Niànfó chāotuō lúnhuí jiéjìng jīng 念佛超脫輪迴捷徑經
The Sūtra of the Shortcut: Reciting the Buddha to Transcend the Cycle of Rebirth (Anonymous, late-imperial Chinese apocryphon)
About the work
A short Pure Land / popular-devotional text in the form of a jīng but evidently composed in late-imperial China for use in the lay-Buddhist devotional liturgy. The text opens not with the standard evaṃ mayā śrutaṃ / 如是我聞 sūtra-incipit but with a fó-zàn 佛讚 (hymn of praise to the Buddha) — the famous gāthā beginning Ē-mí-tuó fó shēn jīn-sè 阿彌陀佛身金色 (“The body of Amitābha is the colour of gold”) associated with the late-imperial niàn-fó-yí 念佛儀 ritual practice. The body of the work consists of devotional formulae for the Wèi-tuó 為他 (recitation on behalf of others), the zì-lì 自利 (self-benefit recitation), and the closing dedication of merit (huí-xiàng 迴向).
Abstract
The work is not a sūtra in the technical sense but a Pure Land devotional manual that has been styled as a jīng — a phenomenon characteristic of late-imperial Chinese apocryphal popular Buddhism. The title — “the shortcut sūtra of niànfó for transcending the wheel of rebirth” — captures the late-imperial popularising emphasis on Pure Land devotion as the simplest and most efficient soteriological route, in contrast to the long bodhisattva path. The text has no canonical attestation prior to the Xùzàngjīng and is anonymous; the language and ritual structure are characteristically YuánMíng. The dating bracket (c. 1300–1600) covers the period in which such popular devotional manuals proliferated in lay-Buddhist circles. There is no plausible Indian source.
Translations and research
- ter Haar, Barend J. Practising Scripture: A Lay Buddhist Movement in Late Imperial China. University of Hawai’i Press, 2014 — the principal English-language treatment of the late-imperial popular-devotional Buddhist movements that produced texts of this kind.
- Buswell, Robert E. (ed.). Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. University of Hawai’i Press, 1990.