-State, transmitter of the Mahāyāna precepts, robed in purple”) and the annotator as a 西域師子比丘 (“Western-Regions Lion-bhikṣu”) of the Dà Cí’ēn-sì 大慈恩寺 of Jīn-tái 金臺 (= Dà-dū / Yuán Beijing).
Abstract
The work is a sustained catechetical defence of Buddhism in which the visitor advances the standard repertoire of Confucian and Daoist objections to Buddhism — that it is foreign, that it neglects the family and the state, that monks shave the head and abandon the social order, that the doctrines of kalpa-cycles and karma are unattested in the Classics, that Buddhist monasteries impoverish the empire — and the author replies by appealing to the Three Teachings as one principle (sānjiào yīlǐ 三教一理), citing the Confucian Classics, the Lǎozǐ and Zhuāngzǐ, the dynastic histories, and the standard Buddhist scriptural and biographical sources to show that Buddhism does not contradict but rather completes Confucian and Daoist insight.
The text’s argumentative structure proceeds through twenty thematic dialogues addressing topics such as: the foreignness of Buddhism (resolved by appeal to its universal applicability and to the Confucian acknowledgement of Western sages); the social legitimacy of monasticism (resolved by appeal to the Confucian recognition of yǐnjū 隱居 retreat); the historicity of the Buddha (resolved by chronological synchronisms with the Zhōu); the alleged uselessness of monks (refuted by enumerating their cultural contributions); the doctrine of karman and the Six Paths; the doctrine of meritorious offering. Throughout, the author maintains the pingxin 平心 (“balanced-heart”) stance characteristic of late-Yuán syncretist apologetics: the three teachings differ in their traces (跡) but agree in their principle (理).
The work belongs typologically to the same late-Sòng / Yuán 三教合一 apologetic tradition as Liú Mì’s KR6r0150 Sānjiào píngxīn lùn, but takes the Buddhist confessional standpoint more explicitly than Liú Mì’s irenic-neutral position: the Zhéyí lùn is a defence of Buddhism by a Buddhist monk, not a dispassionate three-teachings essay. It survives in only the Taishō / Yuán-canon line of transmission and was not widely cited in the late-imperial Buddhist tradition, but represents an important late-Yuán statement of the Buddhist syncretist position as ratified by the Yuán imperial-monastic establishment.
Translations and research
- 釋見曄, “元代《折疑論》之三教思想研究,” 《中華佛學研究》15 (2014): 167–205 — the principal modern Chinese-language study, treating the work in the context of late-Yuán syncretist thought.
- 蘊集慧光 [釋慧嚴], 《元代漢傳佛教史研究》(Táiběi: Fó-guāng wén-huà, 2003) — places the Zhé-yí lùn in the wider history of Yuán Buddhist apologetic literature.
- 野上俊靜, 《元史釋老傳の研究》(Kyōto: Hōzō-kan, 1978) — institutional context of the imperial titles given to Zǐ-chéng.
Links
- CBETA: T52n2118