Zhǔntí jìngyè 準提淨業
Pure Karma of the Cuṇḍā Practice by 謝于教 (著)
About the work
A three-fascicle (3卷) lay-Buddhist devotional manual on the Cuṇḍā (Zhǔntí 準提) dhāraṇī practice, integrated with Pure Land jìngyè 淨業 (“pure karma”) devotion, by the late-Wànlì lay-Buddhist scholar Xiè Yújiào 謝于教 (sobriquet Gǔqián qīnglián jūshì 古虔青蓮居士). Preserved as X59 no. 1077 in the Xùzàngjīng.
Prefaces
The opening Chóngkè Zhǔntí jìngyè xù 重刻准提淨業序 (re-print preface) — the present editor’s preface, prepared for the work’s reprinting — opens with a programmatic syncretist declaration: “there is something prior to heaven and earth, formless yet originally still; it can be lord of the myriad images, and does not fade with the four seasons. This is the source of the formless myriad-forms, the secret depth of the xìng school, and what the sages of the three teachings cannot transcend.” The preface then describes the syncretic-diagrammatic project: 趙貞吉 Zhào Wénsù (Zhào Zhēnjí 趙貞吉, 1508–1576) had drawn a single circle ○ and called it the Hùnyuán tú 混元圖 (“Diagram of Primal Chaos”); subsequently he added the swastika (wàn 卍) within the circle and called it the Wànzì lúnxiàng tú 卍字輪相圖 (“Wheel-Image Diagram with the Wàn character”); these are taken as exact graphic correspondents to the Cuṇḍā dhāraṇī’s circle-and-mantra liturgical visualization. Xiè narrates a dream-vision of gēngzǐzhì (winter solstice) Wànlì 46 wùwǔ 戊午 (1618) in which 羅汝芳 Luó Jìnxī xiānshēng (Luó Rǔfāng 羅汝芳, 1515–1588) showed him a circle-diagram and instructed him: “Your eyes are bright and clear; constantly contemplate this and you will speedily enter the Way.” Composition window: 1618 (the dream-experience and project initiation) – Tiānqǐ 3 guǐhài 癸亥 mid-autumn = 1623 (the dated preface).
Abstract
The Zhǔntí jìngyè is one of the principal late-Wànlì lay-Buddhist Esoteric-Pure Land syncretist manuals: it integrates the Cuṇḍā (a late-Tang Tantric Buddhist practice) with the jìngyè (Pure Land) devotional path that was the institutional center of late-Míng popular Buddhism, and frames the synthesis through Confucian-Daoist syncretic diagrammatics drawn from Tàizhōu 泰州-school Confucian sources (Luó Rǔfāng, Zhào Zhēnjí). The work is therefore a representative document of the sānjiào héyī 三教合一 (“unity of the three teachings”) cultural program of the late-Wànlì period.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The diagrammatic syncretism Xiè documents — the equivalence of the Cuṇḍā dhāraṇī liturgy, the Confucian Hùnyuán tú, and the Buddhist Wànzì lúnxiàng tú — is a representative late-Wànlì cultural-religious phenomenon, also documented in 林兆恩 Lín Zhào’ēn’s writings and in late-Wànlì popular religion broadly.