Huāyán wǔjiào zhāng shēnyì chāo 華嚴五教章深意鈔
Compendium on the Deep Meaning of Fa-zang’s Avataṃsaka Five-Teachings Treatise by 聖詮 (撰)
About the work
A ten-fascicle Kegon sub-commentary on Fa-zang’s Wǔ jiào zhāng 華嚴五教章 KR6a0011 by Shōzen 聖詮, focused on the shēnyì (深意, “deep meaning”) of the work — that is, the more philosophically substantive doctrinal positions rather than the routine categorical-classificatory exposition. The work is organised as a question-and-answer treatment of contested points, opening with the three natures (sānxìng yì 三性義) doctrine and proceeding through the standard Kegon-doctrinal sequence.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: The text bears no internal dating colophon. Shōzen 聖詮 (DILA A001485) is documented only through this canonical attribution. Doctrinal style and citations place him in the post-Gyōnen Tōdaiji-Kegon tradition of the 14th–15th centuries. The CANWWW related-texts apparatus places the work in the standard Wǔjiào zhāng sub-commentarial lineage. notBefore = 1300, notAfter = 1500 is conservative.
Doctrinal content: the opening of fascicle 1 treats the doctrine of the three natures in the Final Mahāyāna (zhōng jiào 終教) — specifically the question of whether the able-imaging-consciousness (néng biàn-jì 能遍計) extends across all eight consciousnesses (the position of Aśvaghoṣa and Sthiramati) or is limited to the sixth and seventh consciousnesses (the position of the Cí’ēn Yogācāra mainstream, which holds that the fifth and eighth are restricted to direct perception and cannot perform imaging). Shōzen explicitly addresses the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha’s position that “the manas alone is the able-imaging-consciousness” and harmonises the Yogācāra and Final Mahāyāna positions through the doctrine of fundamental nescience (gēn-běn wú-míng 根本無明) — the position that, in the Final Mahāyāna, ignorance arises from the deluded turning-away of bhūtatathatā (true-suchness) and is therefore properly attributed to the entire mind-stream rather than to particular consciousnesses.
The remaining fascicles treat the Wǔ jiào zhāng topic-by-topic in the same dispute-oriented mode. The work is a model of the post-Gyōnen Tōdaiji Kegon-Hossō dispute culture, in which the boundary between Kegon and Hossō doctrinal positions was repeatedly contested at the highest level of scholastic sophistication.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language secondary literature located.
- Mochizuki, Bukkyō daijiten, s.v. Shōzen 聖詮 and Kegon gokyōshō jin’i shō 華嚴五教章深意鈔.
Other points of interest
The work’s title — shēnyì “deep meaning” — declares its focus on the most philosophically demanding points of the Wǔ jiào zhāng tradition, rather than on the comprehensive routine exposition pursued by Gyōnen’s KR6t0035 Tōnglù jì. Together with the contrast between Shinjō’s KR6t0036 disputational-compendium approach, Kikai’s KR6t0034 doctrinal-catalogue approach, and Juryō’s KR6t0033 indicating-affairs approach, this work demonstrates the diversity of commentarial methods that the medieval Japanese Kegon tradition applied to its central doctrinal-classificatory work.