Huāyánzōng yàoyì 華嚴宗要義
The Essential Meaning of the Kegon School by 凝然 (述)
About the work
A single-fascicle Kegon doctrinal summary by Gyōnen 凝然 (1240–1321), the most prolific Japanese Buddhist scholastic of the Kamakura period, composed at Tōdaiji Kaidan-in 東大寺戒檀院 on the 28th day of the 10th month of Shōwa 3 = 1314 CE for the Kantō-region patron Zenmon Denka 禪門殿下 of Kōmyō-ji 光明寺. The work is organised as a shí mén 十門 (ten-gate) compendium of Kegon doctrine: (1) jiàozōng dàyì 教宗大意 (great meaning of the school’s teaching); (2) jiàozōng míngyì 教宗名義 (name and meaning of the school’s teaching); (3) lìjiào kāizōng 立教開宗 (establishment of the teaching and opening of the school); (4) yīchéng sānchéng 一乘三乘 (the One Vehicle and the Three Vehicles); (5) suǒlì fǎyì 所立法義 (the dharmas and meanings established); (6) běnjīng cìdì 本經次第 (the order of the foundational scriptures); (7) xiūzhèng xíngxiāng 修證行相 (cultivation, realisation, and practice-characteristics); (8) zhū zá fǎmén 諸雜法門 (various other doctrinal gates); (9) zhāngshū fēnliàng 章疏分量 (the proportions of the commentarial corpus); (10) zǔ chéng hóngzhuàn 祖承弘傳 (patriarchal transmission and propagation).
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The terminal colophon is exceptionally informative: “At the time: Shōwa 3, jiǎ-yín (= 1314), 10th month 28th day, at the Tōdaiji Kaidan-in, I composed this for the Zenmon Denka (“Lord of the Zen Gate”), patron of the Kantō Kōmyō-ji. The Zen-Gate Lord, in the leisure-time of his loyal-and-diligent service, has thoroughly mastered all schools — exoteric and esoteric integrated, dharma-nature and dharma-characteristic together practised — and has questioned me about the Kegon Dharma. We conversed [over] two or three chapter-rolls, and I have further composed this brief chapter as a respectful response to his earnest aspiration. The Kegon-school śramaṇa Gyōnen, in his 75th year.”
The Zenmon Denka of Kōmyō-ji is plausibly Hōjō Sadatoki 北條貞時 (1271–1311) or his successor in the Kamakura bakufu’s Zen-patronage establishment — both maintained close ties with Kōmyō-ji in modern Kamakura. The 1314 date is exactly Gyōnen’s 75th year (1240 + 74 = 1314). The composition is therefore tightly fixed: notBefore = 1314, notAfter = 1314.
A second colophon records the work’s transmission: “Bunpō 2 (= 1318), 5th month, [the work was] received face-to-face from its author’s own residence. With great joy: meeting the great teaching is a rare karmic occasion. Yuán-zōng śramaṇa Fuhai Sonri 普海存理, [bearing] the wisdom of the Round School, in his 6th monastic summer.” Fuhai Sonri (圓宗 = Tendai yuán-zōng) received the work from Gyōnen four years after composition, in the year of his sixth monastic standing.
A third colophon — with a problematic era-name (recorded as “唐永二年癸未四月十四日” = “Tang-yǒng 2, guǐwèi, 4th month, 14th day”; Tang-yǒng is not a Japanese era and the era-name is likely a corruption of either 應永 Ōei or the Chinese-style Yányòu — but the guǐwèi year-cycle suggests 1403 CE) — records a final copying by Kakujō 覺城 at Yamamoto-ji 山本寺 in Gōshū (Ōmi province), “for self-recitation and dissemination.”
Doctrinal content: the shí mén compendium is one of the most accessible introductions to Kegon doctrine produced in medieval Japan. The treatment of gate 6 (the order of the foundational scriptures) is particularly distinctive — Gyōnen lays out the Avataṃsaka’s textual history from the 60-juan Buddhabhadra version (T278) through the 80-juan Śikṣānanda version (T279) to the 40-juan Prajñā version (T293), and discusses their relative authority. Gate 10 (patriarchal transmission) is the principal medieval-Japanese Kegon-school lineage statement, naming Du-shùn 杜順 → Zhì-yǎn 智儼 → Fa-zang 法藏 → Chéng-guān 澄觀 → Zōng-mì 宗密 in China, and the Japanese transmission through Shinjō 審詳, Rōben 良辨, and the Tōdaiji Kegon establishment.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located. The standard Western treatment of Gyōnen’s Kegon corpus is in Frédéric Girard, Une référence: le ‘Compendium des doctrines essentielles’ de Gyōnen (in Mireille Boutry, ed., Les écoles bouddhiques au Japon: hommages à Bernard Frank, EFEO 1994).
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Gyōnen 凝然 and Kegon-shū yōgi 華嚴宗要義.
Other points of interest
The work is a unique witness to Gyōnen’s encyclopedic late-period scholarship and to the Kamakura bakufu’s Buddhist patronage. The composition for a Kantō Zen-school lay patron testifies to the bakufu’s policy of cultivating doctrinal scholarship across school boundaries, and to Gyōnen’s status as the recognised authoritative scholar of the school at Tōdaiji.