Guānwúliángshòu fó jīng róngxīnjiě 觀無量壽佛經融心解
A Mind-Reconciling Exegesis of the Sūtra on the Contemplation of Amitāyus by 知禮 (Sìmíng Zhīlǐ, 撰)
About the work
A short single-juǎn doctrinal treatise by Sìmíng Zhīlǐ 四明知禮 (960–1028) on the Guānwúliángshòu fó jīng 觀無量壽佛經, composed in 大中祥符 7 (1014) — the year after the completion of the longer Miàozōngchāo KR6p0007. The text is cast as a Q-and-A dialogue in response to a student’s question about the doctrinal status of the sixteen contemplations (shíliù guān) within the wider Tiāntái system. The author’s preface, dated to the 重陽 (Double-Ninth) festival of 1014, reports that the text was composed in response to repeated questions about apparent contradictions in the Miàozōngchāo and as a tool for “harmonising the obstructed mind” (融諸滯心 — hence the title róngxīn 融心).
Abstract
The Róngxīnjiě is a doctrinal supplement to the Miàozōngchāo and provides the most concentrated single statement of Zhīlǐ’s distinctive doctrinal position on Pure Land contemplation. Six principal questions are addressed in the work: (1) the relation between guānfó 觀佛 (contemplating the Buddha) and guānxīn 觀心 (contemplating the mind); (2) the nature of the Pure Land as object of contemplation versus its status as the manifest form of one’s own consciousness; (3) the doctrine of yuēxīn guānfó 約心觀佛 (“contemplating the Buddha as conditioned by the mind”) versus the rival jíxīn shìfó 即心是佛 (“the mind itself is the Buddha”) of the Shānwài 山外 opponents; (4) the gradedness of the sixteen contemplations as a soteriological sequence; (5) the meaning of jí jiǎ jí kōng jí zhōng 即假即空即中 (“the simultaneous identity of provisional, empty, and middle”) in Pure Land contemplation; (6) the eschatological status of rebirth in the Pure Land. The text is brief but doctrinally dense and was widely cited by later Tiāntái and Pure Land commentators including 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng and 智旭 Ǒuyì Zhìxù as the locus classicus for Zhīlǐ’s mature position.
The dating is precise: Zhīlǐ’s preface gives 大中祥符七年歲在甲寅重陽日 = 9 October 1014.
Translations and research
- Getz, Daniel A. “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song Dynasty.” In Buddhism in the Sung, ed. Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, Jr. University of Hawai’i Press, 1999. — Discusses the Róngxīn-jiě as the most compact statement of Zhīlǐ’s yuē-xīn guān-fó doctrine.
- Andō Toshio 安藤俊雄, Tendai shisōshi 天台思想史. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1959 — for the Shānjiā/Shānwài controversy.