In 1999, a new manuscript (Kongō Temple’s Manuscript) of An ban shou yi jing 安般守意經 (hereafter K-ASYJ) was discovered at Mt amino, located in Ōsaka Prefecture of Japan. After ten years, the relationship between its contents and the current Taishō Canon 大正大藏經 version, T602 Fo shuo Da An ban shou yi jing 佛說大安般守意經 (hereafter T-ASYJ) has finally been clarified.
In the third and fifth issues of Dharma Drum Buddhist Journal, I have compared the contents of T-ASYJ and K-ASYJ by focusing on “six stages of breathing.”
We compared the corresponding paragraphs of these two sutras and addressed the issues of “counting,” “following,” “fixing,” “contemplating,” “turning” and four parts of “purifying”―which are “Four Bases of Mindfulness,” “Four Efforts to enlightenment,” “Four Occult Powers,” and “Five Roots of Goodness.” After this, we were able to distinguish the “text” from the “annotation.” For example, we can treat the matching parts between T-ASYJ and K-ASYJ as the original text of T-ASYJ, and treat the rest―the parts that do not correspond―as “annotations.”
This paper continues to look into the other three parts of “purifying”─which are “Five Powers,” “Seven Factors of Enlightenment” and “Eightfold Holy Path.” Also, it looks into the parts of “Quiet and Insight,” “Four Noble Truths” and “Four abilities of unhindered understanding and expression.”
As an outcome of this study, we noticed that both of T-ASYJ and K-ASYJ has a close relationship with two other texts─ “the Counting Breath Article 數息品” of T606 Xiu xing dao di jing 修行道地經 and T603 Yinchiru jing 陰持入經. For example, each text of T-ASYJ, K-ASYJ and “the Counting Breath Article” keeps a unique definition about “Noble Eightfold Path” and they are quite similar to one another respectively. This definition of “Noble Eightfold Path” is seldom found in the other texts. This proves that there is a unique relationship among these three texts. Both T-ASYJ and K-ASYJ have the simile of “to proffer four offerings after sunrise 日出作四事,” this is very similar to the ones in “Yinchiru jing.” However, there is no such simile at all in “the Counting Breath Article,” so we can infer that it was quoted from “Yinchiru jing.”
Finally, the paragraph on “the four abilities of unhindered understanding and expression” was scattered around in T-ASYJ. Nonetheless, after our close analyses, we saw that they were just used for interpreting the part of “the four abilities of unhindered understanding and expression.” In K-ASYJ, there is a full paragraph on the four abilities of unhindered understanding and expression.”
Keywords:
An Shigao; text and annotation; Quiet and Insight; Four Noble Truths; Sijieyi (four abilities of unhindered understanding and expression)