Wúliángshòu jīng qǐxìn lùn 無量壽經起信論
Treatise Awakening Faith in the Sūtra of Immeasurable Life by 彭際清 (Péng Jìqīng, 述)
About the work
A three-juǎn doctrinal commentary on the CáoWèi translation of the Wúliángshòu jīng 無量壽經 KR6p0031 composed by the principal late-Qīng lay-Buddhist scholar 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng (1740–1796) under his alternate name Péng Shàoshēng 彭紹升. The title self-consciously echoes the Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn 大乘起信論 (Treatise on Awakening Mahāyāna Faith) — Péng’s claim is that the larger Pure Land sūtra deserves a comparable theoretical treatment as the foundational scripture for “awakening faith” in the practice of Pure Land. The text combines passage-by-passage exegesis with extended doctrinal essays on Dharmākara’s vows, the nine grades of rebirth, the meaning of xìn 信 (faith) in Pure Land soteriology, and the relation between Pure Land practice and Huáyán-school 華嚴宗 ontology — Péng’s distinctive synthesis. The work circulated in Péng’s own Èrlín jū jí 二林居集 and the Jū shì zhuàn 居士傳 corpus before being included in the Xùzàngjīng.
Abstract
The prefatory letter (Wúliángshòu jīng qǐxìn lùn xù) by Péng’s friend Luó Yǒugāo 羅有高 (1735–1779, signed Yǒugāo) — preserved at the head of the text — provides the date frame. Péng began drafting the Qǐxìn lùn during a period of intense devotional retreat in the late 1770s; Luó’s preface was composed shortly before Luó’s own death in 1779, but the work was completed and circulated only in the early 1780s, with final revisions probably continuing until shortly before Péng’s death in 1796. The Wei Yuan preface to the Jìngtǔ sì jīng (1854) mentions the Qǐxìn lùn as having been Wèi’s principal point of departure for his own Pure Land programme, so the text was already established within the late-Qīng lay-Buddhist canon by the 1850s.
Péng’s doctrinal programme has three principal strands. First, he reads the forty-eight vows of Dharmākara through the Huáyán doctrine of the interpenetration of phenomena (shìshì wúài 事事無礙): each vow is at once an individual undertaking and a manifestation of the totality of the Dharma-realm. Second, he develops a strong account of xìn 信 (faith) as a transformative cognitive-affective stance, modelled explicitly on the Dàshèng qǐxìn lùn’s analysis of “originally enlightened mind” (běnjué 本覺) — Pure Land practice is for Péng the route by which the originally enlightened mind activates itself. Third, he develops a comparative typology of Pure Land doctrine across the major Chinese Buddhist schools (Tiāntái, Huáyán, Chán, Faxiang), arguing for the priority of Huáyán as the integrative framework. The work is a foundational document for late-Qīng / early-twentieth-century Chinese Pure Land theology and stands in direct line with 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s earlier doctrinal-Pure Land synthesis. Péng’s methodology — sustained doctrinal essay grounded in canonical sūtra commentary — is also a model for 彭際清’s own Ēmítuó jīng yuēlùn 阿彌陀經約論 KR6p0028 and Guān wúliángshòu fó jīng yuēlùn 觀無量壽佛經約論 KR6p0013, the briefer companion treatises on the smaller and contemplation sūtras.
Translations and research
- Yu Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981 — for the broader Pure Land doctrinal context within which Péng works.
- Goossaert, Vincent and Jan Kiely (eds.). Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850–2015. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- Jennifer Eichman. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship. Leiden: Brill, 2016 — useful for situating the lay-Buddhist literary genre to which Péng’s Qǐxìn lùn belongs.
- Wáng Lěi 王雷, Péng Jì-qīng jū-shì-fó-jiào sī-xiǎng yán-jiū 彭際清居士佛教思想研究. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2017.