Wú liàng shòu jīng yōu pó tí shě yuàn shēng jì zhù 無量壽經優婆提舍願生偈註
Annotated Edition of the Vow-for-Birth Verses on the Sūtra of Amitāyus Upadeśa (commonly known as Wǎngshēng lùn zhù 往生論註) by 曇鸞 (Tánluán, 註解)
About the work
The Wǎngshēng lùn zhù in 2 fascicles is the foundational doctrinal commentary of East Asian Pure Land Buddhism. Composed by 曇鸞 Tánluán (476–542), it is the great Northern-Wèi commentary on 婆藪槃豆菩薩 Vasubandhu’s [[KR6f0100|Sukhāvatī-vyūhopadeśa]] (T1524) — and through Vasubandhu’s Upadeśa on the Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha itself. The work establishes the canonical East Asian Pure Land doctrinal apparatus: the Two Powers (zìlì / tālì — self-power and other-power), the Five-Fold Recollection, and the doctrine of Amitābha’s Original Vow as the foundational efficacy of Pure Land rebirth. Through Tánluán’s lineage to 道綽 Dàochuò to 善導 Shàndǎo to 法然 Hōnen and 親鸞 Shinran, this work is the foundational source of the entire Pure Land tradition of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism.
Prefaces
No formal preface.
Abstract
The bracket adopted here (530 – 542) reflects 曇鸞 Tánluán’s mature scholarly period leading up to his death.
The Taishō text (T1819) is established on a particularly rich apparatus including parallel A and B manuscript witnesses.
Translations and research
- Inagaki, Hisao, tr. T’an-luan’s Commentary on Vasubandhu’s Discourse on the Pure Land. Kyoto: Nagata bunshōdō, 1998. — The standard recent English translation, with extensive scholarly apparatus.
- Bloom, Alfred. Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace. University of Arizona Press, 1965.
- Corless, Roger J. T’an-luan: Taoist Sage and Buddhist Bodhisattva. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1987.
Other points of interest
- Tánluán is the principal Pure Land patriarch credited with establishing the doctrinal distinction between zìlì (self-power, the path of monastic-ascetic effort) and tālì (other-power, the path of reliance on Amitābha’s vow) — the conceptual distinction that became foundational to Hōnen’s and Shinran’s Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.