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

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: "shōki") 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.

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.