Xīguī zhízhǐ 西歸直指
Direct Pointing to the Westward Return [to the Pure Land] by 周夢顏 (Zhōu Mèngyán / Ānshì jūshì, 彙集)
About the work
A four-juǎn lay-compiled Pure Land popularising tract by 周夢顏 Zhōu Mèngyán 周夢顏 (1656–1739), hào Ānshì jūshì 安士居士, the most prolific lay-Buddhist propagandist of the early-to-mid Qīng. The Xīguī zhízhǐ is the Pure Land devotional component of Zhōu’s larger multi-part 《安士全書》 Ānshì quánshū (Mr Ānshì’s Complete Works) — the late-imperial period’s most widely circulated lay-Buddhist yīnguǒ 因果 (cause-and-effect) corpus.
Abstract
The Ānshì quánshū comprises four major works: the Yīnzhì wén guǎngyì jiélù 陰騭文廣義節錄 (extended commentary on the Daoist Wénchāng yīnzhì wén morality-text); the Wànshàn xiānzī 萬善先資 (anti-killing tracts); the Yùhǎi huíkuáng 欲海回狂 (anti-licentiousness tracts); and the present Xīguī zhízhǐ (Pure Land devotional tract). The four works are conceptually integrated: the first three address the moral foundations of Buddhist lay life (the cultivation of yīnzhì / good character; abstention from killing; control of desire), and the fourth — the Xīguī zhízhǐ — supplies the soteriological capstone: the practice of Pure Land devotion as the means by which the morally-cultivated lay Buddhist achieves rebirth in Sukhāvatī.
The four juǎn cover (1) the doctrinal foundations of Pure Land devotion in the canonical sūtras; (2) the practical method of niànfó in daily life; (3) hagiographical exempla of Pure Land devotees, with extensive narrative material on dying-well and ruìxiāng 瑞相 (auspicious deathbed signs); (4) the Yíwén 疑問 / question-and-answer section addressing common doubts and objections. The work is written in clear, accessible literary Chinese aimed at the educated lay-Buddhist reader, with substantial narrative and exhortatory material — characteristic of Zhōu’s overall popularising-pastoral programme.
The Ānshì quánshū circulated extensively in the late Qīng and Republican-era Buddhist book-trade, with multiple editions printed by Buddhist publishers in Shànghǎi, Sūzhōu, Hángzhōu, Chángzhōu, and elsewhere. The Xīguī zhízhǐ in particular remained a standard popular Pure Land reading text well into the twentieth century. The text is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1173). The dating bracket adopted (1700–1739) covers Zhōu’s mature lay-Buddhist activity up to his death.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II. Leiden: Brill, 2016 — substantial discussion of the Ān-shì quán-shū corpus.
- Brokaw, Cynthia. The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. Princeton, 1991 — for the broader morality-tract tradition.
- Welch, Holmes. The Buddhist Revival in China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1968 — for the Republican-era reception.
- Ān-shì quán-shū jīn-yì 安士全書今譯. Beijing: Zōng-jiào wén-huà, 2011 — modern annotated edition.
Other points of interest
The Xīguī zhízhǐ’s integration of moral cultivation (the Wànshàn xiānzī / Yùhǎi huíkuáng programme) with Pure Land devotion is characteristic of the eighteenth-century Pure Land lay-Buddhist scholarship of which Zhōu Mèngyán was the leading exemplar — a programme that fed directly into the late-Qīng Pure Land lay revival of 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng (1740–1796, born the year after Zhōu’s death) and his circle, and through them into the early-Republican Pure Land masters Yìnguāng 印光 and Hóngyī 弘一.