Huāyán xìnzhǒng yì 華嚴信種義
The Doctrine of the Seed of Faith in the Avataṃsaka by 高辨 (記)
About the work
A single-fascicle Kegon devotional-doctrinal treatise on the doctrine of xìn 信 (śraddhā, faith) as the zhǒng 種 (seed) of buddhahood, composed by Myōe Kōben 明惠高辨 (1173–1232) at the Kamo-shrine 賀茂社 sub-temple Zendō-in 禪堂院 on the 21st day of the 9th month of Jōkyū 3 = 1221 CE. The work was composed at the request of the Kamo-shrine officer Hisatsugu 賀茂社司久繼, whom Myōe describes as “one who, alongside his hereditary office, has constantly come to my mountain hermitage to delight in the flavour of the Dharma, forgetting sleep and food” — making it one of the very few Japanese Kegon works composed for an aristocratic-lay patron rather than a fellow monastic.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The terminal colophon is unambiguous: “The Kamo shrine-officer Hisatsugu, in addition to his hereditary office, regularly comes to my mountain hermitage to delight in the flavour of the Dharma, as if forgetting sleep and food. In deep response to his earnest aspiration, I have here collected these essential teachings, with the prayer that by this merit we may surely meet before the One Buddha. At the time: Jōkyū 3 (= 1221), 9th month, 21st day, at the Kamo Sub-Temple Zendō-in residence, the Kegon-school śramaṇa Kōben has recorded this.” Myōe Kōben (1173–1232; DILA A001007; Wikidata Q2026000; see person note at 高辨) is the famous Kamakura-period Kegon-Shingon revivalist of Kōzan-ji. The composition is precisely dated to Jōkyū 3 = 1221.
Doctrinal content: the work expounds the Avataṃsaka’s doctrine of xìn (faith) through analysis of the fó-guāng biǎo-xiāng 佛光表相 (Buddha’s-light-as-manifest-marker) sequence in the Avataṃsaka. In the second assembly of the Avataṃsaka, where the doctrine of faith is taught, the Buddha emits light from his foot-soles (rather than from between his eyebrows, as in the first assembly’s exposition of the fruit-doctrine). Myōe reads this as a deliberate iconographic signal: as the feet are the root of all walking, so faith is the root of all subsequent practice on the path to buddhahood. He then traces the Avataṃsaka’s parallel light-emanations through the shí-zhù 十住 (ten dwellings), shí-xíng 十行 (ten practices), shí-huí-xiàng 十迴向 (ten transferences), and shí-dì 十地 (ten stages) — each issued from a different part of the Buddha’s body — culminating in the shí-dì light returning to the eyebrows, “because the ten stages are the terminus of the causal-fold, and so the light emitted is identical to the fruit-light.”
The work is a model of Myōe’s characteristic iconographic-semantic Kegon exegesis — treating ritual and visual elements of the Avataṃsaka as carrying doctrinal meaning. It is also a witness to his Kegon-Shingon synthesis: the work cites the Mantra of Light (guāng-míng zhēn-yán 光明眞言) tradition that Myōe systematised in KR6j0192 Bù-kōng juàn-suǒ pí-lú-zhē-nà fó dà-guàn-dǐng guāng-míng zhēn-yán jù-yì shì.
The text closes with reference to the Kegon doctrine that even those “who, in the latter age, by seeing or hearing of the Buddha do not arise to faith and joy, but, owing to the karmic-obstruction’s wrapping-cover, plant only inadvertent good roots” — they too “shall in time attain nirvāṇa.” A reference to “as explained in detail in the Rù jiětuō mén yì” — i.e. Myōe’s companion piece KR6t0027 Huā-yán xiū-chán guān-zhào rù jiě-tuō mén yì, composed exactly one year before — confirms the inter-textual relation between Myōe’s three Kegon works in this batch.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Frédéric Girard, Un moine de la secte Kegon à l’époque de Kamakura, Myōe (1173–1232) et le “Journal de ses rêves” (Paris: EFEO, 1990) — the standard Western Myōe monograph, with substantial discussion of the Kegon-Shingon synthesis.
- George J. Tanabe, Myōe the Dreamkeeper: Fantasy and Knowledge in Early Kamakura Buddhism (Cambridge MA: Harvard, 1992) — covers Myōe’s Kegon doctrinal corpus.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Myōe 明惠 / Kōben 高辨; Kegon shinshu gi 華嚴信種義.
Other points of interest
The work’s composition for an aristocratic-lay patron (the Kamo shrine officer Hisatsugu) is a unique witness to Myōe’s lay-engaged Kegon teaching practice. The Kamo shrines were one of the principal Heian-Kamakura court-shrines, and Myōe’s relationship with Hisatsugu represents an important medieval-Japanese Buddho-Shintō integration that the Kōzan-ji circle pursued.