Jìngyè zhī jīn 淨業知津
Knowing the Ford to the Pure Karma by 悟開 (Bǎozàngsēng Wùkāi, 述)
About the work
A short, single-juǎn exhortative tract on Pure Land practice composed (shù 述) by the mid-Qīng monk 悟開 Bǎo-zàng-sēng Wù-kāi 寶藏僧悟開 of Líng-yán-shān 靈巖山 (Suzhou). The title zhī jīn 知津 (“knowing the ford”) borrows the Confucian idiom of Lúnyǔ 18.6 — “knowing where to cross the stream” — and re-uses it as a metaphor for the practitioner who has identified Pure Land devotion as the definitive expedient ford (fāng-biàn jīn 方便津) by which one crosses the kǔ-hǎi 苦海 (sea of suffering) of saṃsāra.
Abstract
The text opens with an extended diagnosis of the world as a “sea of suffering” — kǔhǎi 苦海 — in which the apparent goods (wealth, rank) are themselves productive of further kǔ. Wùkāi argues that even the ostensibly “joyful” conditions of human existence harbour their own characteristic sufferings, that the only intelligent response is to seek transcendence of the liùdào 六道 (six paths of rebirth), and that the only practicable means of transcendence available to ordinary practitioners in the present mòfǎ 末法 (degenerate-age) period is the chímíng niànfó 持名念佛 (recitation-of-the-Buddha’s-name) gate. The body of the text is structured as a series of expository sections that explain Pure Land cosmology, the mechanics of xìnyuànxíng 信願行 (faith / vow / practice), and the proper method of recitation, with frequent appeals to Jīn’gāng jīng 金剛經, Wúliàngshòu jīng 無量壽經, and the late-imperial Pure Land patristic literature — particularly 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng and 徹悟 Chèwù Jìxǐng.
The work is a characteristic product of the early-to-mid-nineteenth-century lay-oriented Pure Land pastoral tradition centred at Línyánshān. The dating bracket adopted (1820–1860) covers Wùkāi’s mature pastoral period; the work is preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1183 alongside two further short Wùkāi treatises in the same anthology (Niànfó bǎiwèn KR6p0103, X1184).
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.