Guīyuán zhízhǐ jí 歸元直指集
Direct-Pointing Anthology of Returning to the Origin by 宗本 (Yīyuán Zōngběn, 集)
About the work
A two-juǎn synthetic Chán–Pure Land anthology compiled in the Hóngzhì 弘治 reign of the mid Míng by the Pure Land / Chán monk 宗本 Yīyuán Zōngběn 一元宗本, with a self-preface dated 弘治 7 (1494). The work belongs to the Jìngtǔ huòwèn KR6p0053 / Xīfāng hélùn KR6p0057 genre of Chán-Pure Land integrative anthology, and represents the principal mid-Míng intermediary between the Yuán-period Chán-Pure Land synthesis of 天如則 Tiānrú Wéizé and the late-Míng synthesis of 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng and 袁宏道 Yuán Hóngdào.
Abstract
The title — guīyuán zhízhǐ 歸元直指 — combines two key Chán–Pure Land slogans: guīyuán 歸元 (“return to the origin”), the classical Chán formulation of the goal of practice (drawn from the Lěngyánjīng 楞嚴經 dictum that “the origin returns to itself, but routes are not one and the same” 歸元無二，方便有多門), and zhízhǐ 直指 (“direct pointing”), the standard Chán metaphor for the immediate transmission of mind. Yīyuán’s argument is that niànfó 念佛 is one such route of “direct pointing” — a Chán method in its own right, fully equivalent in its capacity to bring the practitioner to the guīyuán of awakening. The anthology assembles supporting material from canonical sūtras, earlier Chán and Pure Land masters, and devotional verse, organised in two thematic juǎn: doctrinal foundations and practical instruction in the first; biographical exempla and devotional material in the second.
The work is doctrinally significant for its mid-Míng restatement of the Tiānrú Wéizé position: the standard Chán objections to Pure Land practice are revisited and answered in the same idiom Tiānrú had used a century and a half earlier. But Yīyuán is also responsive to the changed institutional context of the mid Míng — the late-fifteenth-century revival of monastic Buddhism after the early-Míng tightening, the increasing prominence of literati lay-Buddhist circles, and the institutional consolidation of the orthodox Liánzōng in the wake of 普度 Yōután Pǔdù’s Bǎojiàn KR6p0054. The Zhízhǐ jí circulated widely and is regularly cited in late-Míng Pure Land literature, including the Xīfāng hélùn of Yuán Hóngdào and the materials anthologised in 成時 Chéngshí’s Jìngtǔ shíyào KR6p0067.
The text is preserved in the Jiāxīng 嘉興 canon and the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1156). The dating bracket adopted (1490–1500) covers from immediately before Yīyuán’s dated preface to first circulation.
Translations and research
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia, 1981 — the principal English-language treatment of the mid-to-late-Míng Chán-Pure Land tradition.
- Sharf, Robert H. “On Pure Land Buddhism and Ch’an / Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China.” T’oung Pao 88 (2002): 282–331.
- Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1993 — for mid-to-late-Míng lay Buddhism.