Jìngtǔ zīliáng quánjí 淨土資糧全集
Complete Anthology of Provisions for the Pure Land by 袾宏 (Yúnqī Zhūhóng, 校正) and 莊廣 (Huánrú Zhuāng Guǎng, 還輯)
About the work
A six-juǎn lay-compiled Pure Land anthology assembled by the late-Míng lay-Buddhist scholar 莊廣 Huánrú Zhuāng Guǎng 還如莊廣 (a disciple in the Yúnqī Zhūhóng circle) and edited / collated by the great Pure Land master 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng 雲棲袾宏 (1535–1615). The collaboration between lay compiler and monastic editor is characteristic of the late-Míng Pure Land scene at Yúnqīsì in Hángzhōu, where literati lay-Buddhist circles worked closely with the resident monastic community on Pure Land textual projects.
Abstract
The title borrows the standard Mahāyāna term 資糧 zīliáng (“provisions / equipment”) for the merit and wisdom that the bodhisattva must accumulate on the path to awakening; here applied specifically to the Pure Land devotional path, the zīliáng are the doctrinal and practical resources the practitioner needs to cultivate rebirth in Sukhāvatī. The anthology is structured into six juǎn covering: (1) the canonical scriptural foundations of Pure Land devotion (extracts from the Wúliángshòu jīng, the Guānjīng, the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha); (2) doctrinal expositions drawn from the major Pure Land patristic literature; (3–4) the practical yíguǐ of niànfó and the daily Pure Land devotions; (5) hagiographical exempla of Pure Land devotees; (6) verse, jié 偈, and devotional material for daily recitation.
The anthology’s distinctive feature is its comprehensiveness and accessibility: it is more practical and lay-oriented than the doctrinal-systematic works of Yúnqī himself (the Shūchāo, the Hélùn-style scholarship), and more comprehensive than the small popular-devotional collections of Dàoyǎn (KR6p0060) or Lǐ Zhì (KR6p0062). Yúnqī’s editorial 校正 hand is visible throughout: the textual selections are precisely calibrated to the late-Míng Pure Land doctrinal programme that Yúnqī had himself developed, and the work circulates with strong endorsement from the Yúnqī establishment.
The text is preserved only in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1162). No preface fixes the composition date precisely; the bracket adopted (1580–1610) covers Yúnqī’s mature period and the active lay-Buddhist scholarship of the Yúnqī circle in the late Wànlì.
Translations and research
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia, 1981.
- Eichman, Jennifer. A Late Sixteenth-Century Chinese Buddhist Fellowship. Leiden: Brill, 2016 — substantial discussion of the Yúnqī lay-Buddhist network and its joint textual projects.
- Brook, Timothy. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1993 — for the late-Míng lay-Buddhist context.