Jìng zhōng jìng yòu jìng 徑中徑又徑
A Shortcut Within the Shortcut, and Yet Another Shortcut by 張師誠 (Zhāng Lánzhǔ, 著)
About the work
A four-juǎn Pure Land devotional anthology compiled by the high-Qīng official 張師誠 Zhāng Shīchéng 張師誠 (1762–1830, zì Xīnyǒu 心友, hào Lánzhǔ 蘭渚), Governor (xúnfǔ 巡撫) of Jiāngsū. The peculiar title — “the shortcut within the shortcut, and yet another shortcut” — is Zhāng’s own coinage on the standard Pure Land idiom of jìnglù 徑路 (“the shortcut path”) for the niànfó gate: where Pure Land practice as a whole is already the jìng shortcut to liberation, chímíng recitation is the shortcut within that shortcut, and the deathbed zhìniàn moment is yet another shortcut within that.
Abstract
Per Zhāng’s own 自序 (zìxù) dated Dàoguāng 5, 1st month / yǐyǒu 道光五年乙酉正月 (= January / February 1825), and signed “Bīngbù shìláng, xúnfǔ Jiāngsū děngchù tídū jūnwù, Guīān Zhāng Shīchéng” 兵部侍郎巡撫江蘇等處提督軍務歸安張師誠 (Vice-Minister of War, Governor of Jiāngsū with concurrent responsibility for military affairs, of Guīān), the materials had been gathered beginning in Jiāqìng jiǎxū 嘉慶甲戌 (1814), at which point Zhāng “selected from the Pure Land discussions of the former worthies and edited them into this book.” A supplementary preface (續序) by Xǔ Jìngzhōng 許淨中 of Qiántáng 錢塘 in Tóngzhì 7 (1868) records that Zhāng’s materials were re-edited and reprinted that year.
The four juǎn are organised thematically around the Pure Land xìnyuànxíng 信願行 (faith-vow-practice) triad. The bulk of the contents consists of digested extracts from the standard Pure Land patristic and pastoral literature — Tiāntái Zhìyǐ 智顗’s Shíyí lùn KR6p0008, Lèbāng wénlèi KR6p0021, Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s 袾宏 Ēmítuó jīng shūchāo KR6p0036 and Zhúchuāng writings, Ǒuyì Zhìxù’s Jìngtǔ shí yào KR6p0067, and Chèwù Jìxǐng’s 徹悟 Yǔlù KR6p0101 — together with an appendix of Pure Land verse (Jìngtǔ gēyǒng 淨土歌詠) including dozens of Zhāng’s own compositions. The 同治 supplementary preface judges the latter “the most pungent and pointed” (最為警切) of the appended verses.
The work is the principal late-Qīng monument to Pure Land scholarship by a sitting senior provincial official, and is read alongside 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng’s jūshìfójiào programme as evidence of the high-status literati Pure Land tradition that fed into the late-Qīng / early-Republican Pure Land revival under Yìnguāng 印光. Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1185.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
- Jones, Charles B. Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019.
Other points of interest
The text frequently quotes the imperial prefaces of the Kāngxī 康熙 (《聖祖仁皇帝聖製五燈全書序》) and Yōngzhèng 雍正 (《世宗憲皇帝御選語錄卷十三序文》) emperors, including them in their entirety as a doctrinal-political frame for Zhāng’s lay-Buddhist scholarship. This integration of state-orthodox imperial Buddhist prefaces with literati Pure Land devotional anthology is characteristic of the high-Qīng pattern.