Púsà jiè wèndá dòngyì chāo 菩薩戒問答洞義抄
A Probing-the-Inner-Meaning Question-and-Answer Compendium on the Bodhisattva Precepts by 英心 (撰, signed 如空 in the colophon)
About the work
A single-fascicle question-and-answer doctrinal compendium on the Bodhisattva precepts compiled by Eishin 英心 — almost certainly the same person as the signatory of the colophon Nyokū 如空, a Saidai-ji junior monk active in the Hokuriku region. The work is structured as a series of 32 question-headings (listed in a table of contents at the top of the work) covering the full doctrinal landscape of the precept controversy: the Vinaya School’s dà–xiǎo (great-vs-small vehicle) ambivalence; the tōngshòu / biéshòu (universal vs. discrete) ordination debate; the 7 parishads; the ti–yòng (essence-and-function) of the precepts; the precept-positions of the rival schools (Shingon 真言, Pure Land 淨土, Tendai 天台, Zen 禪). The work positions itself within the Saidai-ji school of Eison (叡尊) and provides the school’s response to the most disputed precept controversies of the Kamakura period.
Abstract
The text bears a clear colophon: “In the era Tokuji 3, wùshēn year, at the Zenkō-ji 禪興寺 in Echizen Province (越州), drafted. (…) I, a junior pupil of the Nandō Saidai-ji 南都西大寺末學, the diligent Nyokū 如空, age 45, respectfully record this.” Tokuji 3 = 1308 CE; the author was 45 sui, so born c. 1264. notBefore = notAfter = 1308. The author identifies himself as a junior pupil (末學) of Saidai-ji 西大寺, i.e. the Eison-Shien Shingon-Risshū lineage, and is working in the Hokuriku (北國) — propagating the Saidai-ji teachings northward.
The preface lays out the work’s polemical setting: “The Three Trainings of the Great Vehicle transcend all other vehicles; the Bodhisattva’s Eight-Fold Right Path crosses all extremes. (…) But the world progressively grows shallow, people gradually thin; the śīla is reviled as a Dharma-binding, and the Vinaya is denigrated as ‘inferior learning.’ Misperversions of this sort cannot be counted.” Eishin’s response is two-fold: (1) to establish the doctrinal foundation of the Bodhisattva precepts in the Yogācāra-bhūmi and the major Mahāyāna sūtras, and (2) to refute the anti-Vinaya tendencies of the four rival schools: corrupt Shingon (眞言末學邪倒), the Pure Land school (淨土宗惡見), Tendai yuán-dùn (天台宗非義), and evil Zen (惡禪邪見). The systematic critique of the four contemporary schools represents the Saidai-ji school’s official polemical voice in the early 14th century.
The substantive doctrinal core (門一, the bodhisattva jiè in itself) is organized in four sub-sections: (1) the bié-tuō 別脱 (discrete liberation, prātimokṣa) precept; (2) the biǎo 表 (manifest) / wú-biǎo 無表 (un-manifest) distinction in precept-substance; (3) the xīn-gǔ jiè-tǐ 新古戒體 (“new and old precept essence” — Dàoxuān vs. Yogācāra interpretations); (4) the zhuǎn-chéng wú-lòu 轉成無漏 (“transformation into the outflow-free”) of precept-substance at the bodhisattva-stage. Throughout, Eishin cites Tài-xián, the Yogācāra-bhūmi, the Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra, Wǒnhyo, and Dàoxuān.
The work is one of the most systematic medieval Japanese expositions of the Saidai-ji precept synthesis and the only one explicitly polemicizing against all four rival contemporary schools by name.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Paul Groner, Ryōgen and Mt. Hiei: Japanese Tendai in the Tenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2002), for background on the precept controversy.
- Lori Meeks, Hokkeji and the Reemergence of Female Monastic Orders in Premodern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2010), for the Saidai-ji ordination tradition.
Other points of interest
The work documents the northward propagation of the Saidai-ji Shingon-Risshū from Nara into Echizen, evidenced by the Zenkō-ji composition site. Saidai-ji branch-temples were a major vehicle for the Shingon-Risshū’s reach into the provinces in the 13th–14th centuries.