Jìngtǔ shēng wúshēng lùn zhù 淨土生無生論註
Annotated [Commentary on the] Treatise on Birth-as-Non-Birth in the Pure Land by 正寂 (Huátíng Zhèngjì, 註)
About the work
A single-juǎn annotated commentary on 傳燈 Yōuxī Chuándēng’s Jìngtǔ shēng wúshēng lùn KR6p0056 (T1975), composed by the late-Míng Pure Land monk 正寂 Zhèngjì of Huátíng 華亭 in the early seventeenth century, shortly after Chuándēng’s death in 1628. The annotation is the earliest sustained commentary on Chuándēng’s foundational Tiāntái-Pure Land treatise and the principal seventeenth-century reading apparatus for the work.
Abstract
Chuándēng’s Lùn is doctrinally compressed: each of its ten theses receives only a brief proof-text and analysis, and the underlying Tiāntái doctrinal apparatus (the yī niàn sān qiān, the three contemplations, the four lands) is assumed rather than expounded. Zhèngjì’s commentary fills in this background: each thesis receives an extended doctrinal exposition; each technical term is glossed with cross-references to the major Tiāntái works (Zhìyǐ’s Móhē zhǐguān, Sìmíng Zhīlǐ’s Shíbùèr mén zhǐyào chāo 十不二門指要鈔, the SòngYuán Tiāntái Pure Land literature); each scriptural allusion is identified by source-text. The annotation is interlinear and substantial — running to perhaps three or four times the length of the underlying Lùn — and produces a fully readable working edition of Chuándēng’s text suitable for monastic seminary instruction.
The Lùnzhù belongs to the early-seventeenth-century Tiāntái Pure Land commentary tradition that grew up around Chuándēng’s text in the generation after his death. Subsequent commentaries — 受教 Shòujiào’s Qīnwén jì KR6p0071, 達默 Dámò’s Huìjí KR6p0088, 實賢 Shíxián’s Qīng-period Zhù KR6p0087 — together constitute the most substantial commentarial tradition of any single late-imperial Pure Land treatise.
The text is preserved only in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1167). The dating bracket adopted (1620–1640) covers the period immediately after Chuándēng’s death (1628) during which the first generation of his commentators was active.
Translations and research
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia, 1981.
- Shengyan 聖嚴. Míng-mò Fójiào yán-jiū 明末佛教研究. Taipei, 1987 — for Chuándēng and his immediate disciples.
- Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨. Chūgoku jōdo kyōrishi. Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1942/1964 — for the Tiāntái Pure Land tradition.