Wǎngshēng jìngtǔ chànyuàn yí 往生淨土懺願儀
The Repentance and Vow Liturgy for [Pure Land] Rebirth by 遵式 (Cíyún Zūnshì, 撰)
About the work
The standard Pure Land repentance liturgy of the Sòng Tiāntái Pure Land synthesis, composed by 遵式 Cíyún Zūnshì 慈雲遵式 (964–1032) — the principal architect of Sòng Tiāntái Pure Land liturgical practice and abbot of the Tiānzhúsì 天竺寺 in Hángzhōu. Zūnshì’s sobriquet 百本懺主 Bǎiběn chànzhǔ (“Master of a Hundred Repentance Texts”) reflects his enormous output of liturgical compositions; the Wǎngshēng jìngtǔ chànyuàn yí is the most important of these and the one that has remained continuously in active use as the canonical Pure Land chànyí of Chinese Buddhism.
Abstract
The Chànyuàn yí is structured as a complete liturgical service consisting of five major segments: (1) the opening invocations (qǐjiào 啟教 / yánjí sānbǎo 嚴集三寶) — invitation of the Three Jewels, of Amitābha and his retinue, of the Pure Land bodhisattvas, and of the protector deities; (2) the repentance proper (chànhuǐ 懺悔) — the recitation of the practitioner’s transgressions and the formal request for purification, drawing on the Pǔxián xíngfǎ jīng 普賢行法經 and the Sūtra of Golden Light models; (3) the vow-recitation (fāyuàn 發願) — the formal expression of the resolve for rebirth in Sukhāvatī, modelled on the forty-eight vows of Amitābha; (4) the dedication of merit (huíxiàng 迴向); (5) the closing (chūcháng 出常). The whole script is in alternating prose and verse, with stage-direction-style markers directing the choreography of the service.
The work draws on the prior Pure Land liturgical tradition — Shàndǎo’s 善導 zàn corpus (KR6p0074, KR6p0075, KR6p0076), the broader medieval chànyí tradition systematised by Zhìshēng 智昇 in the Jí zhūjīng lǐchàn yí KR6p0077 — and integrates it with the doctrinal apparatus of the Sòng Tiāntái revival. Zūnshì’s Tiānzhúsì had become by the early eleventh century the principal institutional centre of the Sòng Tiāntái-Pure Land synthesis, and the Chànyuàn yí is the canonical liturgical document of that synthesis. The work was widely circulated, repeatedly reprinted, and adopted as the standard Pure Land repentance service across the medieval and late-imperial periods. It is still in active liturgical use in contemporary Chinese Pure Land monasticism.
The Taishō text (T47N1984) is collated against the Korean canon and a jiǎ manuscript variant. The dating bracket (1000–1032) covers Zūnshì’s mature period at Tiānzhúsì (he became abbot in the late tenth century) up to his death in 明道 1 (1032).
Translations and research
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Four Kinds of Samādhi in Early T’ien-T’ai Buddhism.” In Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, ed. Peter N. Gregory. Honolulu, 1986 — for the broader chàn-yí tradition.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “The Tien-tai Four Forms of Samadhi and Late North-South Dynasties, Sui, and Early T’ang Buddhist Devotionalism.” Columbia PhD dissertation, 1987 — substantial treatment of Zūnshì.
- Getz, Daniel A. “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate.” In Buddhism in the Sung. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999 — places Zūnshì in the Sòng Pure Land institutional context.
- Kuo Li-ying. Confession et contrition dans le bouddhisme chinois du Ve au Xe siècle. Paris: EFEO, 1994 — for the broader chàn-huǐ tradition.
- Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨. Chūgoku jōdo kyōrishi. Kyoto: Hōzōkan — substantial chapters on Zūnshì.
Other points of interest
The Chànyuàn yí is one of the few medieval Chinese Buddhist liturgical texts that has been in continuous active use from its composition to the present — a thousand years of unbroken liturgical performance in monastic and lay-devotional Pure Land contexts. The current performance traditions (in mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, and overseas Chinese Pure Land monasticism) preserve identifiable continuities with Zūnshì’s eleventh-century original, though the chant patterns have inevitably evolved across the millennium.