Mìmì sānmèiyē fójiè yí 祕密三昧耶佛戒儀
Ritual Manual for the Secret Samaya Buddha-Precepts by 空海 (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle liturgical manual (yí 儀 = ritual procedure) for the conferral of the samaya Buddha-precepts — the esoteric ordination ritual that admits the candidate to the Shingon path. Attributed to Kūkai 空海 (774–835), founder of Japanese Shingon. Where the companion KR6t0168 Sānmèiyē jiè xù is the doctrinal preface, the present work is the practical ritual order — the words to be recited, the vows to be taken, the mental dispositions to be cultivated, in the sequence required for a valid Shingon ordination.
Abstract
Authorship and dating: the text is traditionally attributed to Kūkai; the Taishō header carries no separate author line, but the work is grouped with Kūkai’s guàndǐng and jiè writings in the Shingon school catalogs (Tomabechi Seiichi notes that some scholars have questioned the attribution, but no consensus alternative has emerged). The composition window must lie within Kūkai’s mature scholarly career, 822–835.
Doctrinal content: the manual opens with an extended observation of the Buddha-mind — that the pure nature-ocean of all Buddhas in the ten directions is quiescent, perfectly luminous, originally birthless and deathless, infinitely vast, signless, unconditioned, eternally calm. The candidate is then enjoined to observe how sentient beings, through “deluded mental fabrications and afflictive defilements,” occlude this innate purity. From this contemplation arises the fourfold great vow:
- I vow to extirpate all evils
- I vow to cultivate the supreme teaching
- I vow to liberate the realms of sentient beings
- I vow that all beings attain supreme bodhi
The ritual proceeds through the arousal of bodhicitta — defined doctrinally as the pure Dharma-body of all Buddhas, equally the pure-defiled mind of all sentient beings — citing the Bù zēng bù jiǎn jīng 不增不減經 (T16n0668): “outside the realm of sentient beings there is no Dharma-body; outside the Dharma-body there is no realm of sentient beings; the realm of sentient beings is precisely the Dharma-body.” The candidate then invokes the Buddhas of the ten directions, beginning with Vairocana 毘盧遮那, makes formal prostration, confession (chànhuǐ 懺悔), arousal of joy (suíxǐ 隨喜), dedication of merit (huíxiàng 廻向), and request for the precepts. The actual conferral formula is the threefold pure precept (sānjù jìngjiè 三聚淨戒) — the precept of upholding the rules, the precept of cultivating all good, and the precept of benefiting sentient beings — in their esoteric samaya form.
The text is liturgically self-sufficient: a Shingon ācārya could (and historically did) administer ordinations directly from this manual.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Ryūichi Abe, The Weaving of Mantra (1999), and Yoshito Hakeda, Kūkai: Major Works (1972), treat Kūkai’s samaya doctrine.
- Standard Japanese reference: Kōbō Daishi zenshū; Mikkyō daijiten s.v. Sanmaya-kai 三昧耶戒.