Guānwúliángshòu jīng yìshū zhèngguānjì 觀無量壽經義疏正觀記
Notes on the Correct Contemplation, on the Yìshū (Commentary) on the Sūtra on the Contemplation of Amitāyus by 戒度 (Zhuō’ān Jièdù, 述)
About the work
A three-juǎn sub-commentary by 戒度 Jièdù on 元照 Yuánzhào Língzhī’s 元照靈芝 (1048–1116) Guānwúliángshòu jīng yìshū 觀無量壽經義疏 (the Guānjīng xīnshū 觀經新疏, X22N0418). The work serves the same role for the Guānjīng commentary that Jièdù’s now-lost Wénchíjì 聞持記 served for Yuánzhào’s Ēmítuó jīng yìshū — a passage-by-passage gloss restoring the doctrinal coherence of Yuánzhào’s Lǜzōng-school Pure Land reading. The Japanese editor’s preface (recording the rediscovery of a manuscript in Chánglóngsì 長瀧寺, Mino 美濃 province) frames the Zhèngguānjì as the natural completion of Jièdù’s defence of Yuánzhào: where the Fúxīn lùn KR6p0009 rebuts the Tiāntái critic Yīngōng polemically, the Zhèngguānjì provides the systematic positive gloss.
Abstract
The work follows the standard Sòng sub-commentarial format: each section of Yuánzhào’s Yìshū is quoted as a biāo 標 (heading), then expanded with citation of the underlying Guānjīng passage, the relevant yìshū gloss, and Jièdù’s own clarification. The doctrinal centre-piece is Jièdù’s articulation of the zhèngguān 正觀 (“correct contemplation”) — the Lǜzōng version of the contemplative practice prescribed by the Guānjīng, integrated with the Sìfēnlǜ 四分律 disciplinary framework that defines Yuánzhào’s school. Where Sìmíng Zhīlǐ’s Miàozōngchāo KR6p0007 reads the sixteen contemplations through the Tiāntái doctrine of yīxīnsānguān, Jièdù reads them through the Vinaya doctrine of xíngjiè 行戒 (graduated practice in accordance with discipline) — producing a Pure Land theology that subordinates contemplation to ordained discipline rather than to Tiāntái cosmology. The Zhèngguānjì and the KR6p0015 Wénchíjì together represent the most sustained Sòng Lǜzōng treatment of Pure Land doctrine.
The work was lost early in China. Jièdù’s Wénchíjì on the Ēmítuó jīng yìshū circulated in Japan from at least the Kamakura period; the Zhèngguānjì survived only in a single manuscript at Chánglóngsì, from which the Xùzàngjīng recension derives via an early-Edo Japanese cutting. Dating: Yuánzhào died 1116; Jièdù’s Fúxīn lùn KR6p0009 precedes the Zhèngguānjì; both are the work of a mature scholar separated by at least one or two generations from Yuánzhào himself. A bracket of c. 1180–1240 is the safest defensible window.
Translations and research
- Getz, Daniel A. “Siming Zhili and Tiantai Pure Land in the Song Dynasty.” In Buddhism in the Sung. University of Hawai’i Press, 1999.
- Huáng Qǐ-jiāng 黃啟江, Bei Sòng fójiào shǐ lùnshū 北宋佛教史論述. Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1997 — for Yuánzhào’s biography and the Lǜzōng-Pure Land lineage.
Other points of interest
The Japanese editor’s preface to the printed edition records that the manuscript copy was acquired by the abbot of De-wáng-yuàn 德王院 of Mt. Tendai 天台山 (Japan), Dàyún Rùn 大雲潤 (a member of the same lineage), from the Chánglóngsì archive in Mino 美濃 — a typical instance of how Sòng Buddhist commentary preserved itself in early-modern Japanese temple-collections after Chinese-side disappearance.