妙法蓮華經文句 白話全本 · 冊1

Preface composed by the Tang monk Shenjiong of Jingzhong.

The Nameless Principle and the Teaching That Follows Conditions

The preface says: the ultimate principle originally has no name, yet its renown circulates throughout the four continents. The real One Vehicle has never moved, yet its functioning appears within the three realms. The teaching that points toward realization manifests amid all phenomena, while the principle itself remains still and unmoving. The siddhānta modes teach beings in accord with their various conditions; without contrivance or calculation, they naturally draw everyone forward. No merit could be greater.

The Sutra of the Lotus Blossom of the Wondrous Dharma was taught after the Buddha appeared in the world, for the sake of the one great cause and condition. Yet beings resemble different medicinal herbs and trees. Although all receive the moisture of the same Dharma rain, each grows differently. Their opportunities and capacities are not of one kind, and so they receive the teaching in different ways. When the Buddha establishes provisional means, there is the turning of the Dharma wheel of the Four Truths at the Deer Park. When the Buddha reveals the real, there are the three transformations that purified the lands at Vulture Peak.

The sutra's purport is profound and its wording grave and carefully set. The Buddha's station is exalted, and the path he realized is deep. The sutra makes clear the distant Origin of buddhahood long ago in “The Lifespan of the Tathāgata,” while integrating it with the recent Trace of awakening at Gayā. The Dharma rain falls, the Dharma conch is blown, the Dharma drum is struck, and the Dharma meaning is proclaimed. What was taught in the past can then be set aside like traps for fish and snares for rabbits; through opening, revealing, awakening to, and entering, beings obtain the fish and rabbit to which today's teaching points.

Bodhisattvas as numerous as dust motes advance upon the path while their remaining births diminish. Śrāvakas who once lodged in a grass hut feel ashamed of what was small in their attainment and gladly seek the great Dharma. Medicine King burns his arms as an offering, while Many Treasures appears with his whole body to bear witness. This consummate and wondrous principle is so deep and subtle that words truly cannot exhaust it.

Zhiyi Teaches; Guanding Privately Records

There was a Tiantai master whose Dharma name was Zhiyi. Shenjiong's preface says that in the past he personally heard this sutra before the Tathāgata and that his station was within the Five Stages. His renown shook the courts of Chen and Sui. Without pursuing study through ordinary lecture halls, he inwardly accorded with the Buddha Vehicle. Through the power of dhāraṇī, he also possessed an inexhaustible eloquence of delight in teaching.

Zhiyi often lectured on the Prajñā of the Benevolent Kings before the sovereign in the Taiji Hall of the Chen ruler. The emperor, lord of ten thousand chariots, bent his knees before him, while the hundred officials snapped their fingers in acclaim. Consider only his interpretation through contemplating the mind: its wondrous meaning leaves behind both existence and nonexistence, takes true nature as its guiding standard, and relies on contemplation to attain thorough penetration. His explanations of the sutra's title and purport differed from those of earlier masters, and through the Five Meanings he examined the principle, everywhere supporting the sacred teaching.

Zhiyi propagated the Dharma for more than thirty years. Among commentaries he personally composed, only his Commentary on the Vimalakīrti Sūtra was written under an edict from Emperor Yang of the Sui. The present profound text on the Lotus, by contrast, was privately recorded by Dharma Master Guanding and compiled into twenty half-fascicles. It is indeed credible that only a person of wisdom could have drawn forth such wondrous meaning.

Master Lang Sets the Text in Order

More than a century after Zhiyi entered extinction, in the wuzi year of the Tang Tianbao era, there was a Master Lang at Qingtai Monastery in Dongyang Commandery. He was a long-lived elder within the Dharma gate, an eye within the clear and cooling Dharma pool, and a guide who could lead others onward. He was equally urgent about the Vehicle and the precepts and embraced both the inner Buddhist canon and the outer writings of the world. He was like one who had received the Dharma vessel bestowed upon Pūrṇa, and like Subhūti seated within his stone chamber.

Whenever Master Lang lectured on the Wenju, he would fall silent and sigh: “When one examines the purport of the whole work, it accords deeply with the Buddha Vehicle. Yet when one follows the movement of the words, the sequence is sometimes out of order. In some places the wording continues while the meaning breaks off; in others the words come later although their meaning has already appeared. Sometimes prose first opens a set of headings; elsewhere later text directly states their meaning. Sometimes a verse first gives a number, while the names subsequently listed do not follow that sequence. Yet the intent of the sage is difficult to fathom. We can only look up to it in trust.”

At that time, many disciples in the audience repeatedly urged him: “Those of superior capacity readily understand and do not lose their way when probing what is deep. Those of middling and lesser capacity, however, may follow the words and lose the purport. If the master would again extend his compassion and reset this text in order, the benefit it would bring to the propagation of the Dharma would surely be immense.”

Master Lang considered the matter again and again. Only when he truly had no alternative did he focus his recollection upon Master Zhiyi, pray for unseen aid, and ask whether the work should or should not be done. Only after receiving a response in a dream did he begin to arrange the textual order. This was simply a fitting accommodation made in accord with the movement of the text and is entirely understandable. It was not a careless pursuit of verbal sameness or difference followed by arbitrary additions and deletions.

From Words to Purport, from the Bridge to the Place of Jewels

Shenjiong hoped that later students would understand the original purport: finding the collar, they could retrieve the whole garment; taking up true gold, they could discard sand and gravel. What is taught is the true Dharma, and the one who teaches is not a false person. In this way, the subtle current of the teaching could be spread abroad, and the additions and deletions made in old age at Danqiu could be brought to completion. The hundred realms and thousand suchnesses would correspond like official tallies, while both the conjured city and the place of jewels would have a ford and bridge by which they could be approached.

The preface further says that this text relies upon Maitreya's earnest questioning to draw forth Mañjuśrī's carefully guarded reply. It also compares the six auxiliary treatises supporting the Jñānaprasthāna with a single incisive phrase praising the Spring and Autumn Annals.

Shenjiong and his companions gathered and ordered the preceding text, first gaining ease while examining the principle. They all encouraged themselves with the old accounts of together arousing the aspiration in the presence of the Buddha King of Emptiness and of the sixteen śrāmaṇeras each teaching in the Buddha's place. It was as though eye-floaters met sunlight: illness was dispelled and the Dharma jewel could grow. Yet Shenjiong still felt ashamed that his writing did not equal that of Yanmen. How, then, could he claim to have glimpsed a profundity like a dragon's frown? He hoped only that all who sought the profound meaning might bathe in the Dharma stream of the Buddha path and know the source from which that stream arose.