Fó shuō guān wú liàng shòu fó jīng 佛說觀無量壽佛經
The Sūtra Spoken by the Buddha on the Visualization of Amitāyus by 畺良耶舍 (Kālayaśas, 譯)
About the work
The Guān wú liàng shòu fó jīng in 1 fascicle is the Visualization-of-Amitāyus Sūtra — the third of the Three Pure Land Sutras (alongside the Larger T0360 and the Smaller T0366). Translated by 畺良耶舍 Kālayaśas (Sanskrit Kālayaśas “Time-Glory”) in the early Liú-Sòng period, the work presents 16 visualisation-meditations (shí liù guān 十六觀) for cultivating contemplative-devotional engagement with Amitābha’s Pure Land Sukhāvatī. The work became the principal contemplative-ritual basis of East Asian Pure Land practice and is the source of the doctrine of the Nine Grades of Rebirth (九品往生) — a hierarchical structure of rebirth-conditions that became foundational to Pure Land soteriology.
Prefaces
No formal preface.
Abstract
The translation is conventionally datable to 畺良耶舍 Kālayaśas’s Liú-Sòng period (424 – 442 CE).
Modern scholarship (Pas 1995, 末木文美士 Sueki Fumihiko, et al.) has raised significant questions about the work’s textual history: the absence of a corresponding Sanskrit original (despite the existence of Sanskrit witnesses for both the Larger and Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha) has led some scholars to argue that the Visualization Sūtra may be a Central-Asian or even Chinese-Buddhist composition rather than a translation of an Indic original. The traditional Indic-translation attribution is followed here as the canonical position.
The Taishō text (T0365) is established on a particularly rich apparatus including the Liúbù běn 流布本 (“Disseminated Edition”) and the Dūn 敦 (Dūnhuáng) witnesses.
Translations and research
- Pas, Julian F. Visions of Sukhāvatī: Shan-Tao’s Commentary on the Kuan Wu-liang-shou Fo Ching. SUNY Press, 1995. — Standard study with substantial English translation of the parent sūtra.
- Inagaki, Hisao, tr. The Three Pure Land Sutras (1995).
- Tanaka, Kenneth K. The Dawn of Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Doctrine (1990).
- 末木文美士 Sueki Fumihiko. Heian shoki Bukkyō shisō no kenkyū — and several articles on the Sino-Indian / Chinese authorship question.
- 藤田宏達 Fujita Kōtatsu. Genshi Jōdo shisō no kenkyū (1970).
Other points of interest
- The Sixteen Visualisations (shí liù guān) and the Nine Grades of Rebirth (jiǔ pǐn wǎngshēng) — the central doctrinal-contemplative apparatus of this sūtra — became the foundation of all subsequent East Asian Pure Land devotional practice. 善導 Shàndǎo’s (613–681) commentary on this sūtra was the most important Tang Pure Land work and shaped Hōnen’s and Shinran’s Japanese Pure Land development.