Zhēnyánzōng yì 眞言宗義
Doctrinal Tenets of the Mantra School by 覺鑁 (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle doctrinal-polemical treatise by 覺鑁 Kakuban (1095–1144) addressing the doctrinal classification of the Shingon school in relation to Kūkai’s Jūjūshin-ron 十住心論 (“Treatise on the Ten Residence-Minds”) and the Bodhicitta-treatise 菩提心論. The work centers on the apparent contradiction between Yīxíng’s Mahāvairocanasūtra Commentary and Kūkai’s Jūjūshin schema regarding the placement of the Huāyán 華嚴 (Kegon) and Mahāvairocana (Shingon) levels within the bodhicitta doctrinal hierarchy.
Abstract
Problem: when the mantra-practitioner transcends the most subtle deluded attachments and enters the gate of pure bodhicitta, he must contemplate the doctrinal stages of his own mind. The Mahāvairocanasūtra “Residence-Mind chapter” 大日經住心品 begins with emptiness-nature (空性) and culminates in the Secret-Lord (Vajrasattva) “such-is-the-initial-mind” clause; the cause-root-ultimate three lines (因·根·究竟三句) of the Bodhicitta-treatise present the first (bodhicitta-is-the-cause) line as the foundational doctrine. Kakuban’s exegetical-historical question: when Kūkai in the Sanmaya-kai-jō 三昧耶戒 glosses “the initial-mind is the Buddha’s preaching of the cause of becoming-Buddha” as the Kegon (極無自性心 — “the mind without ultimate self-nature”) — this is at odds with the standard Mahāvairocana-Commentary (疏家) reading. How are we to reconcile this?
Further problem: the Commentary repeatedly draws on the Lotus Sūtra (法華) “First Residence and Above” (初住已上) merit-doctrine in expounding the Shingon practitioner’s progress after the bodhicitta gate, but does not invoke the Lotus doctrine for the pre-bodhicitta (kyokumujishōshin) stage. Kakuban presents and resolves this tension by careful citation of the Commentary fasc. 2: “When the mantra-practitioner first enters the pure bodhicitta — even though he has not yet, through innumerable asaṃkhyeya kalpas, fully cultivated the universal practices of Samantabhadra nor perfected great-compassion-skill-in-means — these Tathāgata-merits are already accomplished, because (this mind) is the complete-body Dharma-body of Mahāvairocana.”
Significance: a key Kakuban gloss on the doctrinal-classification controversies between Kūkai’s Jūjūshin schema and the inherited Mahāvairocanasūtra Commentary tradition. The work is one of the principal late-Heian Shingon scholastic treatments of these issues.
Translations and research
- No substantial Western-language translation located.
- van der Veere, Henny, A Study into the Thought of Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban (2000).
- For Kūkai’s Jūjūshin-ron see Hakeda, Yoshito, Kūkai: Major Works (1972), pp. 157–224; Giebel, Rolf, The Teaching, Practice, and Realization of the Vehicle of Secret Mantra, Berkeley: Numata Center, forthcoming.
Links
- CBETA: T79n2523