This presentation seeks to draw out the fundamental thought seen in the mystic discourse section (introduction) of Wŏnch’uk’s Commentary of the Sūtra of Immeasurable Meanings, (re-discovered as a new and complete resource), from the viewpoint of Yogācāra. Moreover, it aims to demonstrate that this new material was indeed composed written by Wŏnch’uk, by way of comparison with other extant works by the same author. As is well-known to most scholars, we have at our disposal three relatively complete works by Wŏnch’uk (613-696), a major scholar-monk of the seventh century, who was born in Silla, but spent his career in the Tang: His commentary on the saṃdhinirmocanasūtra (the Jieshenmijing shu); his commentary on the Sūtra for Humane Kings (the Renwangjing shu) and his commentary on the Heart Sūtra (the Boreboluomiduo xinjing zan). In a 1964 publication, the Japanese scholar Ryōshō Taira showed that the three volumes of the Muryōgikyōsho (the Commentary on the Immeasurable Meanings Sūtra) contained in the nineteenth volume of the Tendaishū Zensho (Complete Works of the Tendai School in Japan) by Renshō was in fact a copy of Wŏnch’uk’s three-volume Wuliangyijingshu. Although this interesting fact was already made known in Japan, Taira’s paper was only published on a volume on Japanese esoteric Buddhism. Thus it may have been ended up being merely understood that this material was not appropriate for inclusion in the collection of the Tendaishū Zensho, rather than being duly recognizes as a discovery of valuable Yogācāra materials. I have already made the first presentation about this new material at the 2008 Korean saṃgīti Conference on Buddhist Studies, at Tongguk University, mainly to introduce Taira’s article. This article, however, might be observed as not giving due consideration to the perspective of Wŏnch’uk’s own thought and the Yogācāra doctrine. In this second presentation, I intend to augment Taira’s theory with my own analysis.
1. Introducing Renshō’s three‐volume Muryōgikyōsho Introduction of Renshō, and analysis of how the original material of the Muryōgikyōsho contained the nineteenth volume of the Tendaishū Zensho was handed down to the present
2. The basis of Taira’s claims for Wŏnch’uk’s authorship Article: Ryōshō Taira, “On the Muryōgikyōsho by Renshō, Disciple of the Fourth Patriarch,” Kōjun Fukui edited “The Research of Jikaku Daishi,” Tendai Gakkai compiled, 1964. Taira extended to prove Wŏnch’uk’s authorship of this work in various ways, based on two main approaches: First, he points out the possibility of a claim being made for authorship by the Tendai monk Renshō. Second, he shows the correspondences between this material and some pieces of the Muryōgikyōsho written by Wŏnch'uk.
3. Features of the Thought observable in the Renshō's Muryōgikyōsho: from the standpoint of the One Vehicle The Immeasurable Meanings Sūtra is regarded by some scholars as apocryphal, but it has nonetheless been known as the “opening sūtra” for the Lotus Sūtra since a very early period, such that it is considered as one of the important three sūtras of the Lotustradition, with the Sūtra Meditating on Samantabhadra Bodhisattva is taken as the closing sūtra of the Lotus. The Immeasurable Meanings Sūtra is understood this way not only by Tiantai figure such as Fayun (467-529), Zhiyi (538-597) and Jizang (549-623), but also in the Faxiang tradition, especially in Kuiji’s (632-682) commentary on the Lotus Sūtra, which officially identifies the sūtra as the opening to the Lotus Sūtra. So, it is pertinent enough to consider the basic thinking of the Muryōgikyōsho with the problem of the Lotus Sūtra and the way of One Vehicle thinking. In fact, the opening part of the Muryōgikyōsho also mainly argues about the way of understanding the One Vehicle problem. The below seminal points emerge from the analysis of this first part. a) The author takes the position of the distinction in five natur
