Northern Sòng (Rénzōng era, 1023–1063) Buddhist scholar-monk, sobriquet Xuěyuè dàshī 雪月大師 (“Snow-Moon Master”). Native of Fèngchéng 鳳城. Lifedates unknown; the floruit given here (1020–1063) reflects his attested Rén-zōng-era career.
His distinctive scholarly contribution is the Dà bōrě jīng guān-fǎ 大般若經關法 (X448 = KR6c0227), a guān-fǎ (passage-key methodology) for the 600-fascicle Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra (T220, Xuánzàng’s translation). The Fózǔ tǒngjì j. 47 records:
- “Tang Xuánzàng’s translation of the Mahāprajñā became 600 fascicles. The Fèngchéng Xuěyuè-dàshī Dàyǐn used the 103 fascicles of the ‘Hard-to-Believe-and-Understand Section’ (Nán-xìn-jiě-pǐn 難信解品) and made a ‘passage-through’ method, transmitting it to later students. In the Chúnxī era (1174–1189), there appeared a śramaṇa whose origin was unknown, who carted this sūtra and arrived at Sì-míng’s Yǒng-dōng. The local resident Wò Chéngzhāng met him on the road and said: ‘My cart-load sūtra I can all chant from memory.’ Chéngzhāng pulled out several fascicles and chanted them, and was greatly surprised. The śramaṇa said: ‘If you can pass through its key passages, then the entire 103-fascicle text can be recited from memory.’ [Chéngzhāng] joyfully received the teaching, and afterwards engraved blocks for circulating the passage-key method, in order to transform worldly people.”
The guān-fǎ (passage-key methodology) is a distinctive late-imperial Chinese Buddhist mnemonic-pedagogical method: by mastering the structure-keys of a long sūtra’s most difficult section (here, the Nán-xìn-jiě-pǐn of the Mahāprajñā), the student gains the capacity to memorise and recite the entire long text. Dàyǐn’s guān-fǎ on the Mahāprajñā is one of the most ambitious such methodologies in the Chinese Buddhist canon.