Liang Huang Bao Chan
The Repentance of Emperor Wu of Liang《慈悲道場懺法》
A ten-fascicle repentance liturgy compiled at the court of the Liang dynasty, traditionally at the urging of Emperor Wu, to deliver his empress from a fearful rebirth as a python — and, in the fifteen centuries since, one of the most widely performed repentance rites in Chinese Buddhism, popularly known simply as the "Emperor Liang Repentance."
- Chinese
- 《慈悲道場懺法》, "The Repentance Rite of the Hall of Compassion" — universally known by its popular short title, 梁皇寶懺, "the Emperor Liang Repentance," or 梁皇懺 for short.
- Traditional origin
- Compiled at the court of Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝, r. 502–549), with the monk Baozhi (寶誌, also called Master Zhi Gong) traditionally credited as its guiding compiler, drawing its text from passages gathered out of the Buddhist sūtras themselves.
- Genre
- A repentance liturgy (懺法, chanfa), like the Cibei Shuichan Fa already on this site — a ritual script meant to be bowed to and recited aloud, not a narrative or doctrinal argument.
- Structure
- Ten fascicles divided into forty traditional chapters (品), opening with refuge in the Three Jewels, resolving doubt, and confession; moving through arousing the awakening-mind, vows, and dedication; explaining the workings of karmic retribution and deliverance from the hells; the famous chapter on dissolving grudges and enmities; and closing with realm-by-realm and hell-by-hell homage to the Buddhas, a chapter of self-rejoicing, and a final entrustment.
- Scale
- Roughly 112,000 characters of source text — about 6.5 times the length of the Cibei Shuichan Fa. This is by far the largest translation project on this site to date, completed fascicle by fascicle.
- Commentary
- No classical line-by-line commentary on this liturgy turned up in preparing this translation. The reading notes accompanying each section are Ru-Yi's own.
- Status
- Complete. All ten fascicles are live below.
About This Liturgy
The Liang Huang Bao Chan is, by a wide margin, the most widely performed repentance liturgy in Chinese Buddhism — the rite most likely to fill a monastery's main hall for days at a time during a formal repentance session. Like the Cibei Shuichan Fa already translated on this site, it is a script for a rite rather than a text meant only to be read: a practitioner, or an assembly of practitioners standing in as "the disciple" (rendered throughout this translation as "we"), moves through confession and vow one section at a time, punctuated by repeated prostrations and recurring litanies of Buddha-names.
Where it differs from the Cibei Shuichan Fa is chiefly in scale and in structure. At ten fascicles and forty traditional chapters, it is more than six times the length, and its architecture is more elaborate: after the opening movement of refuge, resolving doubt, and confession (Fascicle 1) and the arousing of the awakening-mind, vow, and dedication (Fascicle 2), it turns to explain the workings of karmic retribution itself and the possibility of deliverance even from the hells (Fascicles 3–4), before reaching what is probably its single most famous chapter — the dissolving of grudges and enmities (解怨釋結, Fascicle 5) — and then moving through a further cycle of vows and dedication (Fascicle 6) before its closing fascicles turn outward into an extended sequence of homage paid, realm by realm, to every being across the six destinies, and hell by hell to every being suffering there, before a final chapter of self-rejoicing and an entrustment that closes the entire rite (Fascicles 7–10).
The legend behind the name
The Taishō edition carries a short preface, translated in full below, that gives the traditional account of how this rite came to be: Emperor Wu's empress, Lady Chi, reborn after her death as a python because of the jealousy and cruelty she harbored in life, appearing to him in a vision to beg for deliverance, and the ten-fascicle text that resulted, compiled from the Buddhist sūtras at the monk Baozhi's direction. As with the origin legend behind the Cibei Shuichan Fa, this translation neither endorses nor disputes the account — it simply presents it as the preface itself does, as the traditional story this liturgy has carried with it for some fifteen hundred years.
The Legend: A Python, a Vision, and a Rite in Ten Fascicles
This short preface, titled "An Account of the Repentance Rite of the Hall of Compassion" (慈悲道場懺法傳), is carried at the head of the Taishō edition ahead of the liturgy itself. It is unsigned and undated in the text as it survives, and, like the prefaces to the Cibei Shuichan Fa, is best read as the traditional account attached to the rite rather than a contemporary eyewitness record.
此懺者，梁武帝為皇后郗氏所集也。郗氏崩後數月，帝常追悼之，晝則忽忽不樂、宵乃耿耿不寐。居寢殿，聞外有騷窣之聲，視之乃見一蟒盤躃上殿，睒睛呀口以向於帝。帝大驚駭，無所逃遁，不得已蹶然而起，謂蛇曰：「朕宮殿嚴警，非爾蛇類所生之處，必其𪥲孽欲祟朕耶？」蛇為人語啟帝曰：「蟒則昔之郗氏也。妾以生存嫉妬六宮，其性慘毒，怒一發則火熾矢射損物害人，死以是罪謫為蟒耳。無飲食可實口、無窟穴可庇身，飢窘困迫力不自勝。又一鱗甲則有多虫唼嚙肌肉，痛苦其劇若加錐刀，為蟒非常蛇，亦復變化而至，不以皇居深重為阻耳。感帝平昔眷妾之厚，故託醜形骸陳露於帝，祈一功德以見拯拔也。」帝聞之，嗚呼感激，既而求蟒遂不復見。帝明日大集沙門於殿，庭宣其由，問善之最，以贖其苦。 志公對曰：「非禮佛懺滌悃欵方可。」帝乃然其言，搜索佛經錄其名號，兼親抒睿思、灑聖翰，撰悔文共成十卷，皆採摭佛語、削去閑詞，為其懺禮。又一日聞宮室內異香馥郁，良久轉羙。初不知所來，帝因仰視，乃見一天人容儀端麗，謂帝曰：「此則蟒後身也。蒙帝功德，已得生忉利天。今呈本身以為明驗也。」慇懃致謝，言訖不見。自梁迄今已數百年，得此經本虔敬禮懺所為所祈者，皆有陰隲感應。猶恐厥事闇然未彰，輒以粗記，用達諸耳目矣。
This repentance was compiled by Emperor Wu of Liang for his empress, Lady Chi. Some months after Lady Chi's death, the emperor was constantly stricken with grief for her — by day he was listless and unhappy, by night he lay wide awake, unable to sleep. Dwelling in his bedchamber, he heard a rustling, slithering sound outside; looking out, he saw a great python coiled and writhing up into the hall, its eyes flashing and its mouth gaping wide toward him. The emperor was seized with terror, with no way to flee, and, having no other choice, rose up abruptly and said to the snake: "My palace halls are strictly guarded — this is no place for a creature of your kind to have come from. Surely some evil spirit means to curse me!" The python spoke to him in a human voice, saying: "This python is none other than your former empress, Lady Chi. In life, I was consumed with jealousy toward the women of the six palace quarters; my nature was cruel and poisonous, and whenever my anger flared, it blazed like fire and struck like an arrow, injuring things and harming people. For this crime, at death, I was condemned to become a python. I have no food to fill my mouth, no den to shelter my body, and am driven to the point of exhaustion by hunger and desperation. Moreover, beneath every one of my scales there swarm countless insects, gnawing at my flesh, and the pain of it is as sharp as a blade — for a python is no ordinary snake, and it too has come to me through further transformation, undeterred even by the depth and majesty of the palace. Moved by how deeply Your Majesty once cherished me, I have taken this hideous form to reveal myself before you, and beg that some act of merit be performed to rescue and deliver me." The emperor, hearing this, was overcome with grief and pity, and when he then sought the python, it could no longer be found. The next day, the emperor gathered a great assembly of monks in the palace hall, related the whole matter to them in the courtyard, and asked what was the greatest good that could be done to redeem her from such suffering. Master Baozhi answered: "Only through bowing before the Buddhas in repentance, and washing clean one's sincerity, can this be done." The emperor accepted his words, searched through the Buddhist sūtras to record the names found within them, and, adding his own refined thought and setting his own sagely brush to the page, composed a text of repentance that came to ten fascicles in all — gathering together the Buddha's own words and cutting away every idle phrase, to serve as her rite of repentance. Then, one day, he smelled a strange and rich fragrance filling the palace chambers, growing ever more exquisite as time passed. At first he did not know its source; but when the emperor looked up, he saw a heavenly being of fine and dignified bearing, who said to him: "This is none other than the python's later body. Through the emperor's merit, she has already been reborn in the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven. I now present myself in my true form, as clear proof of this." She offered her earnest thanks, and when she had finished speaking, vanished from sight. From the Liang dynasty until today, several hundred years have passed, and all who have obtained this scripture and reverently bowed in repentance with it, whatever they sought or prayed for, have received a hidden and unmistakable response. Yet still fearing that this matter might remain obscure and go unknown, I have here set it down in brief, so that it may reach the ears and eyes of all.
Emperor Wu of Liang (梁武帝, personal name Xiao Yan, r. 502–549) was among the most fervent patrons of Buddhism ever to sit on a Chinese throne — he ordained monks, funded monasteries on a vast scale, and is remembered in Chan literature for his famous, unsatisfying exchange with Bodhidharma about the merit of his own good works. Lady Chi, his empress, is a historical figure as well; the python legend is the traditional explanation for why this particular repentance came to be compiled in her name, and it is this legend, more than any other single detail, that has given the liturgy its enduring popular title, "the Emperor Liang Repentance," even though the text's own formal title makes no mention of either of them. As with the human-faced-sore legend behind the Cibei Shuichan Fa, this account belongs to the genre of origin-story attached to a liturgy rather than to the liturgy's own ritual content — worth reading in full, and worth holding a little apart from the confession and vows that follow it.
How to Read This Collection
Each fascicle opens with the same short invocation and roll call of Buddha-names that marks a session of this rite in the original, then moves through its material in numbered sections marked out by this translation for readability — the Chinese text itself runs as continuous liturgical prose, organized only by the traditional forty chapter-titles (品), which this translation preserves as section headings wherever a fascicle's content maps cleanly onto them. Given the far greater length of this liturgy compared to the Cibei Shuichan Fa, fascicles were translated and published one at a time; all ten are now complete and live below.
The Fascicles
Resources
- T1909 · CBETA XML source — the digital edition of the Taishō text this translation was made from.
- 慈悲道場懺法 · CBETA online reader — the full Chinese text online.
- Cibei Shuichan Fa — this site's other repentance liturgy, the shorter "Water Repentance," a useful point of comparison.
Chinese source: Taishō T1909, public domain. English translation and reading guide written for Ru-Yi Meditation Center. See also this site's note on translation method.