Qǐ yīxīn jīngjìn niànfó qīqī guīshì 起一心精進念佛七期規式
Liturgical Norm for the Intensive Single-Mind Niànfó Forty-Nine-Day Retreat by 行策 (Jiéliú Xíngcè, 定)
About the work
A short single-juǎn liturgical handbook setting out the qīqī 七期 (七 = “seven” × 期 “period” → “seven sevens”, i.e. forty-nine days) niànfó retreat as systematised by 行策 Jiéliú Xíngcè at the Yúshān Pǔrén yuàn 虞山普仁院 in the early Qīng. The guīshì 規式 (“liturgical norm”) status of the work signals its prescriptive intent: this is the institutional manual for the conduct of the standard intensive Pure Land retreat that Xíngcè established as the canonical form of Qīng-period Pure Land devotional intensification.
Abstract
The handbook lays out the complete apparatus of the forty-nine-day retreat: the preparatory observances (the days before the retreat, the dietary and abstinence regimen, the registration of participants); the daily schedule (rising, zǎokè morning service, the seven daily niànfó sessions of the retreat proper, wǎnkè evening service, retiring); the role-assignments (the zhǔqī 主七 retreat-master, the jiānxiāng 監香 incense-warden, the yuèzhòng 悅眾 chant-leaders, the xiāngdēng 香燈 incense-and-lamp officers); the choreography of the xíngfó 行佛 (walking niànfó) and jìngfó 靜佛 (sitting niànfó) alternations that structure each session; the special observances of the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, twenty-eighth, thirty-fifth, forty-second, and forty-ninth days (the close of each successive qī); and the closing observances of the final day with its yuánmǎn huíxiàng 圓滿迴向 (“perfect dedication of merit”) culmination.
The work is the canonical institutional manual for the standard Qīng-period intensive Pure Land retreat, and remained the standard reference through the Republican era and into the present. Modern Chinese Pure Land monastic retreats — held annually in many monasteries on both sides of the Strait — still follow recognisably the structure that Xíngcè systematised in this manual. The companion Jìngtǔ jǐngyǔ KR6p0093 supplies the pastoral-doctrinal apparatus for the retreat; the Guīshì supplies the operational liturgical apparatus.
The text is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 (X1175). The dating bracket adopted (1660–1682) covers Xíngcè’s mature Pure Land period.
Translations and research
- Welch, Holmes. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900–1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1967 — chapters on the fó-qī retreat-form descending from Xíngcè.
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China. New York: Columbia, 1981.
- Stevenson, Daniel B. “Pure Land Buddhist Worship and Meditation in China.” In Buddhism in Practice, ed. D. Lopez. Princeton, 1995.