Ch'eng-kuan on the Hua-yen Trinity

By Robert M. Gimello
The University of Arizona

Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal
No. 9 (July 1996)
pp. 341-411


 

 

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Summary

    One of the interpretive devices that Ch'eng-kuan (澄觀) is famous for having employed to distill the essence of the vast Mahāvaipulya Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra (Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching [大方廣佛華嚴經]) was a series of variations on the contemplative theme (kuan-men 觀門) of the complete interfusion (yüan-jung 圓融) of the scripture's three chief protagonists (san-sheng 三聖) -- the Buddha Vairocana (Pi-lu-che-na 毘盧遮那) and the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī (Wen-shu-shih-li 文殊師利) and Samantabhadra (P'u-hsien 普賢). By aligning these three powerful sacred persons with a number of philosophical categories that he believed to be central to the sūtra -- categories like "cause" (yin 因), "fruition" (kuo 果), "faith" (hsin 信), "understanding" (chieh 解), "insight" (chih 智), "practice" (hsing 行), "principle" (li 理), etc. -- he provided a focal point at which the rich and vivid meditative and liturgical lives of Hua-yen devotees could be made to converge with their philosophical reflections.

    Although Ch'eng-kuan invoked this device in several of his writings, his most concerted development of it is a short essay entitled San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men, which appears to have been written relatively late in his long career.

    Like many important Hua-yen texts, this essay seems to have been lost in China not long after its author's death. However, it was preserved in Korea and Japan and from the latter country was reintroduced to China in the last years of nineteenth century. Neither in China nor in the West has it yet been adequately studied.

    The core of the present article is a critical edition of the Chinese text of the essay based on a careful comparison of all available versions and presented

 

 

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together with a copiously annotated English translation. The edition translation are preceded by a brief interpretive introduction and followed by an appendix in which are given: a detailed discussion of the work's textual history, detailed accounts of its various editions, and descriptions of its several surviving paraphrases and commentaries.

 

Key words: 1. Ch'eng-kuan 2. Vairocana 3. Samantabhadra 4. Hua-yen 5. Mañjuśrī

 

 

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Ch'eng-kuan on the Hua-yen Trinity

By Robert M. Gimello
The University of Arizona

At the turn of the ninth century the eminent Buddhist cleric Ch'eng-kuan 澄觀 (738-839, a.k.a. Ch'ing-liang kuo-shih 清涼國師) was at the height of his career and was recognized throughout China as one of the most saintly and learned Buddhist monks of the day. While residing in major monasteries located in or near the T'ang capital of Ch'ang-an or in the subsidiary capital of Taiyuan he was often sought out by clerics and laymen who came requesting the benefit of his teaching. At some point in this period he was approached by certain high-ranking lay disciples -- court officials, in all likelihood -- who asked him to explain a curious and presumably significant feature of a particular scripture on which he was held to be the highest living authority. The scripture was the Mahāvaipulya Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra (Ta fang-kuang fo hua-yen ching 大方廣佛華嚴經) -- The Great Expansive Scripture of the Buddha's Flower Garland -- and the puzzling feature on which he was consulted was the fact that in this sūtra, unlike all others, the Buddha remains absolutely and always silent while the actual discourse is conducted by various members of his cosmic assembly, particularly by the two great bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī (Wen-shu shih-li 文殊師利) and Samantabhadra (P'u-hsien 普賢). Sūtras, it must be recalled, are by definition buddhavacana (fo-shuo 佛說), the ipsissima verba of the Buddha. Strange sūtra, then, in which the Buddha never speaks! And that this resounding silence should be sustained throughout what was actually one of the longest of all Mahāyāna scriptures made it all the more intriguing. What was its significance?

That such a question was put to Ch'eng-kuan was not only a tribute to his illustrious stature but also an acknowledgment of the fact that he had devoted most of his long life to the exhaustive study of this particular text. Indeed, it was not long after his death that he was acclaimed as the "fourth patriarch" of the "school" or lineage of Buddhism that the text had spawned, the Hua-yen tsung 華嚴宗. Although he had studied other traditions as well -- most notably Ch'an 禪 (especially the Ho-tse 荷澤 and Niu-t'ou 牛頭 varieties), Tien-t'ai 天台, and Chinese Mādhyamika

 

 

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(San-lun 三論) -- it was the Hua-yen ching that had claimed his greatest attention. It had drawn him, for example, to the Five Terraced Mountains (Wu-t'ai shan 五台山, the rugged peaks in northern Shansi, believed to be the terrestrial home of Manjuśrī). Over the course of ten or eleven years (776-787) spent there in ascetic study and reflection, years crowned by visions of the resident bodhisattva, he composed an immense commentary on the sūtra. Not satisfied with that, after leaving Wu-t'ai and taking up residence in the capital, he went on to compile an even lengthier subcommentary, a tome that serves not only as the definitive exposition of the Hua-yen ching but also as a virtual encyclopedia of Mahāyāna Buddhism as it was then known in China. These two monuments of sacred erudition -- the Hua-yen ching shu -- 華嚴經疏 (T 1735:35.503-962) and the Hua-yen ching sui-shu yen-i ch'ao 華嚴經隨疏演義鈔 (T 1736:36.1-701) -- together fill some 1,161 densely printed pages in the standard modern (Taishō) edition of the Sino-Japanese Buddhist canon, and in addition to them Ch'eng-kuan is known to have written at least thirty-three other works!

A scripture as long as the Hua-yen ching, which by Ch'eng-kuan's time had already inspired commentaries and truly daunting length, clearly stood in need of some kind of précis. Particularly if it was to speak to a wider and chiefly lay audience, some finite set of principles or hermeneutical devices had to be devised by which it could be made accessible. To this end Ch'eng-kuan had long considered the possibility of using the sūtra's three chief protagonists -- the mute ur-Buddha, Vairocana, and the eloquently voluble bodhisattvas, Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra -- as keys to the sūtra and as quintessential expressions of its fundamental themes. In the character of each figure as he is presented in the sūtra, in the narrative of their relationships with each other and with other characters (most notably the pilgrim-bodhisattva Sudhana, who is the chief focus of the sūtra's final and longest chapter), and especially in the sūtra's clearly anagogic use of all three personages as embodiments of universal truths, Ch'eng-kuan found what he considered to be a method for distilling from the enormous scripture its essential message. This stratagem had perhaps first been suggested to him by the writings of his Hua-yen predecessor, the enigmatic lay scholar, mystic, and wonder-worker Li T'ung-hsüan 李通玄 (635?-730?) who, at the beginning of the eighth century, had made some such use of the three figures in his writings. [1] In any case, there are brief discussions of the "three sages" or "three holy ones" (san-sheng 三聖), as they are commonly called, in Ch'eng-kuan's commentaries and subcommentary. [2] It seems, however, that it was not until later, when his estimable lay disciples put their question to him, that he undertook a systematic, albeit brief and highly compressed, exposition of the subject. That exposition is the very short text on which we focus in this essay, viz., the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men 三聖圓融觀門 (Contemplations of the Perfect Interfusion of the Three Holy Ones).

 

 

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Ch'eng-kuan's basic strategy in this work is to attend carefully to what the sūtra says about each of the three "holy ones," and about the relations of each to the others, and to find therein a set of basic Hua-yen themes which the holy ones are said not so much to "represent" or to "signify" as ' to "symbolize" or actually to "embody." All three are thus found to have status both as particular (albeit supernal) persons and as embodiments of universal truths.

In this way, Mañjuśrī is held to embody or symbolize especially the themes of "faith" (hsin 信), "understanding" (chieh 解), and "insight" or "wisdom" (chih 智) -- the intentionality of Mahāyāna, as it were; whereas Samantabhadra is said to constitute the "object of faith" (suo-hsin 所信), "practice" (hsing 行), and "principle" (li 理) -- the objective and actual ground of Mahāyāna truth. Moreover, Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra together are seen to comprise the order or dimension of "cause" (yin 因), i.e., the myriad powers and practices of the path, by which beings pursue and attain liberation and so stand in contrast to Vairocana, the cosmic Buddha, who is held to constitute the order or dimension of "fruition (kuo 果), i.e. ultimate realization.

This, however, is no fixed or static array of persons and virtues. Rather the whole pattern of inter-relationship among the three holy ones and what they symbolize is rendered unstable, fluid, and protean by Ch'eng-kuan's invocation of the characteristically Hua-yen notion of "perfect interfusion" or "complete communion" (yüan-jung 圓融) -- an idea which echoes the older and even more characteristically Hua-yen theme of "non-obstruction" or "mutual pervasion" (wu-ai 無礙) and one which is likely to call to the mind of the western reader certain of the cardinal principles of Christian trinitarian theology whereby the three divine persons are three and distinct, yet also one and inseparable. [3] By that principle, it is shown that cause implies or entails fruition, that faith is inherent in insight, that practice is inseparable from understanding, etc. Thus, the virtues of each holy one interfuse among themselves while also drawing the three sacred persons into a mysterious relationship of mutual identity that somehow also entailing mutual difference. Moreover, all of this is shown to have practical as well as theoretical value.

Let us then present the text, first in a critical edition of the Chinese and then in an annotated English translation.

 

 

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The San-Sheng Yüan-Jung Kuan-Men: A Critical Edition

The edition of the text printed below is the product of a comparison of the following previously published editions:

1. The Chin-ling k'o-ching ch'u 金陵刻經處 edition, otherwise known as the Yang Wen-hui 楊文會 or Yang Jen-shan 楊仁山 edition (1897).

2. The Zokuzōkyō 續藏經 edition (original edition: 1905-1912; new, corrected and expanded edition: 1973-1989).

3. The Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經 edition (1924-1931).

4. The Chung-kuo fo-chiao ssu-hsiang tzu-liao hsüan-pien 中國佛教思想資料選編 edition, otherwise known as the Chung-hua shu-chü edition (1983).

Also consulted were:

A. A paraphrase of the text preserved in the Hua-yen ching p'u-hsien hsing-yüan p'in pieh-hsing shu ch'ao 華嚴經普賢行願品別行疏鈔 (SSZZ 229:5.238a6-c20), which is Tsung-mi's subcommentary to Ch'eng-kuan's commentary on Bhadracarīpraṇidhāna, the latter having been appended by the missionary Prajñā (般若 / 智慧 744-ca. 810) to his 796-798 translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra (T 293:10.661-851), of which it comprises the fortieth and final scroll.

B. The abbreviated paraphrase of the text found the Kegon hokkai gikyō 華嚴法界義鏡 a 1295 work by the scholar-monk Gyōnen's 凝然 (available in several modern editions).

C. "The extant fragment (fascicles 1 & 2) of Gyōnen's Sanshō ennyūkan giken 三聖圓融觀義顯 a 1312 commentary on the basic text, available in the Nihon daizōkyō 日本大藏經 of 1922 (reprinted in 1970).

[Note: "T" = Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新修大藏經, 1924-1932. "SSZZ" = Shinsan zokuzōkyō 新纂續藏經, 1978-1989.]

Note that characters for which there are possibly significant variants in certain of the versions of the work are printed here in reverse type. [Note: In the internet version these characters are marked red].

For more information on these and other versions of the text see below the appendix entitled "Versions of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men."

 

 

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三聖圓融觀門

唐大華嚴寺
沙門澄觀述

夫上聖觀人設教:言不虛陳, [4] 指發揮,觸事皆通。因有 [5] 德叩 [6] 以二聖表法之二義,遂著三聖圓融觀。一毛之智觀 [7] 以度成。粗依教理,略示綱要。惟冀遠識虛 [8] 而求之焉。

三聖者,本師毘盧遮那如來,普賢文殊三大菩薩是也。大覺應世輔翼塵沙,而華嚴經中,獨標 [9] 聖為上首者,託以表法,不徒然也。

今略顯二門。一相對明表。二相融頓圓。

且初門中,三聖之內,二聖為因,如來為果。果 [10] 言想,且說二因。若悟 [11] 因之玄微,則 [12] 果海之深妙。

然二聖法門,略為三對。

一:以能信所信相對。

謂普賢表所信之法界,即在纏如來藏。故理趣般若云:『一切眾生皆如來藏。普賢菩薩自體遍故』。初會即『入如來藏身三昧』者,意在此也。
文殊表能信之心。佛名經云,一切諸佛皆因文殊而發心 者,表依信發故。善財始見發大心者,當信位故。經云:

 

 

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『文殊菩薩出生一切菩薩無休息故』。然信但有信而未能見, [13] 所信所證無二理。故無初普賢。信可始生,理唯極見。故文殊居初,普賢居後。

二:以解行相對。

普賢表所起萬行。上下諸經皆 [14] 言普賢行故。

文殊表能起之解。通解事理窮方便故。慈氏云,『汝先得見於善知識,聞菩薩行,入解脫門,皆是文殊威神力』故。又云,『文殊常為一切菩薩師故』。又云,『文殊師利心念力故』。

三:以理智相對。

普賢表所證法界。即出纏如來藏。『善財童子入其身故』。又云,『得究竟三世平等身故』。『一毛廣大即無邊者稱法性』故。『普賢身相如虛空』故。又,見普賢即得智波羅蜜者明依於理而發智故。

文殊表能證大智。本所事佛名不動智故。慈氏云,『文殊師利常為無量百千億那由他諸佛母』故。『文殊於諸經中所說法門多顯般若旨』故。又云。『從文殊師利智慧大海所出生」故。

 

 

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見後文殊方見普賢,顯其有智方證理故。是以古德銘後文殊為『智照無二相』。不現身 [15] 相者,表極智甚深,心境兩 [16] ,信解雙絕故。

又理開體用,智分權貴,故以文殊二智,證普賢體用。此之一門,古德親問三藏。言有經說,未傳此方。又此一門,亦表定慧,理本寂故,智即慧故。亦表體用,普賢理寂以為心體,文殊智照為大用故。

第二:相融顯圓者,亦二。

先:明二聖法門各自圓融。

謂文殊必因於信方能成解。有解無信,增邪見故。有信無解,長無明故。信解真正,方了本原,成其極智。極智反照,不異初心。故初發心時便成正覺。又前方便之智,不離智體。故後文殊名智照無二相。照信不殊於智。故從無身相而展右手。是以文殊三事融通隱隱。

次,普賢三事自相融者。理若無行,理終不顯。依體起行,行必稱體。由行證理,理無行外之理。由理顯行, [17] 無理外之行。故隨所證理, [18] 無不具。一證一切證,故見普賢一毛所得法門,過前不可說 [19] 倍。又是印體之用,故毛孔法門,緣起無盡。由是普賢三事涉入重重。

 

 

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二者:二聖法門互相融者。

謂要因於信,方知法界。信不信理 [20] ,信即為邪故。能所不二,不信自心有如來藏非菩薩故。

次,要藉於解,方能起行。稱解起行,行不異解。則解行不二。

次,以智是理用,體理 [21] 成智,還照於理,智與理冥,方曰真智。則理智無二。故經云。『無有如外智,能證於如。亦無智外如,為智所入。』

又,法界寂照名 [22] ,寂而常照名觀,觀窮數極,妙符乎寂,即定慧不二。

又,即體之用曰智,即用之體曰理,印體用無二。

是以文殊三事融通隱隱,即是普賢三事涉入重重。此二不異 [23] ,名普賢帝網之行。故普賢行品 [24] 上下諸經 [25] ,廣顯理事圓融,為普賢行。非獨事行,名『普賢 [26] 』。既二聖相融,而不名『文殊行』者。攝智屬理,唯一 [27] 法界,故舉一全收。 [28] 二聖法門既相融者。 [29] 則普賢因滿 [30] ,離相絕言,沒 [31] 果海。是名毘盧遮那,光明遍照,唯證相應故。法界品中,普賢之後,便偈讚佛德者,顯果相也。品初如來自入三昧,現相無言,表所證絕言,而普賢開顯放光令悟,表能證絕言。而文殊開顯者,即斯意也。 [32]

 

 

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若合三聖法門以為經目者:

普賢是『』,所證理體無不包故。

文殊是『方廣』,理上之智為業用故。又通是普賢,理含體用通為所證故。

文殊普賢二俱『華嚴』,萬行披敷,信智解行皆是因『』,用『』本寂體故。

舍那 [33]』,通圓諸因,證上體用故。

說即為『』,因言顯故。既包題目無遺。則攝大經義盡。

亦一代時教,不離於此理智等。 [34] 然上理智等並不離心。心佛眾生無差別故。若於心能了,則念念因圓,念念果滿。出現品云。『菩薩應知自心,念念常有佛成正覺』故。

而即一之異,不 [35] 外觀,勿滯言說。若與此觀相應。則觸目對境,常見三聖及十方諸菩薩。一即一切故。心境無二故。依此修行,一生不剋,三 [36] 必圓矣。

 

 

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Translation

Note: Sections headings -- in parentheses and bold-face -- are not found in the original but have been devised by the translator so as to highlight the structure of the text.

 

Contemplations of the Perfect Interfusion of the Three Holy Ones,
Expounded by Śramaṇa Ch'eng-kuan

The supreme holy one establishes his teachings on the basis of a keen observation of men. His words are not desultory but pointed and distinct, [37] penetrating all the particular circumstances on which they touch. [38] Having been asked by some eminent worthies [39] to explain the two-fold significance of the fact that [in the Flower Garland Scripture] it is the two holy ones [rather than the Buddha himself] who expound the dharma, [40] I take the opportunity to compose these "contemplations of the perfect interfusion of the three holy ones." For [one like myself, possessed of only] scant discernment, [this is a topic] hard to treat definitively. [However,] by rudimentary reliance on doctrinal formulations, I will sketch its general outlines. I hope only that [the reader] will seek after it in a spirit far removed [from delusion] and emptied of personal [bias]. [41]

"The "three holy ones" are: the primal teacher, the Tathāgata Vairocana, and the two great Bodhisattvas, Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra. As the salvific means by which the supremely enlightened one responds to the world are as numerous as the grains of sand [in the Ganges], [42] so it is of no little significance that in the Flower Garland Scripture only Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra are featured as chief protagonists and charged with the task of expressing the dharma. [43]

Let us now briefly set forth two approaches to be taken to the subject. First, we shall distinguish among [the three holy ones] so as to clarify what they outwardly express; secondly, we shall merge them with each other so as to manifest their perfect wholeness.

 

 

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(I. The Two Holy Ones in Contradistinction to One Another.)

From the former perspective, two among the three holy ones (i.e., Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra) symbolize the dimension of cause, [44] whereas the Tathāgata symbolizes the dimension of fruition. As the dimension of fruition transcends speech and thought, so let us speak [only] of the two-fold causal dimension. For if one apprehends the profound subtlety of the two-fold causal dimension then will one understand the deep wonder of the ocean of fruition.

Thus, the theme of the two holy ones consists, generally, in three kinds of distinction:

 

(I.A. The Distinction between Faith and Its Object.)

First, [Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra may be distinguished from each other] according to the distinction between faith and the object of faith. That is to say:

 

(I.A.1 Samantabhadra as the Object of Faith.)

Samantabhadra represents [45] the dharmadhātu as the object of faith, the matrix of Buddhahood (tathāgatagarbha) "entangled" [in the afflictions of saṃsāra]. [46] Therefore is it said in the Li-ch'ü po-jo (the Scripture of Definitive insight), that "all sentient beings are matrices of Buddhahood, for they are instinct with the essential nature of Samantabhadr.a" [47] Herein lies the significance of Samantabhadra's entrance into the "Samādhi of the Embryonic Tathāgata" in the Flower Garland Scripture's first assembly. [48]

 

(I.A.2 Mañjuśrī as the Faithful Mind.)

Mañjuśrī, by contrast, represents the faithful mind. According to the Sūtra of the Buddhas' Names, "All the Buddhas rely upon Mañjuśrī for the arousal of the aspiration for awakening," [49] for it is just faith's awakening [of that aspiration] that he represents. [50] Thus, it was when he first met [Mañjuśrī] that Sudhana conceived the great aspiration for awakening, for [that encounter] corresponds [symbolically] to a bodhisattva's [accession to] the stage of faith. As the [Flower Garland]

 

 

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Scripture says. "The bodhisattva Mañjuśrī ceaselessly gives birth to all the bodhisattvas." Although faith is just faith and not yet capable of immediate experience, yet the object of faith and the object of realization are not two different truths. Thus, [Sudhana] has no prior [encounter with] Samantabhadra; [rather he meets him only at the culmination of his quest]. [51] As it is faith which comes first [whereas] immediate experience [52] of the truth comes only at the end, so it is that [in the story of Sudhana's journey] Mañjuśrī comes first and Samantabhadra afterwards.

 

(I.B. The Distinction between Understanding and Practice.)

Second, [the two holy ones may be distinguished from each other] according to the distinction between understanding [53] and practice.

 

(I.B.1 Samantabhadra as Practice.)

Samantabhadra represents the myriad practices [engendered by understanding], for "the practices of Samantabhadra" are mentioned in passages found throughout the scripture. [54]

 

(I.B.2 Mañjuśrī as Understanding.)

Mañjuśrī, [by contrast], represents the understanding that engenders [practice], for to understand phenomena and principle thoroughly is also to master expedient means. As Maitreya said [to Sudhana in the Hua-yen ching], "That you have already met all the [other] spiritual benefactors (kalyānamitra), that you have learned of the practices of bodhisattvas, and that you have entered the gate of liberation -- these are all due to Mañjuśrī's spiritual power." [55] And, as is also said, "Mañjuśrī serves always as the teacher of all bodhisattvas" ... "It is because of the force of Mañjuśrī's thought." [56]

 

 

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(I.C. The Distinction between Principle and Insight.)

Third, [the two holy ones may be distinguished from each other] according to the distinction between principle [57] and insight.

 

(I.C.1 Samantabhadra as Principle, the Object of Realization.)

Samantabhadra represents the realm of truth (dharmadhātu), which is the object of realization. This is the matrix of Buddhahood (tathāgatagarbha) disentangled [from all the afflictions of saṃsāra]. [58] For, [as is said in the sūtra], "... The youth Sudhana enters [Samantabhadra's] body" ... "He attains a body wherein past, present, and future are utterly identical" ... "A single strand [of Samantabhadra's] hair is of boundless breadth, equivalent to the dharma-nature itself' ... "The body of Samantabhadra is as vast as space..." [59] Moreover, to meet Samantabhadra is just to attain the perfection of insight, and from this is it clear that insight arises from principle.

 

(I.C.2 Mañjuśrī as Insight, the Subject of Realization.)

Mañjuśrī, [by contrast], represents the great insight which effects [realization], for the Buddha whom he originally served was named "Immovable Insight." [60] As Maitreya says [in the Hua-yen ching], "Mañjuśrī is the eternal mother of all the incalculable billions of Buddhas" ... "[He is] the purport of the insight revealed in all the teachings taught in all the scriptures." And, as he says further, "it is from the ocean of Mañjuśrī's insight that [realization] arises." [61]

It is after meeting the "Latter Mañjuśrī" that Sudhana meets Samantabhadra; this shows that realization of principle follows from the existence of insight. Therefore did the Old Master [Fa-tsang] declare that the "Latter Mañjuśrī" is "[the embodiment] of the insight that illumines non-duality." [62] His invisibility symbolizes the deep profundity of his utmost wisdom, wherein mind and object are both effaced, faith and understanding both transcended. [63]

 

 

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Furthermore, principle is divided into "substance" and "function," insight into "the provisional" and "the actual." Thus, availing one's self of Mañjuśrī's two-fold wisdom, one may realize both the "substance" and the "function" of Samantabhadra. About this particular teaching the Old Master [Fa-tsang] personally queried the Trepiṭaka [Śikṣānanda], [64] who replied that there were [relevant] scriptures that had not yet reached China. Furthermore, this one teaching also expresses the relationship between concentration (samādhi) and insight (prajñā), for principle is the fundamental quiescence [of samādhi] whereas insight is nothing other than prajñā [itself]. It expresses [the relationship between] substance and function also in the sense that the quiescence of principle [embodied by] Samantabhadra is the "substance" of the mind, whereas the illumination of insight [emanating from] Mañjuśrī is the mind's "great function."

 

(II. The Complete Identity of Two Holy Ones.)

The second [perspective], that of the perfect wholeness [of the two holy ones] as revealed in their interfusion, also has two aspects.

 

(II.A. The Internal Unity of Each Holy One's Three Aspects.)

First it shall be made clear that among the themes [symbolized by each] of the two holy ones, each [single theme] naturally and completely entails [the other two].

 

(II.A.1 The Mutual Implication of Understanding, Faith, and Insight in the Person of Mañjuśrī.)

That is to say, Mañjuśrī is capable of perfect understanding only because he is grounded in faith. For any [effort at] understanding that is without faith [simply] compounds heresy, whereas faith without understanding [merely] extends ignorance. But when faith and understanding are true and correct, then does one both apprehend the original source and attain to the utmost insight. In its reflexive radiance [65] utmost insight does not differ from the mind's first stirrings toward awakening. Thus, as soon as one first arouses the aspiration for awakening one has already

 

 

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achieved its perfect fulfillment. Moreover, the preliminary insight of expedient means is not separate from insight in its very substance. Thus it is that the "Latter Mañjuśrī" is called "Insight which Illumines Nonduality." And as radiant faith does not differ from insight, so does [the sūtra show Mañjuśrī] extending a disembodied right hand to touch Sudhana's head. Such is the manifold interfusion of the three themes [symbolized by ] Mañjuśrī! [66]

 

(II.A.2. The Mutual Implication of Truth, Practice, and Substance in the Person of Samantabhadra.)

Then there is the mutual implication of Samantabhadra's three themes. If principle were without practice, then principle would never be manifest. As practice arises from substance, so practice must necessarily conform to substance. As principle is realized out of practice, so there is no principle apart from practice. And as principle manifests practice, so there is no practice apart from principle. Therefore, whichever the principle to be realized, there is no practice which does not entail it. As each single realization embodies all realizations, so do we see how each of Samantabhadra's particular teachings is ineffably greater than the last. And, as function is identical with substance, so the slightest single teaching entails an infinity [of teachings]. Such is the manifold commingling of the three themes [symbolized by] Samantabhadra.

 

(II.B. How the Characteristics of Each of the Two Holy Ones Entail Those of the Other.)

Second, the interfusion of the teachings of both holy ones.

That is to say, it is only by reliance on faith that one may come to know the dharmadhātu. For faith that is not faith in principle is [mere] error. So too, the subject of faith and its object are not two, for he is no bodhisattva who lacks faith in the Tathāgatagarbha's presence in his own mind.

Likewise is it certain that only by reliance on understanding can one generate practice. As it is in conformity with understanding that one generates practice, so

 

 

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practice is not different from understanding. Thus understanding and practice are not two.

And thus, as insight is the function of principle, so to embody principle is to accomplish insight, which in turn illumines principle. It is the fusion of insight and principle that is called "true insight." From this it follows that principle and insight are not two. Thus does the sūtra say, "There is no insight outside of suchness by which you can realize suchness; nor is there any suchness outside of insight into which insight can delve."

Moreover, the quiescent radiance of the dharmadhātu is called "stilling" (śamatha); whereas to be quiescent and yet always luminous is called "discernment" (vipaśyanā). When discernment has reached its ultimate it mysteriously coincides with quiescence, and just this is the nonduality of samādhi and prajñā.

Also, as it is just the function of substance that is called insight and the substance of function that is called principle, so substance and function are not two.

It follows then that the manifold interfusion of the three themes [symbolized by] Mañjuśrī is nothing other than the multifarious commingling of the three themes [symbolized by] Samantabhadra. The nonduality of these two is called 'the Indra's Net' practice of Samantabhadra." Thus the "Chapter on Samantabhadra's Practice," together with passages of the scripture that precede and follow it, makes it abundantly clear that it is the complete interfusion of principle and phenomena, not simply phenomenal practice, that is called "Samantabhadra practice." [67] And as the two holy ones are an amalgam, so one does not speak: [also] of a "Mañjuśrī Practice." Subsuming both insight and principle, there is only the dharmadhātu of the one mind. Thus, to adduce just one of the holy ones is to imply them both.

As the teachings of the two holy ones are interfused, so the repletion of cause [symbolized by] Samantabhadra, escaping characterization and transcending speech, merges with the ocean of fruition. This is the pervasive illumination of Vairocana's radiance, for it is only a reflex of realization. In the "[Entrance into] the Dharmadhātu" chapter [of the Hua-yen ching], after the [encounter with] Samantabhadra there are verses in praise of the qualities of the Buddha which give explosion to the dimension of fruition. At the opening of the chapter, when

 

 

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the Tathāgata spontaneously enters samādhi, the wordlessness of the event expresses the fact that what is realized transcends speech. Likewise, when Samantabhadra manifests himself, the brilliance he emits to inspire awakening [in others] expresses the fact that the subject of realization [also] transcends speech. And when Mañjuśrī manifests himself, it has the same significance.

 

(III. The Three Holy Ones in Terms of the Sūtra's Title)

If one coordinates the three holy ones with the rubrics of the scripture's [title]:

Samantabhadra [correspond to the rubric] "ta" ("great"), for there is nothing not encompassed by principle and substance, the objects of realization [that he symbolizes].

Mañjuśrī [corresponds to the rubric] "fang-kuang" ("expansive"), for insight as to principle, [which is what he symbolizes,] is his function.

Moreover, this is common also to Samantabhadra, insofar as principle [which is what he symbolizes] encompasses both substance and function, the joint objects of realization.

Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra together [correspond to the rubric] "hua-yen" ("flower ornament") for in the 'blossoming' of the myriad practices faith, insight, understanding, and practice are all the 'flowers' of cause, and they function to 'ornament' the fundamental substance. [68]

Vairocana [corresponds to the rubric] "fo" ("Buddha"), for by thoroughly perfecting all causes, he attained both substance and function.

We speak of [the text] as a "ching" ("scripture") because it is an expression relying upon speech.

As they thus embrace the whole title, with nothing left out, thus do [the three holy ones] subsume [in their persons] the entire meaning of the scripture. [69]

 

 

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(IV. The Three Holy Ones and the Mind: Concluding Remarks on Practice.)

Moreover, the teaching of the whole age does not depart from these things -- principle, insight, etc. Likewise, the aforesaid principle, insight, etc. do not depart from the mind, for among the mind, the Buddha, and sentient beings there is no distinction. If you can see clearly into the mind then, [you know that] in each moment of thought cause is being perfected and in each moment of thought fruition is being fulfilled. For, as it is said in [the Hua-yen ching's] "Chapter on The Manifestation of the Tathāgata," "the bodhisattva should know that in each and every one of his own momentary thoughts there are always buddhas attaining perfect awakening." [70]

And so, as difference that is identical with unity does not block outward discernment, do not speak in adhesion to words. If you would undertake these contemplations fix your eyes on the objective realm and see always that the three holy ones and the bodhisattvas of the ten directions are identical, one with all, and that the mind and the objective realm are not two.

Rely on this practice; if a single lifetime does not suffice, then surely three lifetimes will bring perfection.

 

 

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Appendix:

Ch'eng-kuan's San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men: Extant Versions of the Text, Its Commentaries, and Its Paraphrases

 

Outline

A. Pre-modern Versions.

1. The 1685 Edition.

2. Other Early Japanese editions (?).

B. Modern Versions.

1. The Yang Wen-hui Edition.

2. The Zokuzōkyō Edition.

a. The Original Zokuzōkyō.

b. The Taiwan Reprint of the Original Zokuzōkyō.

c. The Shinsan zokuzōkyō.

d. The Taiwan Reprint of the Shinsan zokuzōkyō.

3. The Taisho Edition (and its reprints).

4. The Chung-hua shu-chü Edition.

5. The "Tucson" Edition.

C. The Tsung-mi Paraphrase.

D. The Gyōnen Paraphrase &. Commentary.

1. The Early Japanese Acquaintance with Ch'eng-kuan.

2. Gyōnen and His Age.

3. Gyōnen and the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men.

a. The Kegon hokkai gikyō.

i. The Nihon daizōkyō Edition.

ii. The Dainihon bukkyō zensho Edition.

iii. The Bukkyō taikei Edition.

iv. The Nihon shisō taikei Edition.

v. The Kitabatake Tensei Edition.

b. The Sanshō ennyūkan giken.

c. The Kegonshū yōgi.

E. Other Relevant Texts.

1. The Sanshō kammon emman ki.

2. The Sanshō ennyū kammon kōgi.

 

 

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A. Pre-modern Versions.

The San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men was lost in China sometime during the late T'ang, Five Dynasties, or early Sung Period. It is therefore not to be found in any of the pre-modern Chinese printed editions of the Ta-tsang ching; nor was it preserved in the Tun-huang 敦煌 archives or among the Fang-shan 房山 stone-tablet inscriptions. However, it was preserved in Japan and for this reason the earliest surviving versions of the text, so far as we know, are Japanese.

The entry on this text in Ono Gemmyō 小野玄妙, Bussho kaisetsu daijiten 佛書解說大辭典 (Vol. 4, pp. 89-90) is by Yusuki Ryoei 湯次了榮. [71] Yusuki lists -- as the earliest surviving version known to him -- an early Tokugawa printed edition dated 1685 (Jōkyō 貞享 2). We have not seen this edition, and do not know where it was printed or by whom. Neither do we know what earlier version (manuscript or printing) was used by the 1685 printer as his model. The only information we have as to its provenance is what we are told by its colophon, which is reproduced in both the Taisho and Zokuzōkyō editions. It reads as follows:

貞享二年乙丑仲秋念一蓂於南都邸舌手糸竹之

"Copied during eighth lunar month (August-September) of the second year of the Jōkyō era (1685), during a month's retreat at a lodge in the Southern Capital (Nara)."

This suggests that it was based on a copy of the text, probably a manuscript copy, kept in some archive in the old capital of Nara. As the Tōdaiji 東大寺 was that city's major repository of Kegon literature, we may reasonably suppose that our anonymous seventeenth century copyist was working from a Tōdaiji manuscript, which seems no longer to exist.

Yusuki does tell us of five copies of this 1685 printing preserved in various Japanese libraries:

The Kōyasan 高野山University Library

The Kyoto Semmon Gakkō 京都專門學校 Library (i.e., a library belonging to Tōji, 東寺 the great Shingon 真言 cathedral in Kyoto)

The Taishō 太正 University Library (Tokyo)

The Kyōtō 京都 University Library

The Ōtani 大谷 University Library (Kyōtō)

 

 

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Yusuki also mentions what he calls a "kanshibon" 刊支本, copies of which may be found in the Kyōtō University and Ōtani University Libraries. I take this "kanshibon" to be either a later reprinting done from the same blocks as were used to print the 1685 edition, or a version printed from other blocks newly carved from the 1685 model. No date is given for this. [72]

In all likelihood, the first version of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men to arrive in Japan came there by way of Korea. We know that a Korean edition of the text had been published in the late eleventh century by the royal Korean scholar-monk Ŭich'ŏn 義天 (1055-1101, visitor to Sung China from May 27, 1085 until August 2, 1086) as part of his famous "Supplement" to the Tripiṭaka (the Sokchanggyŏng 續藏經 -- 1,010 titles in 4,740 scrolls). All but a few fragments of this "Supplement" were lost in the destruction wrought by the 1231 Mongol invasion of Korea, but its catalogue, published in the 1090, does survive and the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is listed therein -- see the Sin'pyŏn chejong kyojang ch'ongnok 新編諸宗教藏總錄 (T 2184:55.1166c). We cannot be sure where Ŭich'ŏn himself found the work but, since there are indications that it had been lost in China by his day, it is probable that he found it somewhere in Korea. (Bear in mind that Hua-yen flourished in Korea throughout the period from the eighth through the eleventh century and so Korean monasteries had extensive collections of early Hua-yen literature.)

We also know that the medieval Japanese acquired many Chinese Buddhist texts from Korea. The San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men was probably one such. In any case, we can be certain that the work was circulating in Japan by the early thirteenth century because it was cited in a work written in 1220 by Myōe 明惠 (1173-1232) -- see below -- and in the course of the subsequent century it was cited, summarized, and commented upon it in several works by Gyōnen 凝然 (1240-1321) -- again, see below. The 1685 printed edition of the work was probably based on some earlier printed or manuscript version that may well have derived in turn from the same version or versions that Myōe and Gyōnen had used.

 

B. Modern Versions.

1. The Yang Wen-hui 楊文會 or Chin-ling k'e-ching-ch'u 金陵刻經處 Edition.

In the year 1897 (Kuang-hsü 光緒) the eminent scholar-official and Buddhist layman, Yang Wen-hui楊文會 (1837- 1911, tzu 字: Jen-shan 仁山), printed a copy of the San-sheng yüan-Jung

 

 

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kuan-men at the Chin-ling Scriptural Press, an institution he had established a few decades earlier in Nanking.

Yang was committed to reprinting Buddhist texts in the wake of the widespread destruction of Buddhist libraries by the T'ai-p'ing rebels. Also, he had become a close friend of the Japanese scholar Nanjō Bunyū 南條文雄 (variant spelling: Nanjio Bunyiu), whom he had met in England in the 1880's while Yang was serving in China's legation in London and Nanjo was a graduate student at Oxford. Through this friendship Yang came to know that there were many important Chinese Buddhist texts preserved in Japan and Korea that had been lost in China. From around 1890 on Yang made a concerted effort to acquire as many such texts as possible. Nanjō and a number of Nanjō's Japanese colleagues (some of whom were active in Korea) assisted him in this effort. One of the texts Yang acquired in this way was the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men. Yang does not tell us what version of the work he received from Japan, but we can guess that it was a copy of the 1685 printed edition discussed above. However, Yang was apparently not willing simply to reprint the Japanese edition as he found it. Rather he submitted it to some editorial scrutiny of his own and added his own punctuation (as it happens, his readings and punctuation are usually preferable to those found m the various Japanese versions of the text).

By virtue of this 1897 edition, Yang Wen-hui may be said to have "re-introduced" the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men to China after an absence of approximately a thousand years.

A photo-reprint of Yang's 1897 edition was published in 1975, in Taipei, by Ho-lo t'u-shu ch'u-pan-she 河洛圖書出版社, as part of a two-volume collection of Hua-yen texts entitled Hua-yen i-hai 華嚴義海. All the works in this anthology had previously been published by Yang Wen-hui and several of them, like our Ch'eng-kuan text, had been retrieved from Korea and Japan. The San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is found at the end of volume I (these volumes do not have continuous pagination).

 

2. The Zokuzōkyō 續藏經 Edition.

During the years 1905-1912 a group of Japanese scholars based in Kyoto and working under the direction of Maeda Eun 前田惠雲 (1857-1930) and Nakano Tatsue 中野達惠 (1871-1934) gathered together a large collection of 1,757 Chinese Buddhist works (in 7,148 kan 卷) and published them in the form of a "Supplement" to the "Manji" 卍字 edition of the Tripiṭaka (full

 

 

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title: [Manji] Dainihon kōtei zōkyō卍字大日本校訂藏經) which had been published only a few years earlier (in 1902-1905). The 1905-1912 "Supplement" consists mostly of works preserved in various Japanese monastic and private archives which had not previously incorporated into any Tripiṭaka collection (although some of them had been included in the supplements to the "Chia-hsing" 嘉興 edition of the canon published in late Ming / early Ch'ing China, i.e., during the period extending from 1579 to 1677). [73]

This Japanese Tripiṭaka Supplement -- commonly referred to simply as the Zokuzōkyō -- contains the second modern edition of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men, and the first edition ever to be included in a Tripiṭaka collection. The Zokuzōkyō editors used the 1685 edition as their base text (as is indicated by their inclusion of the 1685 colophon). They also compared that base text with another version, but they do not tell us what that other version was. [74]

In the 1920's the Zokuzōkyō was reprinted by the Commercial Press (Shang-wu yin-shu kuan 商務印書館) of Shanghai, in the original format; this reprint is now rare. More recently it has been reprinted again (in an unauthorized or "pirated" edition) in Taiwan, first by the Chung-kuo fo-chiao hui 中國佛教會 later by Hsin-wen-feng 新文豐 publishers. This Taiwan reprint adopted a format different from the original -- 150 western-style bound volumes, rather than stitched fascicles and cases -- and it made no distinctions among "series" and "sub-series." Many Chinese and western scholars, when citing texts in this Taiwan reprint of the Zokuzōkyō, will refer to it as the Wan-tzu hsü-tsang ching, or simply as the Hsü-tsang ching (abbreviation: "HTC"). In this reprint the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men appears in Vol. 103.

More recently still the Japanese have produced a revised version of the Zokuzōkyō, known as the Shinsan dainihon zokuzōkyō 新纂大日本續藏經, or simply as the Shinsan zokuzōkyō (abbreviation: "SSZZ"). It is published by Kokusho Kankōkai 國書刊行會 of Tokyo. Publication began in 1973 and was not concluded until 1989. The result is a great improvement over the original edition and its Taiwan reprints. [75]

 

3. The Taisho 大正 Edition.

Between the years 1924 and 1934 a consortium of Japanese Scholars under the direction of Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 (1866-1945), Watanabe Kaigyoku 渡部海旭 (1872-1932), and Ono Gemmyō 小野亦妙 (1884-1939) produced a "critical edition" of the Sino-Japanese Buddhist

 

 

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canon which has ever since served as the standard citation edition. Its full title is Taishō shinshū daizōkyō (The Great Collection of Scriptures Newly Compiled during the Taisho Era [1912-1925] - abbreviation: "T"), and it comprises a total of 3,360 different works in 100 bound volumes. Vols. 1-55 contain texts taken principally from earlier Chinese, Korean, and Japanese editions of the canon; vols. 56-84 contain works composed in Japan and previously excluded from editions of the canon; vol. 85 contain mostly works found at Tun-huang; vols. 86-96 contain illustrated texts (zuzo 圖像) from the Japanese esoteric (mikkyo 密教) traditions; and vols. 98-100 (known separately as the Shōwa hōbō sōmokuroku 昭和法寶目錄 -- The Showa Era's Comprehensive Catalogue of Dharma Treasuries) contain reprints of seventy-seven earlier catalogues of the canon.

The Taishō editors used the Korean edition of the canon as their basis, but, when possible, they compared texts in that Tripiṭaka with versions preserved in other canons or with separately published versions. They also added many texts that had not previously been included in any version of the Tripiṭaka, neither the Korean nor any other. [76]

The Taishō edition of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men, like the Zokuzōkyō edition, is based on the 1685 edition mentioned above, as compared with other versions which (unfortunately) are not identified.

In the Taishō, the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men has the serial number 1882 and may be found in volume 45, on pages 671a-672a.

The Taishō has also been "pirated" in Taiwan and in the Mainland China. I do not know the details of the Mainland reprint, but in Taiwan it was reprinted first by the Chung-kuo Fo-chiao Hui 中國佛教會 and later by Hsin-wen feng 新文豐.

 

4. The Chung-hua shu-chü 中華書局 Edition.

In the 1980's a group of Chinese scholars led by Shih Chün (Shi Jun) 石峻, Lou Yü-lieh (Lou Yulie) 樓宇烈, Fang Li-t'ien (Fang Litian) 方立天, Hsü K'ang-sheng (Xu Kangsheng) 許抗生, and Lo Shou-ming (Luo Shouming) 樂壽明 multi-volume anthology (eight volumes have appeared so far) of basic Buddhist texts for use primarily in colleges and universities. This anthology is entitled Chung-kuo fo-chiao ssu-hsiang tzu-liao hsüan-pien (Zhongguo fojiao sixiang ziliao

 

 

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xuanbian) 中國佛教思想資料選編 and it is published by Chung-hua shu-chü (Zhongguo shuju) of Peking. The third volume in this series (第二卷。第二冊) contains a selection of Hua-yen texts, including the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men (Sansheng yuanrong guanmen) [pp. 375-378].

This edition is based on the Yang Wen-hui edition mentioned above, but is printed horizontally and with some additions and with some changes (not always reliable) in punctuation, etc.

 

The "Tucson Edition."

This is the critical, newly punctuated edition of the text provided in this article. It is based on a comparison of all other available editions (including the Tsung-mi and Gyōnen texts discussed below), with all variant readings noted in endnotes.

It was prepared on a Macintosh computer using the "Nisus Writer" word processing program (version 4.07) together with the "Apple Chinese Language Kit." It is printed horizontally, using the National Taiwan University "Kai" 揩 font.

 

C. The Tsung-mi 宗密 Paraphrase.

A paraphrase of Ch'eng-kuan's essay -- with certain interesting elisions and additions -- may be found in the second of the six chüan of Tsung-mi's (780-841) Hua-yen ching hsing-yüan-p'in shu ch'ao 華嚴經行願品疏鈔 (SSZ 229:5.238a6-c20).

This work by Tsung-mi has its roots in the final phase of the transmission to China of the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra and its component scriptures, a phase datable to the Chen-yüan 貞元 era of the T'ang (785-805) or, more precisely, to the last decade of the eighth century. Late in the year 795 the Emperor Te-tsung 德宗 (r. 779-805) received, as a tribute gift from the King of Uḍra (the region of India corresponding roughly to the modern state of Orissa), a 16,700 śloka Sanskrit manuscript of the Gaṇḍavyūha that the Indian monarch is said to have copied out in his own hand. The following year Te-tsung ordered the Kashmiri monk, Trepiṭaka Prajñā (Po-jo san-tsang 般若三藏; 744-810?), who was then residing in Ch'ang-an, to translate this manuscript. In this task Prajñā was assisted by a number of eminent Chinese monks, including Ch'eng-kuan. They began their work in the summer of 796, finishing in the early spring of 798, and their

 

 

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effoits yielded a forty chüan work entitled Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching 大方廣佛華嚴經 (T 293:10.661a-851c). The title of this work, of course, is the very same as that which had been used to designate both of the two earlier Chinese translations of the complete Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, and for this reason Prajñā's translation is often mistakenly referred to as "third translation of the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra." In fact, however, it is a translation of only the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra, a work which continued to circulate as an independent scripture even though it had also been incorporated into the Buddhāvataṃsaka, as its final chapter, under the title Ju fa-chieh p'in 入法界品.

It is a special feature of the Prajñā translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha that, in addition to being the most ample of the three Chinese versions, it had appended to it another originally independent work that would soon become a standard and important component of the Hua-yen corpus, viz., the P'u-hsien hsing-yüan 普賢行願 ([Samanta]bhadracaryā-praṇidhāna-gāthāḥ; sometimes known by an irregular abbreviation of its title simply as the Bhadracarī). This hymn interspersed with passages of prose is an eloquent, classical, and widely influential expression of Mahāyāna piety. It survives in its original hybrid Sanskrit in two different traditions of redaction. One such tradition may be called Sino-Japanese for it consists in Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in Japan and traceable back to the Sanskrit manuscripts that Kūkai and later ninth century Japanese visitors to China had brought back home with them. These and their derivatives are the manuscripts on which the great eighteenth century Japanese Sanskritist Jiun 慈雲 (1718-1804) based his edition and study of the hymn. The other textual tradition is Nepalese and consists in a considerably later lineage of manuscripts. Before Prajñā the Bhadracarī (or certain antecedents thereof) had been translated several times into Chinese -- first, by Nieh Tao-chen 聶道真 (fl. ca. 280-312) of the Western Chin under the title San-man-t'o-p'o-t'o-luo p'u-sa ching 三曼陀跋羅菩薩經 (T 483:14.666c-668c); second, by Buddhabhadra in the early fifth century, under the title Wen-shu-shih-li fa-yüan ching 文殊師利發願經 (T 296:10.878c879c); and third, in 754, by the great Tantric master Amoghavajra, under the title P'u-hsien p'u-sa hsing-yüan tsan 普賢菩薩行願讚 (T 297:10.880a-881c). There are also two other anonymous translations found among the Tun-huang manuscripts -- the P'u-hsien p'u-sa hsing-yüan wang-ching 普賢菩薩行願王經 (Stein mss. # 2324 & 2361; T 2907:85.1452c-1454a) and the Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching p'u-hsien p'u-sa hsing-yüan wang-p'in 大方廣佛華嚴經普賢菩薩行願王品 (Stein ms. 32384; T 2908:85.1454a-1455b) -- which may or may not have been made prior to Prajñā's translation.

 

 

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The core of the Bhadracarī, in Prajñā's version, is a rendition in sixty-two stanzas of the ten vows of practice that Samantabhadra tells Sudhana are essential to completion of the bodhisattva path: (1) to pay homage to all the buddhas; (2) to glorify the qualities of all the tathāgatas; (3) to make ample offerings to all the buddhas; (4) to confess and repent of all one's sins; (5) to rejoice in the merits of others; (6) always to request the preaching of the dharma; (7) to entreat enlightened beings to remain in the world; (8) always to study the teachings of the buddha; (9) always to respond to sentient beings according to their various needs; and (10) to dedicate all merits to sentient beings that they may achieve buddhahood. The profession of these vows seems to have been at the heart of Mahāyāna ritual practice and in that ritual context they came also to serve as a link between Mahāyāna and the nascent Vajrayāna traditions.

Prajñā's translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha and Bhadracarī was completed in 798. More than ten years prior to that date -- i.e., by 787 -- Ch'eng-kuan had finished the Hua-yen ching shu 華嚴經疏, his commentary on the eighty chüan Śikṣānanda translation of the Buddhāvataṃsaka. During the intervening decade, we presume, he had composed his great subcommentary, the Yen-i ch'ao 演義鈔. These two encyclopedic works served as vehicles for Ch'eng-kuan's thought as it had developed up to that point. They might therefore be characterized as products of roughly the middle-period of his remarkably long career. However, his Hua-yen thought had not then ceased to evolve. The appearance of Prajñā's new Chinese rendition of the Gaṇḍavyūha, together with the Bhadracarī, was an occasion for the further development and consolidation of his vision of Hua-yen in particular and Mahāyāna in general. An index of this further development is his commentary on Prajñā's translation, the ten chüan work known either as the Commentary on the Hua-yen Ching Newly Translated During the Chen-yüan Era (Chen-yüan hsin-shih Hua-yen ching shu 貞元新譯華嚴經疏) or the Commentary on the Practice Vows Chapter of the Hua-yen Ching (Hua-yen ching hsing-yüan p'in shu華嚴經行願品疏) -- SSZZ 227:5.48b-198c. We are not sure exactly when this work was completed, but it is reasonable to assume that it dates to the first decade of the ninth century. In it we find a systematic summary of Ch'eng-kuan's more mature Hua-yen thought, framed especially in terms of Samantabhadra's vows.

Ch'eng-kuan's commentary on Prajñā's translation was sufficiently interesting to his disciple Tsung-mi (780-841) that the latter composed (we know not exactly when) an analytical chart or outline of it, the Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching p'u-hsien hsing-yüan p'in shu k'o-wen 大方廣佛華嚴經普賢行願品疏科文 (SSZZ 228.5.199-219), as well as a kind of selective subcommentary entitled Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching p'u-hsien hsing-yüan p'in pieh-hsing shu ch'ao 大方廣佛華嚴經普賢行願品別行疏鈔, in six chüan (SSZZ 229:5.220b-329b). It is in the last mentioned

 

 

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work, in which Tsung-mi selects certain passages in Ch'eng-kuan's commentary and supplements them with his own explanations, that we find Tsung-mi's paraphrase of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men (SSZZ 229:5.238a6-c20).

Unlike other of Ch'eng-kuan's works, the Hsing-yüan p'in shu survived in China, as well as Korea and Japan. The colophon to the surviving Japanese version of the work refers to an early Southern Sung edition and, although it was never included in any of the Chinese printed editions of the canon, it is mentioned in two seventeenth century scripture catalogues (the Ta-ming shih-chiao hui-mu i-men k'ao-shih 大明釋教彙目義門考釋, compiled late in the Wan-li 萬曆 period [1573-1619], and the Yüeh-tsang chih-chin k'ao-shih 閱藏知津考釋). The Zokuzōkyō edition on which we mostly depend today is based on what appears to be an early fifteenth century (1409?) Japanese manuscript that Maeda Eun had found in the private collection of a Mr. Shimada Shigemoto 島田蕃根 (note: the pronunciation of Shimada's personal name is uncertain). According to its colophons this manuscript (the present whereabouts of which is unknown) was itself based on two imported printed versions -- Ŭich'ŏn's 1095 edition printed for inclusion in his Tripiṭaka Supplement, a copy of which had apparently found its way to the Kōzanji 高山寺, Myōe's temple in the northwestern suburbs of Kyoto, and an early Southern Sung edition.

Tsung-mi's subcommentary also survived in China and in fact came to be even better known there and elsewhere in East Asia than the Ch'eng-kuan work on which it was based. It was included in Chinese editions of the Tripiṭaka, for example -- the supplements to the "Chia-hsing" 嘉興 edition (compiled between 1589 and 1677) and the "Lung" 龍 edition (compiled between 1735 and 1738). There is also a separately published Japanese edition printed in 1673, copies of which may be found in several Japanese libraries. The compilers of the Zokuzōkyō do not tell us which version(s) they used as the model(s) for their edition.

Tsung-mi's paraphrase is a relatively free and concise rewording of Ch'eng-kuan's text. Its most salient differences from the original are its lack of the section dealing with the words of the scripture's title and its addition of an illustrative quotation from the Tantra of the Mañjuśrī of a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Bowls (see the notes to the body of this article).

 

 

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D. The Gyōnen 凝然 Commentaries (With General Remarks on Kegon Studies in the Japan of Gyōnen's Time). [77]

1. The Early Japanese Acquaintance with Ch'eng-kuan.

We do not know exactly when the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men was first brought to Japan, but we do know that some of Ch'eng-kuan's better known and longer works arrived there rather early.

The first of them seems to have been his basic commentary on the eighty-scroll Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, the Hua-yen-ching shu 華嚴經疏 (T 1735:35). which reached Japan while Ch'eng-kuan was still alive. It was imported in 806 by Kūkai 空海 (774-835, a.k.a. Kōbō Daishi 弘法大師), the founder of the Shingon 真言 school of Japanese Buddhism, who had spent nearly two years studying in China (see Kūkai's Goshōrai mokuroku 御請來目錄 T 2161:55.1064a2). It is not unlikely that Kūkai actually met Ch'eng-kuan in Ch'ang-an (although no mention of such a meeting is to be found in the records of Kūkai's travels).

In 813 Kūkai lent his copy of the Hua-yen-ching shu to Saichō 最澄 (767-822, a.k.a. Dengyō Daishi 傳教大師), the founder of the Tendai 天台 school in Japan, who had only recently established the headquarters of his new school on Mt. Hiei 比叡山, northeast of the new Japanese capital of Kyoto (then called Heian 平安). Saichō had also visited T'ang China, during the years 804-805, and he too brought many books back to Japan with him, but apparently he did not bring back anything by Ch'eng-kuan. The records tell us that Saichō returned all or part of the Hua-yen-ching shu to Kūkai in 813 and that Kūkai then presented the work as a gift to an unnamed monk at Tōdaiji.

Later Tendai travellers to China -- e.g., Ennin 圓仁 (814-891, a.k.a. Jikaku Daishi 慈覺大師), who visited China in the years 838-847 (see his Nihonkoku jōwa gonen nittō shinrai shōkyō mokuroku 日本國承和五年入唐新來聖教目錄 -- T2165:55.1083bl3), and Enchin 圓珍 (814-891, a.k.a. Chishō Daishi 智證大師), who was there from 853 to 858 (see his Chishō daishi shōrai mokuroku 智證大師請來 T 2173:55.1105b5-6), also brought back copies of the Hua-yen-ching shu, and Enchin brought back as well a copy of Ch'eng-kuan's autocommentary thereon, the Yen-i ch'ao 演義鈔 (T 1736:36).

 

 

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Thus, it was in the early Heian period, and chiefly through the agency of Shingon and Tendai monks, that Ch'eng-kuan's works were first introduced into Japan. Not until the later Heian period, however, did his writings come to be a central focus of study in the Kegon tradition itself. Crucial to this development, it would seem, was the late eleventh century Korean publication of Ch'eng-kuan's works and the introduction of those Korean editions to Japan. As noted above, in the late 1080's and early 1090's the royal Korean monk Ŭich'ŏn sponsored the collection and reprinting of numerous Buddhist texts of native East Asian authorship, i.e., works most of which had not yet been included in Tripiṭaka collections (such collections being then largely reserved for works composed in India and only translated into Chinese). Despite Ŭich'ŏn's formal affiliation with the Tien-t'ai (Korean: Ch'ŏnt'ae) tradition, his principal intellectual interests were in Hua-yen (Korean: Hwaŏm) and so Hua-yen works were especially well represented among the texts he assembled and published as part of his Tripiṭaka Supplement. His catalogue, for example, lists no fewer than seventeen of Ch'eng-kuan's writings, plus scores of other Hua-yen works by earlier and later figures. Many of these are now lost but even the very fact that they had once existed would be quite unknown to us had Ŭich'ŏn not listed them; in fact, Ŭich'ŏn's catalogue is probably the single best premodern bibliography of Chinese Hua-yen literature.

A number of the texts collected and reprinted by Ŭich'ŏn soon found their way to Japan, including at least one, but probably more than one, by Ch'eng-kuan. Thus, in the Tōdaiji library, for example, there survives today a Japanese transcription of the Hua-yen ching yen-i ch'ao 華嚴經演義鈔 (T 1736:35) that was based on the Korean printed edition published by Ŭich'ŏn less than a decade earlier. The blocks for the Korean xylograph edition were carved over the course of three years, from 1094 to 1096, and the Japanese transcription was done in 1103 at the Shōkaiji 性海寺 in Harima 播磨 (i.e., modern Hyogo 兵庫 Prefecture -- near Ōsaka 大坂, in medieval times a center of trade with Korea). [78]

One of the earliest medieval Kegon scholars of stature to make a concerted study of Ch'eng-kuan's writings was Myōe Shōnin 明惠上人 (1173-1232, a.k.a. Kōben 高辨), the great visionary and Japanese pioneer in the amalgamation of Kegon and Mikkyō who was even better known as a great scourge of sectarian Pure Land Buddhism. Apropos of Hua-yen, Myōe is best known for his study of the writings of the T'ang dynasty lay scholar of Hua-yen, Li T'ung-hsuan 李通玄 (635? - 730?, a.k.a. Tsao-po Ta-shih 棗柏大師 or Li Ch'ang-che 李長者), but he was quite well versed in Ch'eng-kuan's works as well. That Myōe knew the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is

 

 

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indicated by the fact that he cites it in his Kegon shuzen kanshō nyū gedatsu mongi 華嚴修禪觀照入解脫門義 (T 2331:72.78b22-23 & 80c9). In fact, this appears to be the earliest Japanese reference we have to the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men. The 49 year-old Myōe wrote it in 1220 (Jōkyū 承久 2). We can therefore take that date as the terminus ad quem for the introduction of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men to Japan; but of course it could well have arrived even earlier.

The theme of the mutual identity of the three sages must have been of special interest to Myōe not only because of the visions he often had of these figures but also because their communion is a theme also treated -- albeit in a somewhat different way -- by his much admired Elder Li.

 

2. Gyōnen and His Age.

Myōe's interest in Ch'eng-kuan and the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is noteworthy and was no doubt maintained among his disciples. However, it was not in the Myōe lineage that Ch'eng-kuan and his Contemplations of the Perfect interfusion of the Three Sages would achieve their highest Japanese recognition. Rather, that was to be the accomplishment of scholar monks in a tradition of Kegon learning quite distinct from Myōe's. I refer to Sōshō Shōnin 宗性上人 (1202-1278), and especially to his foremost intellectual heir, Gyōnen Daitoku 凝然大德 (1240-1321).

Sōshō was Prior (Inju 院主) of the Sonshōin 尊勝院, a subsidiary cloister within the Tōdaiji complex founded in 960 by Kōchi 光智 (894-979 -- the monk traditionally regarded as the tenth Japanese "Patriarch" of Kegon). The custom at the Sonshōin was to emphasize the older scholastic traditions of Buddhism, to organize them according a Kegon perspective, and to preserve their integrity vis & vis the more recently imported Shingon and Tendai esoteric traditions that were dominant through most of the Heian period. Sōshō was true to this Kegon scholastic heritage -- indeed, he reconsecrated the Sonshōin to the explicit purpose of asserting Kegon over and against Mikkyō -- whereas his more famous near contemporary, Myōe, was drawn especially to those aspects of Kegon that could most readily be combined with Shingon esoterism. Sōshō was also a devotee of Maitreya and one of the first chroniclers of the Japanese monastic tradition. In matters of Kegon thought per se he was especially indebted to Fa-tsang and Ch'eng-kuan. [79]

Sōshō's disciple Gyōnen was probably the single most learned and prolific Japanese monk of his day. His erudition was truly catholic in its scope and he is regarded not only as the chief reviver

 

 

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and systematizer of Kegon thought in medieval Japan but also as a leading authority on monastic discipline (Vinaya, 律, Chinese: Lü, Japanese: Ritsu) and an influential Pure Land thinker. Probably the most famous of Gyōnen's many writings is the Hasshū kōyō 八宗綱要 (available in many editions), which has been for centuries the standard "textbook" on the basic doctrines of the six schools of Nara Buddhism and the two schools of Heian Buddhism. This is a work of broad learning, all the more impressive when one realizes that it was composed in 1268, when Gyōnen was only 28 years old! His scholarship developed steadily throughout his long career, however, and his later works reflect even greater erudition. [80]

    The Six Nara Schools are:

Sanron 三論 (Chinese: San-lun = Madhyamaka)

Jōjitsu 成實 (Chinese: Ch'eng-shih = *Tattvasiddhi or *Satyasiddhi)

Hossō 法相 (Chinese: Fa-hsiang = Yogācāra / Vijñānavāda, a.k.a. 唯識 Chinese: Wei-shih, Japanese: Yuishiki)

Kusha 俱舍 (Chinese: Chü-she = Abhidharmakośa)

Kegon 華嚴 (Chinese: Hua-yen)

Ritsu 律 (Chinese: Lü = Vinaya, a.k.a. 戒律 Chinese: Chieh-lü, Japanese: Kairitsu)

    The Two Heian Schools are

Tendai 天台 (Chinese: Tien-t'ai)

Shingon 真言 (Chinese: Chen-yen)

    Although the title of Gyōnen's work refers to hasshū (8 schools) it actually treats also of a ninth and a tenth, viz., Zen 禪 (Chinese: Ch'an) and Jōdo 淨土 (Chinese: Ching-t'u).

Gyōnen's chief mentor, under whom he was ordained and who brought him to Tōdaiji's Kaidan'in 戒壇院 (Ordination Hall) where he lived almost all of his studious life, was Sōshō's Tōdaiji confrere, Enshō 圓照 (1221-1277). Enshō was a major figure in his own right. He first studied Sanron 三論 (i.e.. East Asian Madhyamaka) Buddhism, but was also well versed in Shingon and in non-sectarian Pure Land (Jōdo 淨土), for the "Sanron" studied at Tōdaiji in those days was actually an amalgam of Madhyamaka doctrine (kyōri 教理) with Mikkyō practice and Jōdo devotionalism. Enshō's Pure Land beliefs were shaped in part by his studies under Ryōhen

 

 

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Shōnin 良遍上人 (1195-1252), a Hossō 法相 scholar of the Kōfukuji 興福寺 (another great Nara temple) who compiled the Kanjin kakumushō 觀心學薨鈔 (T2312:71), the classic Japanese summary of Yogācāra doctrine. [81] From this fact one may speculate that Enshō's Pure Land Buddhism was of the sort that had long been associated with Yogācāra, not the sectarian variety newly promulgated in Japan by Hōnen, et al. One should note too that Enshō, although an adherent of the so-called "Old Buddhism," also studied yet another kind of Buddhism which, in the Japan of his day, was among the "newest," at least in the sense that it was one of those most recently imported from China. I refer to Ch'an or Zen 禪 Buddhism, which Enshō studied for a time at Kyoto's Tōfukuji 東福寺 under the tutelage of Enni Ben'en 圓爾辯圓 (1202-1280), a Rinzai 臨濟 (Chinese: Lin-chi) monk who had lived in Southern Sung China from 1235 to 1241. Enshō was also an administrator and fund-raiser, as well as a scholar-monk. He was entrusted, for example, to complete the rebuilding of the Kaidan'in which, like the Daibutsuden 大佛殿 (the main hall at Tōdaiji containing the colossal bronze Buddha) and most other building Tōdaiji buildings, had been destroyed in the great conflagration of December 7, 1180 when nearly the whole of the Tōdaiji complex was torched by Taira 平 forces in the great civil wars between the Taira and Minamoto 源 clans. This was a conflict in which the Nara monasteries, which then had their own standing armies, were deeply implicated. As master of the Ordination Hall, Enshō is said to have presided over the ordination of thousands of monks.

In matters of Kegon doctrine Gyōnen was a disciple of Sōshō, and Kegon was certainly in Gyōnen's view the paramount school of Buddhist thought. However, he studied also with several other eminent scholar-monks of the day and it is quite likely that to him Kegon's paramountcy consisted less in any autonomous superiority than in its ecumenical capacity to encompass all forms of Buddhism.

Gyōnen's chief Vinaya teacher, for example, was Shōgen 證玄 (d.u.), the rebuilder of another important Nara monastery, the Tōshōdaiji 唐招提寺, which had been founded in the eighth century as the residence of the great Chinese Vinaya expert Chien-chen 鑑真 (687-763, Japanese: Ganjin), the monk who first conducted ordinations at Tōdaiji's Kaidan'in 戒壇院. Of course, the subject of Vinaya would have been important to Gyōnen in his role as Prior of the Kaidan'in, a position to which he succeeded after Enshō's death. However, it was important to him also because there was a general renewal of interest in Vinaya during the reformist Kamakura period when the Tendai Buddhism of Mt. Hiei was under attack as corrupt and when its corruption was widely blamed on, among other things, its lack of a strict Vinaya tradition. Then too, there was the challenge mounted against Tōdaiji's ascendancy in Vinaya matters by Shunjō 俊仍 (1166-1217),

 

 

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a Tendai monk who had studied in Sung China from 1199 to 1211. On his return to Kyoto, Shunjō established at the Sennyūji 泉涌寺 a new school of Vinaya (called Hokukyō-ritsu 北京律, the "Vinaya of the Northern Capital") based on Sung Chinese models in which Vinaya was combined with elements of Ch'an discipline and Pure Land devotion. By contrast, Gyōnen's teachings on monastic discipline -- set forth in his masterpiece of Vinaya scholarship, the Rishhū kōyō 律宗綱要 (T 2348:74) -- were a learned reassertion of the classical Dharmaguptaka (i.e., "Ssu-fen" 四分 or "Nan-shan" 南山) Vinaya that had been established in T'ang China by Tao-hsüan 道宣 (596-667) of Chung-nan shan 中南山.

Gyōnen also studied Shingon and Tendai esoterism under Shōshu 聖守 (1219-1291) who was Enshō's elder brother, a Shingon monk, and the founder of the Shingon'in 真言院 in Nara.

Perhaps the most surprising testimony to the breadth of Gyōnen's interests and learning, and to the catholicity of his Buddhism, were his extensive studies of Pure Land. Sectarian Pure Land, of course, was one of the most vigorous new developments in Japanese Buddhism during the Kamakura 鎌倉 era (1185-1333). As might be expected, many representatives of older Buddhist traditions were quite hostile towards it. Myōe, for example, is famous for his very strong attack on the Pure Land teachings of Honen 法然 (1133-1212), the founder of the Jōdo-shū 淨土宗. [82] Gyōnen, by contrast, followed the more ecumenical model of his teacher Enshō. In fact, he had deep sympathy for Pure Land, which he found not at all incompatible with the various "orthodoxies" he promoted (Kegon, Ritsu, etc.). Indeed, he wrote eloquently and with impressive learning to establish the legitimacy of Pure Land devotionalism. Gyōnen's Pure Land devotionalism was influenced not only by Enshō but also by two other Pure Land teachers of the day -- Chōsai 長西 (1184-1266/68) and Shinkū Shōnin 真空上人 (1204-1268, a.k.a. Eshinbo 迴心房). Chōsai, one of Hōnen's younger disciples, was known for teaching a moderate version of Pure Land doctrine (criticized by the later Jōdo-shū as heterodox). According to Chōsai, reliance on the saving power of Amitābha's vow was not incompatible with the rest of Mahāyāna. Shinkū was a monk of Sanron sectarian affiliation who was also learned in the Shingon and Vinaya traditions. By the 1260's, however, when Gyōnen studied with him for five years in Kyoto, Shinkū had conceived a strong devotion to Amida and the Pure Land. This devotion led him to leave Kyoto and move to Kamakura, to the Muryōju'in 無量壽寺, where he committed himself entirely to Pure Land teaching for the final year of his life. Gyōnen's Pure land teachings may be found in several of his many writings but their most thorough and systematic exposition is his 1312 composition the Jōdo hōmon genrushō 淨土法門源流章 (T 2687:84).

 

 

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Gyōnen's knowledge of the Hua-yen/Kegon was encyclopedic and there is no major figure in the earlier Chinese and Japanese history of the tradition with whom he was not familiar. Nevertheless, it is apparent that he had a special interest in Ch'eng-kuan, and it may be that he is the first Japanese Kegon scholar of whom that may be said. Indeed, he would later be criticized for his fidelity to Ch'eng-kuan. In the Tokugawa period, Kegon thought enjoyed a kind of revival led by the scholar-monk Hōtan 鳳潭 (1657-1738. a.k.a. Sōshun 僧濬, Genko Dōjin 幻虎道人) and his disciple Fujaku 普寂 (1707-1781). Hōtan held that Ch'eng-kuan and Tsung-mi had departed from the Hua-yen orthodoxy formulated by Chih-yen and Fa-tsang and were responsible for what might be called the intellectual deracination of the tradition. Hōtan's reasons for taking this revisionist view are too complicated to summarize here, but they turn on issues similar to those that arose in the Sung debates between proponents of the Hua-yen doctrine of "nature-origination" (性起 Chinese: "hsing-ch'i" Japanese: "shooki") and partisans of the T'ien-t'ai teaching of "nature-inclusion" 性具; Chinese: "hsing-chü" Japanese: "shōgu"). Noting the extent to which Gyōnen was indebted to Ch'eng-kuan, Hōtan aimed at him many of the same criticisms he made of Ch'eng-kuan and Tsung-mi themselves. Modern Japanese scholarly views of the early history of Hua-yen owe much to Hōtan.

 

3. Gyōnen and the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men.

There are three works in Gyōnen's ample corpus which pertain directly to the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men -- one which includes a summary paraphrase of it, another which merely cites it, and a third which is in fact a lengthy (but only partly extant) commentary on it.

A. The first of these is the Kegon hokkai gikyō 華嚴法界義鏡, written in 1295. It is perhaps the best known of Gyōnen's purely Kegon works and serves as a summary of what he considered to be the most essential Kegon teachings. The fifth of its ten chapters deals with "forms of meditative contemplation" (kangyō jōbō 觀行狀貊) and is divided into two parts -- "contemplations of the ten levels of representation-only" (jūjū yuishiki kan 十重唯識觀), and "contemplations of the perfect interfusion of the three sages" (sanshō ennyū kan 三聖圓融觀) -- these being in Gyōnen's view the two principle methods of distinctively Kegon practice. The second of these two parts of chapter 5 is essentially a condensation of Ch'eng-kuan's San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men. Gyōnen repeated some passages from the original verbatim while briefly paraphrasing others.

 

 

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Gyōnen's holograph of this work seems not to have survived, nor have several early (fourteenth century) manuscript copies of which we have record. However, the Tōdaiji library does contain two sixteenth century manuscript copies -- one dated 1574 (comprising only the first of 2 fascicles), the other (a complete version) dated 1590. There also survives, in the Ryūkoku and Ōtani University libraries and in my own collection, copies of a 1695 (Genroku 元祿 8) printed edition, and it is this printing which was the basis of the versions of the text found in three standard modern collections of Kegon literature:

a. The Nihon daizōkyō 日本大藏經 (abbreviation: NDZK). This collection was originally published in Tokyo during the years 1914-1921 by the Nihon Daizōkyō Hensankai 日本大藏編纂會. It comprised 51 volumes. In 1973 the Suzuki Research Foundation (Suzuki Gakujutsu Zaidan 鈴木學術財團) of Tokyo published a new edition in 100 volumes (including three new and very useful "kaidai" 解題 volumes -- vols. 97, 98, & 99) known as the "Zōho-kaitei" 增補改訂 edition. In the original 1914-1921 edition of the NDZK the Kegon hokkai gikyō is found in volume 38; in the new edition it is found in vol.75 as #321.

b. The Dainihon bukkyō zensho 大日本佛教全書 (abbreviation: DNBZ). The original 1922 edition of this collection was published in Tokyo by the Bussho Kankōkai 佛書刊行會. This 150 volume edition was reprinted in 1981 by the Meicho Fukyūkai 名著普及會 of Tokyo. In 1970, however, the Suzuki Research Foundation published a new, "Zōho-kaitei" edition of the DNBZ in 100 volumes. In the older 150 volume edition of the DNBZ the Kegon hokkai gikyo is found in Vol. 13; in the new 100 volume edition -- in which the sequence of texts was considerably altered and in which each text was assigned a serial number -- it is #164 and is found in volume 36.

c. The Bukkyō taikei 佛教大系. This sixty-five volume series -- containing new, critical, and punctuated editions of important Chinese and Japanese Buddhist texts -- was originally published in Tokyo during the years 1917 to 1938. Its publisher was a charitable organization established especially for the purpose of publishing and distributing the series free of charge. In 1977 a photo-reprint was published (for purchase) by Nakayama Shobō 中山書房 of Tokyo. In 1990 yet another photo-reprint of the series was published in Taipei by Hsin-wen-feng 新文豐. The Kegon hokkai gikyō may be found in Volume 1.

 

 

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Also to be recommended is the critical edition annotated modern Japanese translation of the Kegon hokkai gikyō prepared by Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄 and included in Kamata Shigeo and Tanaka Hisao 田中久男, eds., Kamakura kyū bukkyo 鎌倉舊佛教, Nihon shisō taikei 日本思想大系 15 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten 岩波書店, 1971), pp. 227-303, 401-428, 492-499, & 526-576.

However, the best edition of the Kegon hokkai gikyō (or at least, at present, the best edition of its first five chapters) is that done by Kitabatake Tensei 北畠典生 -- the Kegon hokkai gikyō kōgi 華嚴法界義鏡講義, Vol. I (Kyoto: Nagata Bunshōdō 永田文昌堂, 1990). Kitabatake not only gives a thoroughly critical and punctuated edition of the text, based on comparison of all available printed and manuscript editions; he also gives a Japanese yomikudashi 讀み下し "translation," a modern Japanese paraphrase, ample annotation, and an informative introduction. This first volume includes chapters 1 through 5 of the original. [83]

B. The second Gyōnen text related to the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is his commentary thereon, written in 1312 when its author was 72 years old (he died at age 83). The common title of this commentary is Sanshō ennyūkan giken 三聖圓融義顯, but it is also known as the Sanshō ennyūkan giyōki 三聖圓融觀義影記. Regrettably, only its first two fascicles have survived. We do not know how long the whole of it was (or even if it was ever finished), but we may presume that if it was finished it was quite lengthy. The two fascicles that do survive cover only the first 11% of Ch'eng-kuan's text (the first 9.5 lines of the 87 lines in the Taishō edition). If Gyōnen covered the remainder of the text in the same degree of detail, then the full commentary might have run to as many as 20 fascicles. At the very least, this length indicates how important a text the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men was for Gyōnen. Actually, to call Gyōnen's work a "commentary" may be a bit misleading. It does provide line-by-line exegesis, but it also includes whole essays on particular Kegon topics, essays for which Ch'eng-kuan's words are simply a sort of pretext (e.g., a biography of Ch'eng-kuan, a substantial discourse on the identity of each of the "three sages," etc.).

The two extant fascicles survive in manuscript form. By the early twentieth century the manuscript had come into the personal possession of Nakano Tatsue (see above, the note on the Zokuzōkyō). Where that manuscript is now, or whether or not it still survives, we do not know. Nor do we know when the manuscript was actually written out (I suppose it is not absolutely impossible that it might have been Gyōnen's own holograph). Each of the two surviving fascicles is precisely dated (fascicle 1: the 20th day of the second month of 1312 [Ōchō 應長 2 -- note this era ended on the 15th day of the 7th month; the Shōwa 正和 era began the next day. In many imprecise

 

 

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chronologies 1312 would be given as Shōwa 1]; fascicle 2: the 4th day of the 3rd month of 1312). The last page of the second fascicle bears a note inscribed by an otherwise unknown monk who calls himself Shamon Eigaku 沙門敝覺 (pronunciation uncertain) of Rakusai 洛西 (the western quarter of Kyoto). Eigaku says that on March 11, 1755, while detained by snow at an inn in a certain mountain village, he had the opportunity to peruse the manuscript. As he also expresses regret that the commentary is incomplete, we can assume that all but the two surviving fascicles had been lost before the mid-eighteenth century. Nakano Tatsue apparently made his manuscript available to the compilers of the NDZK, who published a printed copy of it in their collection (Vol. 73 of the 100 volume edition, pp. 187-215). [84]

C. The third relevant Gyōnen text is the Kegonshū yōgi 華嚴宗要義, which Gyōnen wrote in 1311 when he was 74 years old. This is a very short text composed upon the request of fellow monks from the Kantō 關東 area who wanted a brief summary of Kegon doctrine. It contains a mere mention of the title of Ch'eng-kuan's work -- see T 1335:72.a22.

 

E. Other Relevant Texts.

The Bussho kaisetsu daijiten (Vol.4, p. 90) mentions also two other manuscripts which appear to be lecture notes either on Ch'eng-kuan's original text, and/or (less likely) on Gyōnen's commentary.

1. One is entitled Sanshō kammon emman ki 三聖觀門圓滿記; it is anonymous and is kept in the Ryūkoku University library.

2. The other is entitled Sanshō ennyū kammon kōgi 三聖圓融觀門講義 and is said to have been composed in 1820 by the monk Reikyō 靈暀 (pronunciation uncertain) who lived from 1775 to 1851. It is kept in the Ōtani University Library. (I have as yet no information on the author of this text, but the fact that his dates are given in the Bussho kaisetsu daijiten suggests that information on him is available somewhere.)

I have seen neither of these two manuscripts.

 

 

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Notes

1. The relationship between Ch'eng-kuan and Li T'ung-hsüan is something of a puzzle. There is good reason to believe that the later monk knew of the earlier layman and his thought. Indeed, this is made all the more likely by the fact that Li was especially revered -- indeed, treated as a kind of local saint -- in the vicinity of Wu-t'ai shan where Ch'eng-kuan spent so much time. One might therefore expect from Ch'eng-kuan ample and explicit reference to Li, especially when one notes his very extensive use of the work of nearly all other contributors to the early Hua-yen tradition. And yet such explicit reference is simply not to be found. Recently the Japanese scholar Kojima Taizan 小島岱山, in an interesting effort to construct an innovative scheme for classifying the various kinds of early Hua-yen, has plausibly distinguished between what he calls the Chung-nan shan 終南山 / Ch'ang-an tradition (so-called because its major representatives were associated with monasteries located in the capital and/or the mountains just south thereof) and the Wu-t'ai shan tradition.

(See, for example, Kojima's "Godaisan-kei Kegon shisō no tokushitsu to tenkai" 五台山系華嚴思想の特質と展開 ["The Development and Distinctive Characteristics of the Thought of the Wu-t'ai shan Line of Hua-yen], "Chūgoku kegon shisō saikōchiku e no kokoromi" 中國華嚴思想再構築えの試み [An Experiment in the Reconstruction Chinese Hua-yen Thought], and "Aratanaru Chūgoku Kegon shisōshi" 新たなる中國華嚴思想史5& [A New Intellectual History of Chinese Hua-yen], Kegongaku kenkyū 華嚴學研究 33 (1991):111-136, 145-164, 165-176.)

Kojima notes that Ch'eng-kuan has strong connections with both lines of Hua-yen, but he also suggests that his strongest doctrinal sympathies lay ultimately with the approach taken by Li T'ung-hsüan and others of the "Wu-t'ai tradition." And yet Kojima also notes what he takes to be significant differences between Ch'eng-kuan's and Li T'ung-hsüan's views of the relationships among "the three holy ones." In any case, whichever hypothesis one might adopt about the influence of Li Tung-hsüan on Ch'eng-kuan, it must reconciled with both the dearth of references to Li in Ch'eng-kuan's writings and the latter's generally conscientious fidelity to Fa-tsang, chief representative of the so-called Chung-nan shan / Ch'ang-an tradition. On the differences between Ch'eng-kuan's and Li T'ung-hsiian's developments of the "three holy ones" theme see Kojima Taizan, "Ri Tsūgen ni okeru sanshō ennyū shisō no kaimei" 李通玄における三聖円融思想の解明 [An Elucidation of 'Coalescence of the Three Holy Ones' Thought in Li T'ung-hsüan], Kegongaku kenkyū 1 (1987):105-157, especially 128-129.

 

 

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2. See Hua-yen ching shu 華嚴經疏55 (T 1735:35.918a-b), Yen-i ch'ao 演義鈔 85 (T 1736.36.663a), Hsing-yüan p'in shu 行願品疏 2 (SSZZ 227:5.7009-17), and Hsing-yüan p'in shu ch'ao行願品疏鈔 2 (SSZZ 229:5.238a-c).

3. Although it is well beyond the limits of this essay, there would, I believe, be much to gain from a systematic comparison of the Hua-yen Buddhist notion of "yüan-jung" with the Christian trinitarian notion of "perichoresis" or "circumincession" (mutual inherence) in terms of which the relationship among the three persons of the Christian Trinity was understood. The literature on the latter, of course, is enormous, especially as regards Eastern (i.e., Greek and Russian) Christianity, but for useful introductions to the topic see the entries on these and related terms in The New Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1967), vol. 3, p. 880 & vol 12., pp. 219-220.

4. The version of the text embedded in Gyōnen's commentary (Z-NDZK 321:75.195a) reads 案, rather than 按, but then these two characters are commonly interchangeable.

5. The Taishō, Zokuzōkyō, and Yang Wen-hui editions all read miao 妙/玅, but the Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editors tell us in footnotes that there is at least one early version of the text in which the word "ming" 名 appears instead. "Ming" is clearly the preferable reading. The version of the text in Gyōnen's commentary (195b) reads "ko" 各 in one instance whereas in every other instance "ming" 名 is used, but the "ko" must surely be only a typographical error.

6. Gyōnen (196a) suggests that the word "shih" 示 is actually a mistake for "yü" 余, meaning "me." This, however, is not a necessary emendation, for the construal Gyōnen prefers (reflected in my translation) is possible without it.

7. There is a puzzling discrepancy among the various editions of the text at this point. The version embedded in Gyōnen's commentary (195b) reads "一毛之智難以度成" and Gyōnen tells us explicitly in his commentary that he takes Ch'eng-kuan's point to be that it is "very difficult indeed" to plumb this teaching with only a little bit of wisdom. Gyōnen's is also the reading followed in the Zokuzōkyō edition. However, the Zokuzōkyō editors note that there is one version of the text (they do not say which version) which gives "無" rather than "難." The Taishō edition also follows the wording of the Gyōnen text, but the Taishō editors note that the version on which they based their edition -- a Tokugawa printing kept in the library of Ōtani 大谷 University (probably the 1685 edition) -- lacks the character "難." The Taishō editors say nothing about the character "無." The Yang Wen-hui edition, however, reads "一毛之智觀、無難以度成" -- that is to say, Yang Wen-hui gives both "無" and "難," rather than "無" or "難"

 

 

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alone. Of course, Yang's edition is based on a Japanese version of the text, perhaps the very same one that the Zokuzōkyō and Taishō editors used, but Yang does not identify his Japanese source, nor can we be sure that his wording is not the result of his own emendation. The modern editors of the 中國佛教思想資料選編 follow Yang's version precisely (except in matters of punctuation and page-layout). In the absence of decisive philological evidence I choose to follow the Gyōnen / Zokuzōkyō / Taishō wording, which seems to fit better the general sense of the passage. Indeed, it is hard to make any sense at all of the Yang Wen-hui wording.

8. The Zokuzōkyō edition mistakenly gives szu 巳, rather than chi 己.

9. The Gyōnen commentary (211b) mistakenly gives san 三 rather than erh 二.

10. The Taishō and Zokuzōkyō versions of the text read "ch'i" (起), but the Yang Wen-hui version and the Gyōnen paraplirase read "ch'ao" (超). From the patent sense of the passage it is clear that "ch'ao" (超) is the correct reading.

11. The text embedded in the Gyōnen commentary (214b) lacks the character "erh" 二.

12. At this point, the Tsung-mi's paraphrase (SSZZ 229:5.238a8) reads chien 見, rather than chih 知.

13. The Yang Wen-hui edition reads yu 又, which is preferable to the Zokuzōkyō and Taishō reading of chi 及.

14. Tsung-mi's wording here is significantly different... Where as all other versions read "shang-hsia chü ching chieh..." 上下諸經皆..., Tsung-mi reads "shang-hsia ching-wen wu-chou yin-kuo..." 上下經文皆五周因果皆..., on the possible significance of which see note # 54, below.

15. Whereas the Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editions read "shih" 視, the Yang Wen-hui edition reads "hsien" 現. Also, the Zokuzōkyō and Taishō editors note that there is a version of the text which lacks the word "shen" 身. Curiously, the Tsung-mi paraphrase reads "pu-li shen" 不理身, rather than either "pu-hsien shen" 不現身, or "pu-shih shen" 不視身, but I take this to be merely a misprint.

16. The Zokuzōkyō and Taishō editions read "i" 已 or "szu" 巳 instead of "wang" 亡, but clearly "wang" is the correct reading.

17. This repetition of the word "hsing" 行 is found in the Yang Wen-hui edition and in the Tsung-mi and Gyōnen paraphrase (see SSZZ 229:5.238b14 and Kegon hokkai gikyō 華嚴法界義鏡 -- Kitabatake edition, p. 260), but not in the Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editions.

 

 

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18. Interestingly, both Tsung-mi's and Gyōnen's paraphrases of this line add the word "hsing" 行 at this point, giving the reading "ku sui suo-ch'eng li hsing pu chü" 故隨所證理行無不具 (see SSZZ 229:5.238bl3 and Kegon hokkai gikyō -- Kitabatake edition, p. 260), whereas all other versions lack this occurrence of hsing and read simply "ku sui suo-ch'eng li pu chü" 故隨所證理無不具. The Tsung-mi/Gyōnen reading seems more in harmony with the sense and rhythm of the immediately preceding sentences -- see the translation below.

19. Here the Tsung-mi paraphrase "wu-k'o-shuo pu-k'o-shuo" 無可說不可說, rather than simply "pu-k'o-shuo" 不可說. The effect of Tsung-mi's wording is simply to intensify the point.

20. Here the Tsung-mi paraphrase reads "fa-chieh" 法界 rather than "li" 理. However, as "principle" and "dharmadhātu" had previously been equated, this results in no difference of meaning.

21. The Tsung-mi paraphrase reverses the order of these two characters, reading li-t'i 理體, rather than t'i-li 體理.

22. At this point the Yang Wen-hui edition and the Gyōnen paraphrase (Kegon hokkai gikyō -- Kitabatake edition, p. 261) read "chih" 止, whereas the Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editions read "cheng" 正.

23. At this point the Tsung-mi paraphrase reads "pu-i pu-i" 不一不異, rather than simply "pu-i" 不異, but this does not materially alter the meaning.

24. Whereas the Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editions read "fan" 反, the Yang Wen-hui edition reads "chi" 及.

25. Again, the Tsung-mi paraphrase reads "shang-hsia ching-wen" 上下經文 rather than "shang-hsia chu ching" 上下諸經.

26. The Tsung-mi paraphrase lacks the word "hsing", reading "...ming P'u-hsien" 名普賢 rather than "... ming P'u-hsien hsing"名普賢行. Also, the Tsung-mi's version adds here an illustrative quotation from the Man-shu ch'ien-po ching 曼殊千缽經 that is entirely absent from all other versions; see note # 67, below.

27. Tsung-mi reads "i-chen fa-chieh" 一真法界, whereas all other versions read "i-hsin fa-chieh" 一心法界. One can only speculate as to whether or not the latter variation is significant.

28. In the Tsung-mi paraphrase these two sentences are worded as a question and its answer:

問既二聖相何以不名文殊行耶答為攝智屬理唯一真法界故舉一全收也.

 

 

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29. Tsung-mi's paraphrase inserts at the beginning of this sentence the clause, "erh ch'e-na wei kuo che" 二遮那為果者. I can make no sense of this intrusive and incoherent clause; perhaps it is the result of textual corruption.

30. The Tsung-mi paraphrase reads "yuan" 圓 rather than "man" 滿.

31. The Zokuzōkyō and Taishō editions read "yin" 因 instead of "t'ung" 同.

32. Tsung-mi's paraphrase is interrupted at this point and lacks the subsequent analysis of the three holy ones in connection with the words of the scriptures title.

33. The Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editions read "chi" 即, whereas the Yang Wen-hui edition reads "shih" 是.

34. Here the Tsung-mi paraphrase resumes.

35. The Tsung-mi paraphrase reads "te" 得 rather than "ai" 礙, but this must be simply a misprint of 碍, the abbreviated form of "ai."

36. The Taishō and Zokuzōkyō editions here read "san-sheng" 三聖 (three holy ones), but the Yang Wen-hui edition and the Tsung-mi and Gyōnen paraphrases both read "san-sheng" 三生 (three lifetimes). The latter makes eminently better sense.

37. The somewhat recherché and deliberately elegant phrase "an-chih fa-hui" 按指發揮 -- chosen, perhaps, in respect of the cultivated literary tastes of Ch'eng-kuan's intended audience -- means literally "apposite or pertinent and explicit or perspicuous" -- the opposite, in other words, of "generic and vague."

38. These opening lines resist literal translation but, as Gyōnen explains them in his commentary (195b), they refer to the Buddha's consummate skill in making his teachings intelligible and tailoring them to the particular capacities and widely varying circumstances of those whom he seeks to save. His teachings, in other words, are so far from being nondescript and obscure as to be specific, compellingly clear, and exhaustively applicable to all concrete situations.

39. The two earliest and most important biographies of Ch'eng-kuan, on which all later accounts of his life are based, are:

The Miao-chüeh t'a chi 妙覺塔記 is an epitaph for Ch'eng-kuan written by his lay disciple, the scholar and quondam T'ang Prime Minister, P'ei-hsiu's 裴休 (787?-860?). This epitaph was composed for inscription at Ch'eng-kuan's reliquary stūpa, which was

 

 

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erected shortly after his death at the Hua-yen ssu 華嚴寺, a famous monastery located near the village of Hsia-hou 夏候 on the Fan 樊 river plain south of Ch'ang-an, just below the northern slopes of the Chung-nan 中南 mountains. The stele on which P'ei-hsiu's epitaph was originally inscribed does not survive, although digests or excerpts of the epitaph are incorporated into several later accounts of his life -- e.g., the Lung-hsing fo-chiao pien-nien t'ung-lun 隆興佛教編年通論 chüan 25 (SSZZ 1512:75.232c-233b), compiled in 1164; the Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsai 佛祖歷代通載 16 (T 2036:49.634c), compiled in 1341; and the Ch'üan-T'ang wen 全唐文, chüan 743, compiled in 1814. What may well be the whole -- or at least most -- of the epitaph was incorporated into a late thirteenth century work, the Hua-yen hsüan-t'an hui-hsüan chi 華嚴懸談會玄記 by P'u-jui's 普瑞 (chüan 1, SSZZ 236:8.93a-94a).

(Little is known about P'u-jui, but one may note that he was a resident of the Ta-li 大理 area, in what today is the province of Yunnan. During the T'ang and Sung this region had been an independent kingdom known first as Nan-chao 南詔 and later as Ta-li; it was not fully incorporated into China proper until the Mongol conquest. Throughout its long history Nan-chao/Ta-li had had a rich and variegated Buddhist culture. It may well be that Buddhist materials lost in China proper during the late T'ang, Five Dynasties, and Sung periods had been preserved in that remote southwestern kingdom, and this may be why P'u-jui was able to include in his work the whole, or nearly the whole, of an inscription that was no longer commonly available in its entirety elsewhere.)

See also the précis of P'ei-hsiu's epitaph inscribed on a stele erected in 1272 to mark the Yüan dynasty reconstruction of Ch'eng-kuan's reliquary stupa. A rubbing of this inscription was made in the 1930's by Yūki Reimon's 結城令聞, and a photograph of that rubbing may be found in the front matter of Kamata Shigeo's 鎌田茂雄, Chūgoku kegon shisōshi no kenkyū 中國華嚴思想の研究 (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai 東京大學出版会, 1965); Kamata provides a transcription of the rubbing on pp. 157-158 of the same book. On P'ei Hsiu and his Buddhism, see Yoshikawa Tadao 吉川忠夫, "Hai Kū den: Tōdai no ichi shidaifu to Bukkyō" 裴休伝: 唐代一士大夫と仏教, Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報 [Kyoto] 64 (1992):115-277.

Tsan-ning's 贊寧 (919-1001) biography ofCh'eng-kuan in the Sung kao-seng chuan 宋高僧傳, chüan 5 (T 2061:50.737a-c; cf. the 1987 Chung-hua shu-chü edition, pp. 104-107). Note, however, that Tsan-ning biography must be used with care as it is riddled with errors.

 

 

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Both of these biographies indicate that in the later decades of his long life, while he was at the height of his eminence and was residing in or near the capital, he received numerous requests from high-ranking court dignitaries for brief and accessible expositions of various topics in Buddhist doctrine. Perhaps the most famous of the many literati-officials who may have known Ch'eng-kuan was the great poet Po Chü-i 白居易I (772-846). I know of no source that explicitly links the two men, but both were residents of Ch'ang-an in the 820's and Po's well-known devotion to the Hua-yen ching may well have drawn him to, and been nourished by, the teachings of the eminent monk -- See Arthur Waley, The Life and Times of Po Chü-i (London: Allen and Unwin, 1949) and Kenneth K. S. Ch'en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 184-239. Included among the other dignitaries whom the P'ei Hsiu and Tsan-ning biographies do explicitly connect with Ch'eng-kuan are the following (each provided with a notation as to the location of his biographies in the Chiu T'ang shu 舊唐書 (CTS) and Hsin T'ang shu 新唐書 (HTS) -- with chüan and page numbers in the Chung-hua shu-chü edition -- as well as his entry in Fu Hsüan-tsung 傅璇琮, et al., eds., T'ang Wu-tai jen-wu chuan-chi tzu-liao tsung-ho so-yin 唐五代人物傳記資料綜合索引 [TWT-SY] (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1982):

Wu Yüan-heng 武元衡 (758-815) CTS 158/4127, HTS 152/4833, TWT-SY 193c.

Li Ch'i-fu 李吉甫 (758-814) CTS 158/3992, HTS 146/4738, TWT-SY 417a-b.

ChengYin 鄭絪 (752-829) CTS 159/4180, HTS 165/5074, TWT-SY 702b.

Li Feng-ch'i 李逢吉 CTS 168/4365, HTS 174/5221, TWT-SY 412a-b.

Ch'ien Hui 錢徽 CTS 168/4382, HTS 177/5271, TWT-SY 690b.

Kuei Teng 歸登 CTS 149/4019, HTS 164/5038, TWT-SY 289a.

Ch'üan Te-yü 權德輿 CTS 148/4001, HTS 90/5076, TWT-SY 540a-b.

Ch'i Hang 齊杭 CTS 136/3756, HTS 128/4471, TWT-SY 37c-38a.

Wei Ch'u-mou 韋渠牟 CTS 135/3718, HTS 167/5019, TWT-SY 458a.

Yen Shou 嚴綬 CTS 146/3959, HTS 129/4485, TWT-SY 613b.

Meng Chien 孟簡 CTS 163/4257, HTS 160/4968, TWT-SY 198c-199a.

Wei Tan 韋丹 HTS 197/5629, TWT-SY 467b.

Lu Ch'ang-yüan 陸長源 CTS 145/3937, HTS 151/4822, TWT-SY 655a.

Hsieh Hua 薛華 Fo-tsu li-tai t'ung-tsai 佛祖歷代通載 14 (T 49.609c), TWT-SY 522.

 

 

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The work at hand, like several other of Ch'eng-kuan's shorter works, was apparently composed in response to request from one or more of these worthies.

40. See note # 43, below.

41. My translation of the final sentences of this introductory passage is informed by Gyōnen's glosses on them in his Sanshō ennyūkan giken 三聖圓融義顯 (196b). He takes the phrase "i-mao chih-kuan" 一毛智觀 to be self-deprecatory, an expression both of Ch'eng-kuan's humility (章主示謙) and of his awareness of his own limitations as he addresses the limitlessness of ultimate truth. The phrase "tu-ch'eng " 度成 he takes to mean "to assay and confirm" (度量 ... 成立). "Doctrinal formulations" ("chiao-li" 教理) he understands to refer to the actual words of the holy one's teachings (教文) together with the doctrinal principles (道理) those teachings convey. To the extent that such formulations "do not contradict" (不乖) the dharma but "tally with its true meaning" (契正義), they may provide at least general outlines (大網簡要) of the truth. The implication is that only by means of approximations, which all doctrines necessarily are, can finite insight approach infinite reality. In all of this Gyōnen quite plausibly hears an echo of famous lines in the invocatory verse found in the preface of Ch'eng-kuan's great commentary on the Hua-yen Sūtra, the Hua-yen ching shu 華嚴經疏 (T1735:35.503c2-5):

我今欲以一毛智    測量無邊法界空
願承三寶同體慈    句句冥符諸佛意

"I now wish, with the mere speck of wisdom [I possess], to fathom the boundless emptiness of the dharmadhātu.
I aspire to receive the grace of the triune treasure, so that word for word [my explanations] may tally with the Buddha's intentions."

The somewhat obscure last sentence of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men's opening paragraph Gyōnen takes as the author's exhortation to the readers for whom the piece was composed (章主勸人). To the term "yüan-shih" 遠識 -- in conventional usage a kind of stock phrase meaning something like "farsightedness" or "sagacity" -- he attributes a particularly Buddhist significance, understanding it to mean "consciousness or intellect purged of affective delusion" (遣情遮情識). The term "hsü-chi" 虛己 he interprets as referring to attainment of "an unimpeded mind" (虛通心) "free of misconceptions and purged of discriminations" (無倒見泯分別). He overlooks, however, the likely possibility that the latter phrase may also be allusive to the "Shan-mu" 山木

 

 

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chapter of the Chuang-tzu 莊子, where it is said that "if a man could empty himself and so roam the world, who could harm him?" (人能虛已以遊世、其孰能害之). Ch'eng-kuan's general point, Gyōnen suggests, is that he hopes the reader will "empty himself of bias" (hsü-huai 虛懷) and approach the theme of the text "objectively" (yüan-ching 緣境), in the manner of the Diamond Sūtra's (Chin-kang ching 金鋼經) ideal of "non-abiding thought" (wu suo-chu erh sheng ch'i hsin 無所住而生其心).

42. Taking "ch'en" 塵 as a contraction of "wei-ch'en" 徽塵 and "sha" as a contraction of "heng-ho sha" 恆河沙 (i.e., gaṅgā-nadī-vāluka = "sands of the river Ganges"). Here, as Gyōnen explains in his commentary (212b), Ch'eng-kuan has recourse to the traditional notion that the Buddha is an infinitely versatile teacher who has at his disposal as many forms of assistance to extend to sentient beings as there are "grains of sand in the Ganges." Rather than offer only one teaching to all, without regard to the diversity of their circumstances and abilities, he crafts a virtual infinity of teachings, each especially suitable to one particular kind of circumstance or to one particular degree of spiritual capacity, among the numberless conditions and capacities that comprise the realm of sentient existence.

43. Sūtras are conventionally defined as buddhavacana, i.e., as the very words of the Buddha, and in most such texts the Buddha himself is the principal speaker. The Hua-yen ching, however, is a notable exception to this rule. Throughout its extraordinary length the Buddha (whether he be Śākyamuni or the primal Buddha, Vairocana) remains silent, deeply absorbed in the ecstasy of his recently achieved, but really timeless, enlightenment. The actual discourse of the sūtra is conducted by members of his cosmic audience -- most particularly by the great bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra. The Hua-yen tradition has often noted this peculiarity of its fundamental scripture and has attached various kinds of significance to it. It is just this feature of the scripture that prompted the requests in response to which Ch'eng-kuan wrote the present text.

44. The phrase which Ch'eng-kuan here uses is "wei-yin" 為因 literally, "constitute cause" or "comprise cause." Such phrasing implies a rather strong claim. It is not simply that Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra serve as metaphors for the realm of practice that "causes" or engenders the "fruit" (kuo 果) of enlightenment; rather they actually embody it. Thus, when I translate "wei" as "symbolize" I employ a very strong sense of the concept of symbolization, not unlike that employed in Christian sacramental theology, whereby a symbol differs from a mere sign insofar as it also embodies that to which it refers. Such notions of symbol are by no means foreign to the Mahāyāna tradition and are even given systematic formulation in Buddhist esoterism (with which, it should be recalled, Ch'eng-kuan was quite familiar).

 

 

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45. The term "piao" 表 -- here translated as "represents" -- must be understood in a strong sense as referring to the way in which the boddhisattva "bodies forth," or gives concrete expression to, the dharmadhātu.

46. The term "tsai-ch'an ju-lai-tsang" 在纏如來藏 encapsulates a key theme of the Tathāgatagarbha tradition, broached perhaps for the first time in the Śrīmālādevīsimhanāda Sūtra, one of that tradition's fundamental scriptural sources. In its discussion of the third of the four noble truths, i.e., the truth of cessation (nirodha), the Śrīmālā Sūtra distinguishes sharply between the misinterpretation of cessation, in which it is taken to mean the annihilation of dharma-s, and its correct interpretation, in which it is understood to mean just the cessation of suffering. Cessation of suffering, the scripture continues, is nothing other than the truth-body (dharmakāya) of the Buddha, which is "beginningless, uncreate, unarisen, endless, free from destruction, permanently abiding, inherently pure, free of all affliction-stores, and endowed with indivisible and inconceivable qualities of Buddhahood which are inalienable from wisdom and more numerous than the grains of sand in the river Ganges. And when this dharmakāya is not separate from the affliction-stores, then it is called tathāgatagarbha." It happens that this passage from the Śrīmālā Sūtra is quoted in the Ratnagotravibhāga; thus we have it in Sanskrit as well as Chinese and Tibetan -- see Nakamura Zuiryu 中村瑞隆, editor and translator, Bon-Kan taishō Kukyō ichijō hōshō ron kenkyū 梵漢對照: 究竟一乘寶性論研究 [The Ratnagotravibhāga-Mahāyānottaratantra-Śāstra] (Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin 山喜房仏書林, 1968), p. 21 and Takasaki Jikido 高崎直道, A Study of the Ratnagotravibhāga (Uttaratantra), Being a Treatise on the Tathāgatagarbha Theory ofMahāyāna Buddhism, Serie Orientale Roma XXXIII (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1966), pp. 167-168. In Sanskrit the pertinent term is avinirmuktakleśakośa (literally: "not released from the affliction-stores"), which is rendered in Chinese, in the Guṇabhadra translation of the Śrīmālā, as "pu-li fan-nao-tsang" 不離煩惱藏 (see T 353:12.221c) and, in the Ratnamati translation of the Ratnagotra, as "pu-li fan-nao-tsang suo-ch'an"不離煩惱藏所纏 (see T 1611:31.824a). The particular usage "tsai-ch'an ju-lai-tsang" 在纏如來藏 (literally: "the enmeshed or trammeled tathāgatagarbha") seems to have been coined in China but it derives from these passages and from cognate passages in other Tathāgatagarbha texts of Indian origin. It refers specifically to the notion of the embryo or matrix of Buddhahood as an "immanent absolute" (see David Seyfort Ruegg, Buddha-nature, Mind and the Problem of Gradualism in a Comparative Perspective: On the Transmission and Reception of Buddhism in India andTibet, Jordan Lectures 1987 [London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1989], Chapter 1. "The Buddhist Notion of an Immanent Absolute as a Problem in Comparative Religious and Philosophical Hermeneutics," pp. 1-55). Thus it conveys the idea

 

 

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that in the very precincts of impurity -- which is just what the minds of sentient beings are -- the transcendent purity of enlightenment is proleptically present.

47. The text from which Ch'eng-kuan here quotes is the Perfection of Insight in One Hundred and Fifty Lines, a well-known work associated with the Prajñāpāramitā canon but belonging really to the strain of the Tantric tradition that is based on the root tantra known either as the Vajraśekhara Sūtra, or as the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha (金鋼頂經 Chinese: Chin-kang-t'ing ching, Japanese: Kongōchōkyō: T 865). The 150 Line Perfection of Insight Scripture survives in its original Sanskrit (with some passages in Khotanese) under the title Adhyardhaśatikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, or Prajñāpāramitā-nayaśatapañcaśatikā. In all, six Chinese translations of the work were made -- the earliest by Hsüan-tsang, in 660 (T 220-10); the second by the "latter" Bodhiruci, ca. 693 (T 240); the third by Vajrabodhi, ca. 725 (T 241); the fourth by Amoghavajra, in 770 (T 243); the fifth by Dānapāla in 980 (T 242); and the sixth by Dharmabhadra, in 999 (T 244). Note too that Amoghavajra composed a commentary on the text -- the Ta-yüeh chin-kang pu-k'ung chen-shih san-mei-yeh ching po-jo-po-lo-mi-t'uo li-ch'ü shih 大樂金鋼不空真實三昧耶經般若波羅蜜多理趣釋 (T 1003). This commentary came to be, in its own right, one of the most influential of all Mi-chiao / Mikkyō 密教 texts in the Japanese Shingon 真言 tradition. Indeed, Kūkai's 空海 (774-835) famous refusal in 813 to make the work available to Saichō 最澄 (767-822) marked the end of the brief and strained collaboration between the two men and the beginning a millennium of intense animosity between the Shingon and Tendai traditions.

For a study and translation of the scripture together with Amoghavajra's famous commentary, see Ian Astley-Kristensen, translator and annotator. The Rishukyō: The Sino-Japanese Tantric Prajñāpāramitā in 150 Verses (Amoghavajra's Version), Buddhica Brittanica Series Continua III (Tring, UK: The Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1991). See also Edward Conze's imperfect English translation in The Short Prajñāpāramitā Texts (London: Luzac & Company, 1973), pp. 184-195, which first appeared in Studies in Esoteric and Tantric Buddhism In Commemoration of the 1,150th Anniversary of the Founding of Kōyasan (Kōyasan: Kōyasan University, 1965), pp. 101-115. Conze's translation is based on the edition of the Sanskrit-Khotanese original found in Toganoo Shōun 尾祥雲, Rishukyō no kenkyū 理趣經の研究 (Kōyasan: Kōyasan Daigaku 高野山大學, 1930), pp. 1-9, which was in turn based on Ernst Leumann's edition of the Central Asian manuscript fragments he found in 1907 in the Petrovsky Collection in St. Petersburg and in the Hoernle collection at Oxford -- see Ernst Leumann, Zur nordarischen Sprache und Literatur. Vorbemerkungen und vier Aufsätze mit Glossar. Schriften der

 

 

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Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft in Strassburg, Vol. 10 (Strassburg: Trübner, 1912) and "Die nordarischen Abschnitte der Adhyardhaśtikā Prajñāpāramitā, Text und Übersetzung mit Glossar," Taishō Daigaku Gakuhō 大正大學學報 6/7 (1930): 47-87. For a bibliography of the various redactions and translations of the text see Edward Conze, The Prajñāpāramitā Literature, second edition, revised and enlarged (Tokyo: The Reiyūkai 霊友会, 1978), pp. 79-81. The most extensive and mature modern study of the text is Fukuda Ryosei 福田亮成, Rishukyō no kenkyū: sono seiritsu to tenkai 理趣經の研究: その成立と展開 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kangyōkai 國書刊行会, 1987). Concerning the Amoghavajra commentary on the scripture, see Ian Astley, "An Annotated Translation of Amoghavajra's Commentary on the Liqu jing (Rishukyō) -- Part I," Studies in Central and East Asian Religions 7 (1994): 27-53.

Theoretically, Ch'eng-kuan might have had access to any or all of the first four Chinese translations of the scripture, but it would appear that the one he actually chose to quote or paraphrase was Bodhiruci's 693 version (T 240:8.777c9-10). It is true that the title of Bodhiruci's translation -- the Shih-hsiang po-jo-po-lo-mi ching 實相般若波羅蜜經 -- is not the title Ch'eng-kuan here used, but it may well be that by his time the work had come to be known by such general designations as Li-ch'ü po-jo 理趣般若 regardless of which translation was used. In any case, Ch'eng-kuan's citation uses the phrase "chung-sheng" 眾生; the fact that Bodhiruci's was the only translation employing that old rendering of the Sanksrit sattva -- rather than the new standard of "yu-ch'ing " 有情 used by Hsüan-tsang, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra -- seems to be conclusive evidence in support of the claim that it was Bodhiruci's version to which Ch'eng-kuan was referring. Nevertheless, his use of the text -- even in Bodhiruci's translation -- may be taken as testimony to the prevalence in the capital of late eighth and early ninth century China of the kind of esoteric Buddhism established especially by the work of men like Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra (see Chou I-liang 周一郎, "Tantrism in China," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 8.3-4 (1945): 241-332. And one must note the tradition, however questionable it may be, according to which Ch'eng-kuan worked in the early 770's as a member of Amoghavajra's translation team (see Kamata Shigeo, Chūgoku Kegon shisōshi no kenkyū, p. 163).

48. Ch'eng-kuan here refers to the concentration or mystical transport which Samantabhadra enters at the opening of Hua-yen Sūtra's chapter entitled "Samantabhadra's Samādhi" (普賢三昧品. In the 80 chüan version of the sūtra, this is the third chapter, the beginning of which corresponds to the beginning of the chüan 7; see T 279:10.32c26-33al4. The full title of this concentration is the samādhi of "The Body of Tathāgata Vairocana Indwelling all the Buddhas" (一切諸佛毗盧遮那如來藏身). In this samādhi Samantabhadra experiences, as it were, the

 

 

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common source of the Buddhahood of all Buddhas, a single reality in which all worlds and Buddhas merge into oneness or sameness without the slightest loss of particularity. For a digest of Li-T'ung-hsüan's 李通玄 and Ch'eng-kuan's comments on this passage and this samādhi, taken from their famous commentaries and sub-commentary on the sūtra, see Tao-p'ei 道霈, Hua-yen-ching shu lun tsuan-yao 華嚴經疏論纂要 (1668, reprint; Taipei: Hsin-wen-feng 新文豐, 1987), Vol. 1, pp. 258-264.

Note: Tao-p'ei's 120 chüan work is in two parts. The first 116 fascicles consist of rubrics taken from Śikṣānanda's 80 chüan translation of the Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra, each rubric followed by key extracts from one or more of the following commentarial works: Li T'ung-hsüan's Hsin hua-yen-ching lun 新華嚴經論 (T 1739 or SSZZ 223), Ch'eng-kuan's Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching shu 大方廣佛華嚴經疏 (T 1735 or SSZZ 234), and Ch'eng-kuan's Ta-fang-kuang fo-hua-yen ching sui-shu yen-i ch'ao大方廣佛華嚴經隨疏 (T 1736 or SSZZ 232 & 233) -- the last mentioned of the three being a subcommentary on the second. The final 4 fascicles consist of excerpts from Ch'eng-kuan's Hua-yen-ching hsing-yüan-p'in pieh-hsing shu 華嚴經普賢行願品別行疏 and Tsung-mi's Hua-yen-ching hsing-yüan-p'in pieh-hsing shu-ch'ao華嚴經普賢行願品別行疏鈔 (SSZZ 229), which are the standard commentary and a subcommentary, respectively, on the Pu-hsien hsing yüan p'in 普賢行願品 (i.e., the [Samanta]bhadracarīpraṇidhāna), which Prajñā had included at the end of his 40 chüan translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra (T 293) done in the years 796-798 (a translation in which Ch'eng-kuan had assisted). Although Tao-p'ei's compendium does not incorporate all of Li T'ung-hsüan's, Ch'eng-kuan's, and Tsung-mi's massive commentaries and subcommentaries, it can often be a boon to anyone who would consult them, for they are themselves so long and complex that, even with the aid of the relevant Taishō index volume (Taishō shinshū daizōkyō sakuin 大正新修大藏經索引, Vol. 20), it is exceedingly difficult to find in them any particular phrases or passages.

Wei-lin Tao-p'ei 為霖道霈 hao 號: Lü-p'o 旅泊 (1615-1702), it should be noted, was a learned Ch'an monk of the Ts'ao-tung 曹洞 lineage who lived his whole life in Fukien, most of it at the Ku-shan Yung-ch'üan ssu 鼓山湧泉寺 near Fuchow, of which he was abbot for several decades. He was one of the most eminent monks of his day and was known especially for his interest in Hua-yen thought. The most detailed account of Tao-p'ei's life is his autobiography, entitled Lü-p'o huan-chi旅泊幻蹟, which is included in the fourth chüan of the Wei-lin Tao-p'ei ch'an-shih huan-shan lu為霖道霈禪師還山錄 (SSZZ 1440:72671b-673b). For other sources of biographical infoimation on Tao-p'ei, together with samplings of his teachings, see:

 

 

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Wu-teng ch'üan-shu 五燈全書, chüan 63 (compiled by Chi-lun Ch'ao-yung 霽崙超永 in 1697 -- SSZZ 1571:82.286b-287a);

Hsin hsü-kao-seng-chuan 新續高僧傳, chüan 63 (compiled by Yü Chien 喻謙 [tzu 字: Mei-yen 昧菴], et al. in 1923 -- four volume edition published in Taipei, in 1974, by Hsin-wen-feng ch'u-pan kung-ssu 新文豐出版公司, vol. 4, p. 1809);

Zensō nembutsu shū 禪宗念佛集, kan 2 (compiled in 1694 by the Sōtō Zen monk Echū 慧(惠)中 (1628-1703), disciple and biographer of the famous Samurai Zen Master Suzuki Shōsan 鈴木正三 (1579-1655) -- Dainihon bukkyō zensho (kyūban) 大日本佛教全書 (旧版), vol. 70, pp. 276b-281a.

Tao-p'ei's Hua-yen-ching shu-lun tsuan-yao -- a deliberate attempt to make available in a single, readable work both the practical insight of Li T'ung-hsüan's exposition of the Hua-yen Sūtra and the doctrinal sophistication of Ch'eng-kuan's great commentaries -- was rediscovered in 1929 by the remarkable artist, vinaya-expert, and leading Buddhist reformer. Hung-i 弘一 (1880-1942), who was then visiting Tao-p'ei's old monastery, the Yung-ch'üan ssu. Hung-i had long cultivated an interest in Hua-yen. Immediately upon his discovery of Tao-p'ei's work he read through the whole of it and was so impressed that he arranged for its immediate reprinting. He even sent twelve copies of his reprint to monasteries and universities in Japan (where he had lived for a number of years before ordination) because, noticing that it had not been included in the Supplement to the Tripiṭaka (Zokuzōkyō) published a couple of decades earlier in Kyoto, he assumed that it was a text that had never made its way to Japan. It is to Hung-i's advocacy of the work that we owe its many reprintings over the course of the past six decades. See Lin Tzu-ch'ing 林子青, editor, Hung-i Ta-shih nien-p'u 弘一大師年譜, 2nd edition (Taipei: T'ien-hua ch'u-pan kung-ssu 天華出版公司, 1989), pp. 92-93; see also Kamata Shigeo鎌田茂雄, "Irin Dōhai Kegon-kyō soron san'yō no kankō to kizō -- Kōichi Daishi no gyōseki o shinonde" 為霖道霈 『華嚴經疏論纂要』の刊行と寄贈: 弘一大師の業績を偲んで, Kegon-gaku kenkyū 華嚴學研究 3 (1991): 137-144.

That Tao-p'ei and his teachings were mentioned in a Japanese work (Echū's Sensō nembutsu shū) published eight years before he died is testimony to both the extraordinary measure of his fame and the remarkably close relations between Chinese Ch'an and Japanese Zen in the late seventeenth century. Indeed, several versions of Tao-p'ei's Yü-lu 語錄 and occasional writings were published in Kyoto in the 1660's and 1670's -- see Shinsan zenseki mokuroku 新纂禪籍目錄 (Tokyo: Komazawa University Library 駒沢大學圖書

 

 

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館, 1962), pp. 4-5. That someone like Echū should have been familiar with them by the 1690's should not really be surprising. What especially recommended Tao-p'ei to Echū was the former's typically Chinese espousal of the view that Ch'an and Pure Land were quite in harmony with each other. This Echū saw as a necessary corrective to the disdain toward Pure Land that was so prevalent in seventeenth century Zen, especially in the Rinzai school. Tao-p'ei's Yü-lu and that of his teacher Yung-chüeh Yüan-hsien 永覺元賢 (1578-1657) are preserved in the Zokuzōkyō (SSZZ 1437, 1438, 1439, 1440, 1441, & 1442) along with a number of Tao-p'ei's shorter works (SSZZ 495-A, 675-1, 675-2, 675-3, 513, 563, 599, 599-a, 1437-F, 1442-附, 1455, & 1455-A); note especially his delightful short collection of Ch'an anecdotes, the Sheng-chien-t'ang shu-ku 聖箭棠述古 (SSZZ 1455:73. 445a-459a). Regarding Tao-p'ei's teacher Yung-chüeh yüan-hsien, see Shih Sheng-yen 釋聖嚴, Ming-mo fo-chiao yen-chiu 明末佛教研究 (Taipei: Tung-ch'u ch'u-pan-she 東初出版社, 1987), pp. 170-171.

49. Ch'eng-kuan is here paraphrasing a line from the Fo-shuo fo-ming ching 佛說佛名經 -- either the version translated by the Bodhiruci who was active in Loyang under the Wei dynasty from 508 until about 534 (T 440:14.153c28-29), or the anonymous text of the same title that appears to be simply an expansion of Bodhiruci's translation (T 441:14.253al4-15). In both versions the line Ch'eng-kuan seems to be paraphrasing occurs in a passage in which Sariputra asks Śākyamuni how many Buddhas there are at present, Śākyamuni replies that just as Śāriputra sees the Buddha Śākyamuni present directly before him, so too, in that very same present moment, Śākyamuni himself sees before him, arrayed in the ten directions, an incalculable number of other worlds in each of which there is another Buddha who is also named Śākyamuni and who is identical to himself. And just as each of those innumerable worlds has its own Śākyamuni, so also does it have in the current aeon a full complement of the seven past Buddhas (i.e., a Dīpaṃkara, a Vipaśyin, a Śikhin, a Viśvabhū, a Krakucchanda, a Kanakamuni, and a Kāśyapa). Moreover, Śākyamuni continues, the present aeon is merely one among trillions of aeons! If there are such infinite numbers of Buddhas with just these eight names, how many more must there be who have different names? "And every one of these Buddhas [partake of the same] aspiration for unexcelled, perfect, complete awakening first proclaimed by Manjuśrī" (此如是等諸佛皆是文殊師利初教發阿耨多羅三藐三菩提心).

The Sūtra of the Buddhas' Names is an enormous list of the names of some eleven thousand and ninety-three different Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. In fact, it is a kind of litany punctuated by brief passages of dialogue between Śākyamuni and Śāriputra. It belongs to a whole class of liturgically oriented Mahāyāna scriptures (comprising over

 

 

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twenty different titles in Chinese alone) concerned with the theme of the "One Thousand Buddhas of the Auspicious (Fortunate) Age (= Bhadrakalpa =Hsien-ch'ieh 賢劫)." This tradition took shape during the fourth through ninth centuries in Northwestern India, Central Asia, and the Turfan region (note the "Cave of the Thousand Buddhas" at Tun-huang), whence it spread widely throughout East Asia generally. It served as a kind of optimistic counterpoint to the contemporary and more pessimistic theme of the "latter day of the law" (mo-fa 末法). According to this Bhadrakalpa tradition, the present cosmic aeon (mahākalpa) is an especially blessed age because in the course of its virtually incalculable duration sentient beings will have the benefit of the appearance of one thousand Buddhas. Moreover, as Śākyamuni is only the fourth of these, there are still 996 yet to come! See Friedrich Weller, Tausend Buddhanamen des Bhadrakalpa, nach einer funfsprachigen Polyglotte (Leipzig: Asia Major, 1928); Isshi Yamada, editor and translator, Karuṇāpuṇḍarika (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1968), Vol. 1, pp. 121-139; and Jan Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline, Nanzan Studies in Asian Religions. No. 4 (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991), pp. 15-26. This tradition gave rise to elaborate liturgical traditions during which the litanies that are the core of its scriptures were recited for purificatory or expiatory purposes. In Japan, for example, the ninth century saw the inauguration of grand and solemn imperially sponsored rituals -- called Butsumyōe 佛名會 or Butsumyōsange 佛名懺悔 -- performed at the end of each lunar year in both the national and the provincial capitals for the purpose of cleansing the nation of the pollution it had incurred during the preceding twelve months. See the entry, "Butsumyō in Hōbōgirin 法寶義林: Dictionaire encyclopédique du Bouddhisme d'après les sources chinoises et japonaises, troisième fascicule (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1937), pp. 209-210 and Marinus Willem De Visser, Ancient Buddhism in Japan: Sūtras and Ceremonies in Use in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries A. D. and Their History in Later Times (Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1935), Vol. 1, pp. 377-393.

It is significant that Ch'eng-kuan chose to support an important point of doctrine with a unobtrusive line from what was essentially a ceremonial text -- indeed, a litany. This suggests that Ch'eng-kuan himself was familiar with the ritual recitation of such texts, and this in turn is a salutary reminder of the way in which even abstruse doctrine is rooted in ritual praxis.

50. The belief that Mañjuśrī was the progenitor -- indeed, the progenetrix -- of all the Buddhas is long-standing and widespread. See, for example, the passage from the *Ajātaśatrukaukṛtyavinodana (Wei-tseng-yu cheng-fa ching 未曾有正法經, T 629:15.451al4-19)

 

 

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-- translated in the late tenth century by the Indian monk *Dharmadeva (= Fa-t'ien 法天), which was quoted by Etienne Lamotte in his classic article, "Mañjuśrī," Toung-Pao 48 (1960): 93-94. There Śākyamuni is given to say that he owes his Buddhahood together with all its qualities to the favor (恩) of none other than Mañjuśrī, who is not only his teacher but also the teacher -- the very father and mother -- of all the innumerable Buddhas of the past and future. See also the story of Mañjuśrī's previous life as King Ākāśa, which is actually the story of the inception of his Bodhisattva career. This is recounted in the *Mañjuśrībuddhakṣetraguṇavyūha, also quoted by Lamotte in the same article (pp. 20-23). Of course, Mañjuśrī's designation as "mother of all Buddha's" is in part a function of his identification with the perfection of insight or wisdom (prajñāpāramitā) which, like its counterparts in Mediterranean "wisdom" traditions (Hebrew: "Hokhmah," Greek: "Sophia," Latin: "Sapientia"), is conceived as a feminine and maternal presence. This association is traceable all the back to the early Prajñāpāramitā canon.

51. This is a reference to the fact that in the course of his pilgrimage, as told in the Gaṇḍavyūha Sūtra (i.e., in the text known best to the Chinese as the "Ju fa-chieh p'in" 入法界品, the long final chapter of the Hua-yen ching), the fledgling "Everyman" bodhisattva Sudhana (Shan-tsai 善財) meets Mañjuśrī twice -- once at the very outset of his quest and once again, near its end, just before his culminating visit with Samantabhadra. Thus, of the fifty-four visits comprising Sudhana's pilgrimage, his visits with Mañjuśrī are the first and the fifty-third. The fact that Mañjuśrī is the only one of his fifty-four spiritual advisers (i.e., kalyānamitra, shan-chih-shih 善知識) whom Sudhana meets twice has always been taken as especially significant. All commentators have drawn from it at least the conclusion that the values which Mañjuśrī is believed to embody (wisdom, faith, etc.) are present at both the inception and the culmination of the bodhisattva path. It was conventional to refer to the Mañjuśrī of the first meeting as "the former Mañjuśrī" (ch'u wen-shu 初文殊), and to the Mañjuśrī of the fifty-third encounter as "the latter Mañjuśrī" (hou wen-shu 後文殊). Ch'eng-kuan is here concerned to explain why Sudhana does not also meet twice with Samantabhadra, as he does with Mañjuśrī, -- i.e., at the beginning of his journey as well as at its end. The reason is that Samantabhadra represents, among other things, the object of faith. As the object of faith is not really different from the object of realization (ch'eng 證), Samantabhadra need not appear twice. Mañjuśrī, by contrast, represents both the subjectivity or capacity of faith (neng-hsin 能信) and, as will be asserted below, the subjectivity or capacity of insight (neng-chih 能智). Even though there objects are essentially the same, the subjectivity or capacity of faith clearly differs from that of realization. In light of their difference it is reasonable that he should appear twice to Sudhana, once at the beginning to symbolize faith and once again near the end to symbolize insight, the confirmation of faith.

 

 

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52. The term "chien" 見 here means more than just "to see." In Hua-yen usage it has the sense of direct or unmediated experience, as distinct from the sort of anticipatory experience provided by faith.

53. The term "understanding" is an imperfect translation of the Chinese "chieh" 解. The latter means, literally, "to loose," "to untie," "to release." It is conventionally used to label a kind of explanatory or interpretive strategy whereby intellectual problems are discursively or theoretically solved. In Buddhist usage it implied doctrinal reflection but only as a foundation for, rather than an alternative to, practice and experience.

54. If one were to follow the wording in Tsung-mi's paraphrase (SSZZ 229:5.238al5) this passage would have to be translated differently. Note first that Tsung-mi reads "shang-hsia ching-wen" 上下經文, rather than "shang-hsia chu-ching" 上下諸經, suggesting that the reference is to passages of text found throughout the Flower Garland Scripture" More important is the fact that Tsung-mi adds the phrase "wu-chou yin-kuo" 五周因果. This set of rubrics -- borrowed from Ch'eng-kuan's commentary and sub-commentary on the Hua-yen ching (T 1735:522bl0-25, 527b21-528b3, et passim; and SSZZ 232:5.825c719), which in turn derived from Fa-tsang's commentary (T 1733:35.120b1-9) -- refers to a scheme that was used to organize or divide the whole of the 80-scroll version of the sūtra into five major parts, each part said to treat of one aspect of the scripture's overarching them of soteriological causation (yin-kuo 因果):

The first part, consisting of the first of the sūtra's 9 "assemblies" (hui 會) -- its first 6 of its 39 chapters (p'in 品) and the first 11 of its 80 scrolls (chüan 卷) -- is said to treat of "cause and fruition as objects of faith" (suo-hsin yin-kuo 所信因果), i.e., the sheer wonder and many ineffable qualities of the Tathāgata's ultimate accomplishment and the power of that accomplishment to awaken and sustain the faith of sentient beings.

The second part, consisting of the 2nd assembly through most of the 7th -- the 7th through the 35th chapters, the 12th through the 48th scrolls -- is said to treat of "cause and fruition in their differentiations" (ch'a-pieh yin-kuo 差別因果), i.e., the various particular components of the path (the 10 faiths, 10 abodes, 10 practices, 10 dedications, 10 stages, etc.) and their respective fruitions.

The third part , consisting of the final section of the 7th assembly -- chapters 36 and 37, scrolls 49 through 52 -- is said to treat of "cause and fruition in their ultimate sameness" (p'ing-teng yin-kuo 平等因果), i.e., the final identity of the dimension of

 

 

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practice symbolized by Samantabhadra with the dimension of fruition symbolized by Vairocana.

The fourth part, consisting of only the 8th assembly -- chapter 38 and scrolls 53 through 59 -- is said to treat of "cause and fruition as practices of attainment" (ch'eng-hsing yin-kuo 成行因果). i.e., the "five ranks or orders" (wu-wei 五位) of bodhisattva practice (sambhāra-mārga [tzu-liang wei 資糧位], prayoga-mārga [chia-hsing wei 加行位], darśana-mārga [chien-tao wei 見道位], bhāvanā-mārga [hsiu-hsi wei 修習位], aśaik.sa-mārga [wu-hsüeh wei 無學位]) and the "eight features" (pa-hsiang 八相) of a Buddha's career (descent from the Tuṣita heaven, miraculous entry into the womb, miraculous birth, setting forth into the homeless life, defeat of Mara, attainment of awakening, expounding the dharma, and nirvāṇa).

The fifth and final part, consisting of the 9th assembly -- chapter 39, scrolls 60 through 80 -- is said to treat of "cause and fruition in terms of their [simultaneous] entry and realization" (ch'eng-ju yin-kuo 證入因果).

This five-part scheme is an artful device for attributing to the vast and various hua-yen Sūtra a single underlying theme while yet addressing that theme from such a variety of perspectives that it can be made to subsume a great diversity of doctrine. Tsung-mi's invocation of it at this point in his paraphrase of Ch'eng-kuan's essay on the Hua-yen trinity suggests at least two things: first, that he sees "the myriad practices of Samantabhadra" as implicit in the structure of the sūtra and, second, that he regards the contemplations of the three holy ones as serving especially the hermeneutical purpose of giving access to the scripture and its truths.

55. These words are spoken -- at the end of the seventy-ninth scroll of the eighty-scroll Hua-yen ching -- by Maitreya, Sudhana's fifty-third kalyanamitra, just as he sends the young pilgrim off on his second visit to Mañjuśrī. See T 279:439a22-23.

56. Presumably, these two brief quotations are also from the Hua-yen ching, but I have not yet been able to find their exact locations.

57. The term "li" 理 is notoriously difficult to translate. "Principle" is at best a makeshift; "truth," "norm," and "logos" are other possibilities, depending on context and preferred degree of interpretation. As we ponder the term's meaning, and particularly in view of the fact that it is not in this usage a translation of any Sanskrit term, we do well to bear in mind its Chinese etymology by which it can be seen to have implications of "inner pattern," "intrinsic structure," or even "pattern" or "structure" generally conceived. In contrast to the term "shih" 事 (thing,

 

 

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event, affair, phenomenon, etc.), with which it is often paired, li has the implication of universality as opposed to particularity. Thus it can refer to those general principles or truths which indwell, comprise, and govern particular things -- the intrinsic norms by which things are as they are. Among examples of "principles" recognized in Buddhism are such central tenets of the faith as the following: that all things are "impermanent," that all things are "empty," that all things are "mind alone," that all beings are potential Buddhas, etc.

58. This is the transcendent aspect of the tathāgatagarbha, as distinct from its immanent aspect addressed above (see note # 46, above). Although the tathāgatagarbha is, by definition, an immanence or a presence -- the potential for Buddhahood that resides in all beings -- it is also, in a sense, transcendent insofar as it remains, for all its immanence, essentially inviolate and uncontaminable, impervious to the defilement within which it resides.

59. I cannot find these exact strings of characters in the Hua-yen ching, but they seem to be abbreviated paraphrases of things that are said of Samantabhadra in the final pages of the scripture's eightieth scroll (T 279:9.439b-442b).

60. See chapter 7, chüan 12, and chapter 9, chüan 13 of the eighty-scroll Hua-yen ching (T 279:10.58a20-21 7 62c, et passim), where it is explained that it was in a world named "Golden Hue" (Chin-ssu shih-chieh 金色世界) that Mañjuśrī began his bodhisattva career and that at that time the presiding Buddha was named Immovable Insight (Pu-tung chih 不動智).

61. The first of these three quotations is taken from the section of the scripture in which Maitreya praises Mañjuśrī just before sending Sudhana off to visit him for the second time (T 279:10.439a9-10); the other two I have not yet been able to trace.

62. Ch'eng-kuan here draws upon Fa-tsang's (643-712) commentary on the sixty-scroll translation of the Hua-yen ching, written about 695 and best known by the short title, T'an-hsüan chi 探玄記 -- see chüan 20 (T 1733:35.490a-b; cf. Kaginushi Ryōkei's 鍵主良敬 annotated Japanese translation of this portion of Fa-tsang's work in Kokuyaku issaikyō, Wa-Kan senshū-bu, kyōso-bu 國訳一切經‧和漢選集部‧經疏部‧10 [Tokyo: Daitō shuppansha 大東出版社, 1984], pp. 2142-2147). Fa-tsang, in turn, elaborates on the 628 commentary by his teacher Chih-yen 智儼 (602-668), known by the abbreviation of its title as the Sou-hsüan chi 搜玄記 -- see chüan 5b, T 1732:35.105a. The subject of the relevant passages in both commentaries is Sudhana's second meeting with Mañjuśrī, i.e., the penultimate encounter of his long pilgrimage. Both Chih-yen and Fa-tsang divide the fifty-five kalyānamitra (shan-chih-shih 善知識) whom Sudhana visits into five categories, assigning each category a special significance.

 

 

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Thus, the first forty-one kalyanamitra (i.e., the "Former Mañjuśrī" through the Śākya maiden, Gopā 瞿波釋種女) symbolize "cultivation according to the pretext of rank" (chi-wei hsiu-hsing hsiang 寄位修行相). In this scheme, the "Former Mañjuśrī" represents in his single person all of the "ten degrees of faith" (shih-hsin 十信), whereas the next forty represent, one by one and in sequence, the "ten stations" (shih chu 十住), the "ten practices" (shih-hsing 十行), the "ten dedications" (shih hui-hsiang 十迴向), and the "ten stages" (shih-ti 十地).

The forty-second through the fifty-second kalyānamitra (i.e., Lady Māyā 摩耶夫人 through the boy-girl pair, Śrīsaṃbhava 德生童子 and Śrīmatī 有德童女 symbolize "the entrance into the [one and undifferentiated] real by the coalescence of all the conditions [represented separately by the previous forty-one kalyānamitra]" (hui-yuän ju-shih hsiang 會緣入實相).

The fifty-third kalyānamitra, Maitreya, is the one who "subsumes [all] qualities and so brings cause [i.e., practice] to culmination" (攝德成因相).

The fifty-fourth kalyānamitra, of course, is the "Latter Mañjuśrī," to whom Ch'eng-kuan here refers, and he is said to signify "insight illuminating non-duality" (chih-chao wu-erh hsiang 智照無二相), i.e. the discernment that ultimately all distinctions -- between subject and object, cause and fruit, practice and realization, etc. -- do not really exist.

The fifty-fifth -- Samantabhadra -- "expresses the vastness of the causal dimension" (hsien-yin kuang-ta hsiang 顯因廣大相), i.e., the great profusion of the means and methods of practice.

63. Ch'eng-kuan here refers to the curious ending of Sudhana's brief but significant second encounter with Mañjuśrī, which is the prelude to the culmination of his pilgrimage, the visit with Samantabhadra. That meeting occurs without Sudhana's departure from the city of Sumanamukha (Su-ma-na ch'eng 蘇摩那城), the place where he had just had his extended encounter with Maitreya. Rather, Mañjuśrī comes to Sudhana and does almost invisibly, as it were. His body remains in its distant abode while he extends his right hand, the only part of him which is visible, across some one-hundred and ten yojana (yu-hsün 由旬 -- a yojana conventionally calculated as the equivalent of about 5 miles) to place it upon Sudhana's head. Mañjuśrī speaks only a few words to Sudhana -- about the indispensability of faith, effort, resolution, spiritual guides, etc. -- and then he simply retracts his hand "withdraws back into his invisibility" (huan-she pu-hsien 還攝不現); see T 279:439b1-23. Ch'eng-kuan follows long-standing Hua-yen precedent in taking Mañjuśrī's non-appearance or vanishing as a token of his utter transcendence.

 

 

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64. It is well known that Fa-tsang was a close associate of the great Khotanese missionary and translator Śikṣānanda (652-710), who first arrived in China in 695. During the years 695-700 Śikṣānanda worked in Loyang, under the patronage of Empress Wu, supervising a team of translators who rendered the whole Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra into Chinese for the second time, producing the eighty-scroll version on which everyone thereafter, including Ch'eng-kuan, came soon to rely. Fa-tsang was a member of that translation team, as was the monk-traveller I-ching 義淨 (635-713), famous for his meticulously recorded twenty-four years of travel throughout India and the Malay Archipelago. Exactly why Fa-tsang had deemed this particular matter worthy of special consultation with Śikṣānanda is not clear. Perhaps it was because the claim that Mañjuśrī's double insight -- i.e., his combination of a kind of "relativist" and pedagogically sophisticated insight into diverse conditions and appearances (ch'üan 權) with an "absolutist" or invariant insight into the true or the actual (shih 實) as it always and ultimately is -- might be mistaken to imply that the "knowing" symbolized by Mañjuśrī obviated all need for the "doing" (the practice) which Samantabhadra symbolizes. In this connection it is worth remembering that both Fa-tsang and Ch'eng-kuan lived in a period of Chinese Buddhism's history when Ch'an and other Buddhists were sometimes given to extremist assertions of the claims of prajñā over those of all other ingredients of Buddhism, often with the effect of endorsing, or seeming to endorse, forms of antinomian and/or quietist spirituality. Interestingly, these same issues were under debate in Tibet in the very same years that saw Ch'eng-kuan's composition of the essay at hand. I refer, of course, to the Lhasa or Samye debates between the Indian missionary Kamalaśīla and the Chinese Ch'an monk Mo-ho-yen 摩訶衍.

65. The notion of "reflexive radiance" (fan-chao 反照) is an important one in Hua-yen, and in other traditions of East Asian Buddhism influenced by Hua-yen, like Ch'an. For examples of its use in the Ch'an 禪 (Sŏn) of the great Korean monk Chinul 知訥 (1158-1210) -- who was much indebted to earlier Hua-yen thinkers like Li T'ung-hsüan 李通玄 (635?-730?), Ch'eng-kuan, and Tsung-mi 宗密 (780-841) -- see Robert E. Buswell, Jr., Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul's Korean Way of Zen, Classics in East Asian Buddhism 2 (Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press and The Kuroda Institute, 1991).

66. The phrase "yin-yin" 隱隱 can mean either "obscure," "subtle" or "abundant," "plentiful." My choice of the latter is somewhat conjectural but informed by the implications of the subsequently appearing parallel phrase "chung-chung" 重重 ( vide infra).

67. At this point in Tsung-mi's paraphrase (SSZZ 229:5.238c5-8) there is a passage which is found in no other version of the essay and which therefore may be presumed to have been added

 

 

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by Tsung-mi himself. It is a paraphrase of a passage from a text to which Tsung-mi refers by the abbreviated title Man-shu ch'ien-po ching 曼殊千缽經. This must be the Ta-sheng yu-chia-chin-kang hsing-hai man-shu-she-li ch'ien-pi ch'ien-po ta-chiao-wang ching 大乘瑜伽金鋼性海曼列室利千臂千缽大教王經 (10 卷; T 1177A:20.714b-775c; *Mahāyāna-yoga-vajra-prakṛtisāgara-Mañjuśrī-sahasrabāhu-sahasrapātra-mahātantrarāja-sūtra), one of the several esoteric Manjuśrī texts said to have been translated by Amoghavara (Pu-k'ung 不空, 705-774), the great Tantric missionary who ardently promoted the cult of Mañjuśrī as patron deity of China. This tantra is accompanied in all of its editions by an anonymous but detailed preface which purports to recount the history of its study and translation. It tells us that study of the original Sanskrit of the tantra was begun by Vajrabodhi (d. 741) and his disciple Hyech'o 慧超 (704?-787), the latter a Korean (Silla) monk who had travelled widely in South and Central Asia sometime during the years 719-727. It may be that the tantra was one of those that Vajrabodhi himself brought to China (although he is said to have lost most of the texts he had acquired during a storm encountered as he sailed in 719 from Sumatra to China), or it may have been brought back to China by Hyech'o.

A fragment of Hyech'o's account of his journey has survived among the Tun-huang mss.; see Wang wu T'ien-chu-kuo chuan 往五天竺國傳, in Yu-fang-chi ch'ao (T 2089:51.975a- 979b). This record has been studied and translated by Walter Fuchs, "Keui-ch'ao's Pilgrerreise durch Nordwest Indien und Zentral-Asien um 726," Sitzungsberichte der preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaftten, Stizung der philosophisch-historichen Klasse, 30 (1938) and more recently by Yang Han-sung, Jan Yün-hu, Iida Shotaro, and Laurence W. Preston, The Hye Ch'o Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India (Berkeley and Seoul: Asian Humanities Press and Po Chin Chai, Ltd., 1984) -- not to mention the numerous Japanese studies of the topic, some of which were consulted by Yang, Jan, et al.

The preface recounts that Vajrabodhi and Hyech'o began their study of the tantra and its sādhanā in January of 733; that nearly 8 years later, in June of 740, the two men formally began their translation; that work on the translation was suspended in January of 741 (only a few months before Vajrabodhi's death); that in April of 742 the Sanskrit ms. was sent back to India in compliance with Vajrabodhi's directions; that late in 774 (within a few months of Amoghavajra's death on July 28 of that year) Hyech'o pledged his commitment to esoteric practice in compliance with Amoghavajra's dying wishes and thereafter took up again his work on the Tantra of the Mañjuśrī of a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Bowls (on which, presumably, Amoghavajra and he had continued to work after Vajrabodhi's death); and that in the spring of 780 he took the text

 

 

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to Wu-t'ai shan, to the Ch'ien-yuan p'u-t'i 乾元菩提 monastery, where he copied it out over the course of nineteen days, from May 23 to June 11. The text seems to have remained at Wu-t'ai shan, and to have been little known elsewhere, until the year 938 when the Southern T'ang monk Heng-an 恆安 (d.u.) travelled to Wu-t'ai, found it there, and included it in his 945 catalogue, the Ta-t'ang pao-ta i-szu sui hsü cheng-yüan shih-chiao lu 大唐保大乙巳歲續貞元釋教錄 (T 2158:55.1048b & 1049c-1050a). Of course, visitors to Wu-t'ai in the interim between 780 and 938 could easily have come upon the text. This may have been the case with Ch'eng-kuan. He had arrived at Wu-t'ai in 776 and the years he spent there working on his commentary to the Hua-yen ching overlapped the years during which Hyech'o was also at Wu-t'ai copying the tantra. In this connection, however, it is somewhat curious that none of the famous ninth century Japanese visitors to Wu-t'ai brought this particular tantra back with them to Japan; Jōjin 成尋 (1011-1081), the famous Tendai visitor to Sung China who arrived there in 1072, was the first Japanese known to have acquired it. By the twelfth century (1136) the tantra had come to be well enough known to be included among those scriptures that the Chin dynasty ecclesiastical authorities had inscribed on stone tablets at Fang-shan -- see Fang-shan shih-ching t'i-chi hui-pien房山石經題記彙編 (Peking: Shu-mu wen-hsien ch'u-pan-she 書目文獻出版社, 1987), pp. 537-540. In the mid-thirteenth century it was included in the second Korean edition of the canon. In China it was first incorporated into a printed canon in 1306 when it was added to the supplementary portions of the Chi-hsia 磧沙 Tripiṭaka. Thereafter, it was regularly included in nearly all East Asian editions of the canon.

For a great variety of reasons, some more compelling than others, Japanese scholars have long harbored doubts about the authenticity of this tantra, suggesting that Amoghavajra did not really translate it and that it is actually a Chinese apochryphon, a composite consisting of pieces taken from other texts cobbled together with extended passages of anonymous Chinese composition.

For a recent summary of such opinion see Ōsabe Kazuo 長部和雄, Tōdai mikkyō-shi zakkō 唐代密教史雜考 (Tokyo: Keisuisha 溪水社, 1990), pp. 115-118.

Indeed, parts of the text, particularly its later sections, do read remarkably like rehearsals of themes that were prominent in the Buddhist discourse of the late T'ang, themes of just the sort to which Tsung-mi was devoted, that may be why he was drawn to the text. That the text was a focus of interest in late T'ang or immediately post-T'ang times is indicated by the fact that paintings of its protagonist, the "Mañjuśrī of the Thousand Arms and Thousand Bowls," may be found in the caves at Tun-huang. One such, dating from the tenth century (the period during which Heng-an discovered the text at Wu-t'ai), adorns the south wall of cave no. 99 of the Mo-kao grottos. A color photograph of that painting may be found as plate no. 34 in

 

 

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the fifth volume of Tun-huang Wen-wu Yen-chiu-suo 敦煌文物研究所 eds., Chung-kuo shih-k'u: Tun-huang Mo-kao-k'u 中國石窟: 敦煌莫高窟 (Peking: Wen-wu ch'u-pan-she 文物出版社, 1987). A monochrome photograph of another and very similar Tun-huang painting of the same bodhisattva, presumably from the same general period, may be found in Paul Pelliot, Les grottes de Touen-houang: peintures et sculptures bouddhiques des époques des Wei, des T'ang et des Song, tome I (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1914-1924). That no depiction of this bodhisattva is to be found among the esoteric iconographical texts included in the later volumes of the Taishō canon is probably a function of the fact that this tantra was not among the esoteric texts brought to Japan by the Heian pilgrims to China.

The lines inserted by Tsung-mi are not an exact quotation. Rather, a scan of the tantra shows that they are a rewording of a passage from the tantra's third chüan (T 1177A:20.735b10-21). Tsung-mi's paraphrase (in my own punctuation) reads as follows:

《爾時,眾中菩薩摩訶薩一切有情同修行普賢曼殊行願證,
入毘盧遮那如來十大慈佛心觀》,亦表二聖不異。

"At that time the bodhisattva-mahāsattvas and other beings in the assembly, all alike undertaking to cultivate the vows of Samantabhadra and Mañjuśrī, attained to the ten contemplations of the Tathagata Vairocana's great compassionate buddha-mind." Thereby is it shown that the two sages are not different.

Tsung-mi's point in adducing these lines is that, if the ten-fold contemplation of the compassionate mind of Vairocana may be attamed by practice of either Samantabhadra's vows or Mañjuśrī's or both, then there can be no essential difference between Samantabhadra and Mañjuśrī. That Tsung-mi should have resorted to a tantric text to make this point is yet another indication of the insufficiently appreciated close relationship between Hua-yen and Chen-yen in the late T'ang.

68. As the divergence in punctuation among the various editions indicates, this line is somewhat obscure, which is probably why Gyōnen altered its wording in his Hokkai gikyō paraphrase (Kitabatake edition, p. 262).

Ch'eng-kuan's original (following Yang Wen-hui's punctuation) reads:

文殊普賢二俱華嚴,萬行披敷,信智解行皆是因華,用嚴本寂體故。

By contrast, Gyōnen's paraphrase (following Kitabatake's punctuation) reads:

文殊、普賢二俱華嚴,萬行披敷是因門故。信智及解皆是因,華嚴本體故。

 

 

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Gyōnen's wording may be translated as follows:

Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra together [correspond to the rubric of] "flower ornament," for the 'blossoming' of the myriad practices is the domain of cause. Faith, insight, and understanding are all [of the order of] cause, in the sense of 'flowers ornamenting' the fundamental substance."

69. In his Hokkai gikyō paraphrase (Kitabatake edition, p. 262), Gyōnen adds a further flourish. He says that the phrase "ta fang-kuang" implies the object of realization, i.e., Samantabhadra, whereas the phrase "fo hua-yen" implies insight as the subject of realization, i.e, Mañjuśrī (又所證之境,是『大方廣』,即是普賢。能證之智,是『佛華嚴』,即是文殊。).

70. This quotation is from the thirty-fifth chapter (chüan 52) of the thirty-nine chapters that comprise the eighty-scroll version of the Hua-yen ching -- see T 279:10.275b24.

71. A leading Japanese scholar of Kegon, active especially in the 1920's and 1930's; his name is sometimes given as "Yūtsugi" or "Yutsugi," but these pronunciations are incorrect).

72. It is important to remember that, although the Ono Gemmyō bibliography is the best we have, it is by no means exhaustive. There may well be other and earlier versions of the text -- printed versions and/or manuscripts -- surviving in Japan apart from those mentioned in the Bussho kaisetsu daijiten. To find these, however, or to determine with certainty whether or not they exist, would require extensive consultation of a great many catalogues and other reference works. Among the particular archives where one might search for early versions of this and other Hua-yen / Kegon works are:

The Library of the Todaiji 東大寺 Research Institute in Nara 奈良, Todaiji being the chief center of Kegon throughout its history in Japan.

The Kanazawa Bunko 金澤文庫 in Yokohama 橫浜 (just southeast of Tokyo), a major collection of medieval Buddhist materials which is especially strong in Kegon works.

The archives of Kōzanji 高山寺, a temple located in the Northwestern suburbs of Kyoto which was associated with Myōe 明惠. Like Tōdaiji and the Kanazawa Bunko, it has especially strong Kegon holdings.

The Kanazawa Bunko and Kōzanji archives are very well catalogued. I have been able to establish that there are no early versions of the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men at either

 

 

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institution. However, no complete catalogue of the Tōdaiji collection has yet been published. Thus, I do not yet know if there are early versions of our text there.

73. For useful overviews of the development of the Chinese Tripiṭaka see:

Lü Cheng 呂澂, Fo-tien fan-lun 佛典泛論.

Shih Tao-an 釋道安, Chung-kuo tsang-ching i-yin shih 中國藏經譯印.

[I do not know exactly where or when these two works were originally published, but they have often been reprinted and are both readily available together in Yang Chia-lo 楊家駱, ed., Fo-hsüeh wu-shu 佛學五書. Chung-kuo hsüeh-shu lei-pien 中國學術類編 (Taipei: Ting-wen shu-chü 鼎文書局 191975).]

See also Daizokai 大蔵会, eds. Daizōkyō: seiritsu to hensen 大蔵経: 成立と変遷 (Kyoto: Hyakkaen 百華苑, 1964).

The most detailed survey is perhaps:

Ts'ai Yün-chen 蔡運辰, Erh-shih-wu-chung tsang-ching mu-tu tui-chao k'ao-shih 二十五種藏經目錄對照考釋 (Taipei: Hsin-wen-feng 新文豐, 1983).

74. When the Zokuzōkyō was first published in Kyoto it was printed in traditional style, i.e., in 751 stitched "fascicles" (satsu 冊) bundled in 150 "cases" (tō 套). The whole collection was divided into two "series" (hen 編), but the second of these was further divided into two "sub-series". The first "sub-series" either has no special designation or is called "kō" 甲, whereas the second sub-series is called "otsu" 乙 or (in English) "b." Citations of works in this original 1905-1912 Japanese edition of the Zokuzōkyō (usually abbreviated "ZZ") are thus given as follows:

ZZ 2.8.4 (= fascicle 4, case 8, sub-series 1, series 2) (If it the text were in fascicle 4 of case 8 of sub-series 2, it would be cited as ZZ 2b.8.4).

This is why the Zokuzōkyō edition of this work is listed in the Harvard-Yenching index as 續貳 8/4.

Note that the texts in the Zokuzōkyō are not punctuated, but most of them do have kunten 訓点 or kaeriten 返り点, i.e. markings which indicate how the Chinese text is to be read according to Japanese syntax. These markings are not always correct. Each page in this collection is printed in 2 registers, with 18 lines to a register and 20 characters to a line. Spaces above registers are used for occasional notes.

 

 

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75. All texts have been given reorganized into a new page layout, with 3 registers to a page rather than the original 2, with 24 lines to a register rather than 18, and with notes placed at the bottom of each page rather than in the top margins. This new Zokuzōkyō has been printed in eighty-eight large western-style bound volumes with two supplementary volumes -- a catalogue and an index -- added to complete the full ninety-volume set. Moreover, each text in the collection has been assigned a serial number (from "1" to "1671"), with ancillary works (prefaces, etc.) listed by such numbers plus letter suffixes. Moreover, certain anomalies in the original sequence of texts have been corrected. The "catalogue" (mokuroku 目錄) volume gives the location of each text not only in this new edition but also in the Taiwan reprints of the first edition and in the original first edition itself with its "series," "case," and "fascicle" format. Also, the "index" (sakuin 索引) volume lists texts by the Japanese pronunciations of their titles but also provides a stroke-order index of titles along with indices to authors and translators names by Japanese pronunciation and stroke-order. In this edition the San-sheng yüan-jung kuan-men is cited as:

SSZZ 1003:58.424a-425a ("1003" is the serial number; "58," the volume number; 424 & 425, the page numbers. The 3 registers on each page are labelled "a," "b," & "c").

Within the last three years an unauthorized reprint of the SSZZ has appeared in Taiwan, produced and distributed by Pai-ma ching-she yin-ching she 白馬精舍印經社 ofTaipei.

76. All texts in the Taishō canon are punctuated (although Taishō punctuation is notoriously unreliable) and each one is assigned a serial number. Also, most Taishō texts are printed in a standard format: three registers (a, b, & c) to a page, 29 lines to a full register, and generally 17 characters to a full line.

77. For most of the information presented here we have relied on a variety of Japanese scholarly sources, some of which are noted below, but there are three works in western languages to which we are also indebted:

Natalie J. Mock, "Ch'eng-kuan's Role in the Revitalization of Tōdaiji Kegon during the Kamakura Period," Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan Sponsored by the Tōhō Gakkai 東方學會, No. XXVIII-XXIX (1984): 78-96.

Mark Laurence Blum, Gyōnen's "Jōdō Hōmon Genryūshō" and the Importance of Lineage to the Pure Land Tradition; Ph.D. dissertation, UC Berkeley, 1990.

Frédéric Girard, Un moine de la secte Kegon a l'époque de Kamakura: Myōe

 

 

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(1173-1232), Publications de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, Volume CLX (Paris: 1990), especially pp. 44-67.

78. See: Hiraoka Jōkai 平岡定海, Tōdaiji jiten 東大寺辞典 (Tokyo: Tōkyōtō Shuppansha 東京党出版社, 1980), 106-107.

(This "dictionary," by the way, is a reference work very useful for Hua-yen scholarship generally and not only for the study of the Japanese history of the tradition. Hiraoka is one of the leading authorities on Tōdaiji and on the later history of so-called "Old-Buddhism" [Kyu Bukkyo 旧仏教] , i.e. the Buddhism of the major Nara schools (including Kegon) during the centuries following the Nara period.)

See also Hiraoka Jōkai, Nihon Miroku jōdo shisō tenkaishi no kenkyū 日本彌勒淨土思想展開史の研究 (Tokyo: Daizō Shuppan 大藏出版, 1977), pp. 315-318.

79. See Hiraoka Jōkai平岡定海, Tōdaiji Sōshō Shōnin no kenkyū narabi ni shiryō 東大寺宗性上人の研究並びに資料, 3 volumes (Tokyo: Nihon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai 日本學術振興会, 1958- 1960).

80. See the recently published English translation by the late Leo M. Pruden, The Essentials of the Eight Traditions, Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai 仏教伝道協会 English Tripiṭaka 107-1 (Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Reserach, 1994). Unfortunately, it is a rule of this series that its translations not be annotated. However, there are dozens of easily available well annotated Japanese editions and translations. There was a great proliferation of modern Japanese scholarship on the Hasshū kōyō began in Meiji 明治 times (1868-1912). This was the result of a deliberate policy on the part of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japanese Buddhist institutions to foster the "modernization" and defense of their tradition, then struggling against strong government repression and hostility, by sponsoring reforms in the education of clerics. The Hasshū kōyō was selected as one of the basic textbooks used in the Buddhist academies of the day. See James Edward Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 178-184.

81. This is the text which Stanley Weinstein studied and translated for his Harvard doctoral dissertation, a revised version of which is soon to be published in the Kuroda Institute's and the University of Hawaii Press' series, "Classics in East Asian Buddhism."

82. Myōe's angry anti-Hōnen work, appropriately entitled Zaijarin 摧雅輪 ("A Wheel for Pulverizing Heresy"), was published in 1212, within months of Hōnen's death; it was partly responsible for the banishment of several of its target's leading disciples and for the imperial court's prohibition

 

 

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of Jōdoshū. See, inter alia, George Tanabe, Myōe the Dreamkeeper, pp. 84-121.

83. For a useful, albeit very general, discussion of the thought of the Hokkai gikyō see Kamata Shigeo 鎌田茂雄, "Hokkai gokyō no kyōrishiteki igi" 法界義鏡の教理史的意義 in Fukushima Shun'ō 福島俊翁, ed., Zen to tōyō shisō no sho mondai 禪と東洋思想の諸問題 (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten 平楽寺書店, 1970), pp. 49-65.

84. Most works found in the NDZK are also included, although in different order, in the DNBZ. There are, however, a few exceptions to this rule of duplication and the Sanshō ennyūkan giken is one of those exceptions. Thus, the NDZK edition is the only printed version of this valuable Gyōnen text that we have.

 

 

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澄觀的華嚴三聖觀

詹密羅
亞利桑那大學教授

提要

    在澄觀詮釋《大方廣佛華嚴經》的要義中,有一項著名的方法,是以「三對」說明華嚴三聖 (毘盧遮那佛、文殊師利菩薩、普賢菩薩) 的圓融觀門。他以他所認為的《華嚴經》中心哲學思想如: 因、果、信、解、智、行、理等,來呼應三聖;華嚴學人的觀想和宗教修持豐富而生動,就在上述條目中,與他們的哲學思維會合。

    雖然澄觀在他的若干作品中也採用這種方法,但表現得最好的還是在〈三聖圓融觀門〉這篇短文中,這是他晚年的著作。

    這像許多華嚴作品一樣,這篇文章在澄觀圓寂後不久就從中國消失了。幸好保存於韓國和日本,十九世紀末葉,才從日本請回中國。在中國或在西方,該文還沒有人做應有的研究。

    本文旨在比對現有的中文版本,並譯成英文附加評註。在本文和譯註的前面有一篇簡介,附錄則詳細討論版本史、各種版本,以及現有的若干意譯和註疏。

 

關鍵詞: 1. 澄觀 2. 毘盧遮那 3.普賢 4. 華嚴 5. 文殊