Wǔxīn yì lüèjì 五心義略記
A Brief Record of the Doctrine of the Five Mental States by 清範 (抄)
About the work
A two-fascicle Hossō sub-commentary on the doctrine of the five mental states (wǔxīn 五心 = shuàiěr, xúnqiú, juédìng, rǎnjìng, děngliú), abridged and commented by the late-Heian Kōfuku-ji 興福寺 monk Seihan 清範. The work is an abridgment (chāo 抄) — Seihan’s term — of the corresponding section of Zenju’s KR6t0013 Fǎyuàn yìjìng 法苑義鏡 (the Wǔxīn yì lín section), reorganised as a stand-alone treatise for use in the Kōfuku-ji Yuima-e 維摩會 debate tradition. The five mental states of cognition are the foundational Yogācāra account of how a single cognitive episode unfolds — from the initial suddenness (shuàiěr 率爾) of encounter, through seeking (xúnqiú 尋求) and determination (juédìng 決定), to purification or pollution (rǎnjìng 染淨) and finally equal-flow (děngliú 等流, the steady-state).
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The colophon at the head of the work reads “Kōfuku-ji shaku Seihan shō” 興福寺釋淸範抄 — “Seihan of Kōfuku-ji, shaku (= śākya / monk), has abridged this.” Seihan 清範 (DILA A001094) is the late-Heian Kōfuku-ji Hossō debater documented in the Konjaku monogatari shū 今昔物語集 and in the Genkō shakusho 元亨釋書, conventionally dated 962–999. He was famous as a child prodigy: ordained at Kōfuku-ji while still in his teens, he served as a yuima-e lecturer by his early twenties, and died young at the age of thirty-eight in 999. notBefore = 970 (his earliest productive years), notAfter = 999 (his death).
Doctrinal content: Seihan opens with a survey of the comparative doctrine of mental states across the Buddhist schools — a classic Yuima-e debate-opening move. He notes that the Chéngshí school and Sūtra-Cī’ēn school (= Hīnayāna Sautrāntika) recognise only four mental states (shí, xiǎng, shòu, xíng = cognition, perception, feeling, formation), while the Mahīśāsaka liǎo-fēn-míng-lùn 了分明論 also recognises four (initial cognition, accompanying cognition, deliberating cognition, gross cognition). The Sthaviravāda Upper-Seat school (Shàng-zuò-bù 上座部) recognises nine mental-state-cycles (xīn-lún 心輪): bhavāṅga-citta, abhinihāra, avajjana, xún-qiú (= āvajjana), and so on, ending with the return to bhavāṅga. Only the Mahāyāna Yogācāra recognises exactly five — neither nine nor four. The remainder of the work develops each of the five in turn, drawing extensively on Zenju’s KR6t0013 Yì-jìng, the Liǎo-yì dēng KR6n0030, and the Yán-mì chāo tradition.
The CANWWW related-texts apparatus identifies the work as a sub-commentary on both KR6n0029 Yìlín zhāng (T45N1861-2 = its 2nd section, the Wǔxīn yì) and KR6t0019 Yìlín zhāng shīzǐhǒu chāo (with which it forms a tightly-related apparatus). It is one of the three closely-related Hossō sub-commentaries on Zenju’s Yìjìng preserved in the medieval Japanese canon (the other two being KR6t0015 Wéishí yì sījì by Shinkō and KR6t0016 Hossōshū xiánshèng yì lüè wèndá by Chūzan).
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Yūki Reimon 結城令聞, Yuishikigaku tenseki-shi 唯識学典籍志 — discusses the work as part of the late-Heian Kōfuku-ji Hossō tradition.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Seihan 清範 (with the famous biographical Konjaku monogatari shū anecdote of his debate skill); Goshin gi ryakki 五心義略記.
Other points of interest
Seihan is one of the most famous late-Heian Japanese Buddhist monks outside the sphere of pure doctrinal history — his name appears repeatedly in medieval Japanese narrative literature (the Konjaku monogatari shū, the Genkō shakusho, the Hokke genki) as the paradigmatic Yuima-e debate prodigy. Wǔxīn yì lüèjì is one of his few surviving doctrinal writings and is the principal Taishō witness to his actual Yogācāra scholarship — as opposed to the hagiographical anecdotes that constitute his more widely-known biography.