Xīfāng fāyuàn wén zhù 西方發願文註
Annotated Commentary on the [Yúnqī Zhūhóng] Vow-Text for the Western [Pure Land] by 實賢 (Xǐng’ān Shíxián, 註)
About the work
A single-juǎn commentary on 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s Xīfāng yuànwén KR6p0064 — Yúnqī’s standard Pure Land vow-text — composed by the early-Qīng Pure Land master 實賢 Xǐng’ān Shíxián 省庵實賢 (1685–1734), the Eleventh Patriarch of the orthodox Chinese Pure Land lineage. The work supplies a sustained doctrinal exposition of Yúnqī’s vow-text, expanding on Yúnqī’s own commentary and integrating it with the Qīng-period Pure Land doctrinal apparatus.
Abstract
Yúnqī’s Xīfāng yuànwén circulates with Yúnqī’s own shì 釋 (commentary), supplied as part of the original composition (T1160 / KR6p0064). Xǐng’ān’s Zhù is therefore a second-order commentary: an annotation on Yúnqī’s already-annotated vow-text, supplying further doctrinal cross-references, scriptural source-citations, and pastoral applications that Yúnqī’s first-order commentary had not addressed. The structural division (kē 科) follows Yúnqī’s text phrase by phrase; the annotation density is high.
The work belongs to the broader Qīng-period Pure Land commentary tradition in which the foundational texts of the late-Míng Pure Land synthesis — Yúnqī’s writings, 傳燈 Chuándēng’s Lùn, 智旭 Ǒuyì’s Yàojiě — received successive layers of sub-commentary from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Pure Land masters. Xǐng’ān’s contribution to this tradition is substantial: in addition to the present Yuànwén zhù, he produced a separate Shēng wúshēng lùn zhù on Chuándēng’s Lùn, and his Dōnghǎi ruò jiě KR6p0097 continued the tradition into Confucian-Buddhist comparative scholarship. Together these works establish Xǐng’ān as the central early-Qīng commentator on the late-Míng Pure Land canon.
The text is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1161). The dating bracket adopted (1715–1734) covers Xǐng’ān’s mature period at Fèngshān / Méifēngsì up to his death.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China. New York: Columbia, 1981 — for the Yúnqī tradition that Xǐng’ān is commentating on.
- Welch, Holmes. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900–1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1967 — for the institutional successor to Xǐng’ān’s Pure Land culture.
- Shengyan 聖嚴. Mìngmò Qīngchū Zhōngguó Fójiào 明末清初中國佛教. Taipei, 1987.