Guānxīn juémèng chāo 觀心覺夢鈔
Mind-Contemplation and Awakening-from-Dreams Compendium by 良遍 (撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle practical Hossō manual by the early-Kamakura Kōfuku-ji Yogācāra master Ryōhen 良遍 (1194–1252), one of the most influential medieval Japanese systematisers of the Hossō school. The work treats ten major Yogācāra topics in sequence: (1) the principal scriptural support (suǒ-yī běn-jīng 所依本經 = the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra and the Yogācārabhūmi); (2) the yī-dài jiào-shí 一代敎時 (the five-time teaching classification); (3) the hundred categories of dharmas and the two-fold emptiness (bǎi-fǎ èr-kōng 百法二空); (4) the four-part division of consciousness (sì-fēn ān-lì 四分安立 = xiāng-fēn, jiàn-fēn, zì-zhèng-fēn, zhèng-zì-zhèng-fēn); (5) the three classes of objects (sān-lèi-jìng yì 三類境義); (6) seeds and perfuming (zhǒng-zǐ xūn-xí 種子熏習); (7) the twelve links of dependent origination (shí-èr yuán-qǐ 十二縁起); (8) the three natures (sān-zhǒng zì-xìng 三種自性); (9) the three non-natures (sān-zhǒng wú-xìng 三種無性); (10) [the remaining tenth not visible in the survey].
The title — “Mind-Contemplation and Awakening-from-Dreams” — captures the work’s pedagogical aim: Yogācāra doctrine is presented as the means by which the consciousness wakes from the dream of subject-object division to recognise the underlying nature of the mind. The work is conspicuously accessible, written for advanced students rather than for the disputation hall.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The 1793 Edo-period reprint preface, by the Edo monk Tenju 典壽 of Shamon-edo, opens by acknowledging the authorship-attribution problem: “This book does not bear the compiler’s name. The tradition holds that it is the work of Ryōhen hōshi. Some say it is the work of Chū-kan hōshi 中觀法師. In short, none but a man of complete learning could have composed it.” The work’s transmission tradition firmly identifies it with Ryōhen, and modern scholarship has converged on this attribution: the doctrinal apparatus, the citational density, and the topical organisation all fit Ryōhen’s other works exactly. Ryōhen (DILA A000541; Wikidata Q11614433) was born 1194 and died 1252, putting his mature scholarly career in the second quarter of the 13th century. notBefore = 1230, notAfter = 1252.
The 1470 Bunmei 2 manuscript colophon — “Generally, this chāo is the manuscript-draft of Ryōhen Shōnin. The upper booklet was copied and deposited at the Ningen-shū Sōzu’s Jin-shin-bō; of the three booklets, upper-middle-lower, the middle and lower were absent. Then this booklet was copied; the middle booklet was completed by Rinnō, who put first and last in order, and deposited it at the Kanshūbō.” — fixes both the manuscript transmission and the medieval Japanese identification of the work with Ryōhen. The 1793 Edo-period reprint by Tenju 典壽 includes editorial corrections, and is the version that entered the modern Taishō.
Doctrinal content: the work is the most coherent surviving medieval Japanese Hossō summa designed for practical (rather than disputational) purposes. The treatment of the sìfēn (four-part division of consciousness) is unusually clear, treating each of the four — the seen-aspect, the seeing-aspect, the self-witnessing-aspect, and the witnessing-of-self-witnessing-aspect — with the standard Kuījī apparatus, but adapted to a meditation-instruction format. Ryōhen’s text is the principal Japanese Hossō intermediate-manual of the Kamakura period; in Edo it became the standard introductory text for Kōfuku-ji students.
The work is closely linked, both stylistically and topically, to Ryōhen’s KR6t0009 Zhēnxīn yàojué 眞心要決 and his KR6t0010 Èrjuàn chāo 二卷鈔 — the three texts together constituting the Ryōhen Hossō trilogy that defines his contribution.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — standard Japanese reference treating the trilogy.
- The text is discussed in Hayashi Hideo 林秀夫 and the standard Japanese Hossō-school kōsho literature.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Ryōhen 良遍; Kanjin kakumu shō 觀心覺夢鈔.
Other points of interest
The text is a foundational manual of the medieval-Edo Japanese Hossō pedagogical tradition. Its Kamakura-era origin, its near-loss in the 15th century (recorded in the Bunmei colophon), its survival via a single Kanshūbō transmission chain, and its Edo-period rescue and reprinting by Tenju (1793) make it a tightly-documented exemplar of how medieval Japanese sectarian doctrinal literature was transmitted across the Sengoku disruption and into the Edo printed-book canon.