Jìngtǔ shénzhū 淨土神珠
The Divine Pearl of the Pure Land by 古崑 (Gǔkūn lǎorén, 集)
About the work
A single-juǎn Pure Land doctrinal-devotional anthology compiled (jí 集) by 古崑 Gǔ-kūn lǎo-rén 古崑老人 — the central anthology in his late-Qīng Pure Land series and the work to which his subsequent Jìng-tǔ suí xué KR6p0106 (X1187) explicitly cross-refers as the prior shén-zhū anthology. The title image — shén-zhū 神珠 (“the divine pearl”) — is the Pure Land tradition’s standard wish-fulfilling-jewel (cintāmaṇi) imagery applied to the Mí-tuó míng-hào 彌陀名號 itself: the Buddha-name is conceived as a mó-ní bǎo 摩尼寶 (māṇi-jewel) that, by mere recollection, fulfils every vow.
Abstract
The Jìngtǔ shénzhū xù 淨土神珠序 explicates the imagery: “the fódé (Buddha’s virtue) is yuánróng 圓融 (wholly interpenetrating) and manifests in accordance with the practitioner’s mind, like a móní bǎo whose wish-fulfilling power is unfailing — therefore the Guānjīng 觀經 says, ‘The all-knowing oceans of the Buddhas arise from mind-thought; therefore when the mind thinks the Buddha, the mind itself is the thirty-two marks and the eighty minor characteristics; the mind makes the Buddha, the mind is the Buddha’ (是心作佛是心是佛).” The doctrinal frame is therefore the yīxīn shífāng 一心十方 (one-mind-encompassing-the-ten-directions) interpenetration of the Léngyán jīng 楞嚴經 and the Huáyán 華嚴 mind-only soteriology, applied to give Pure Land devotion its full wéixīn jìngtǔ 唯心淨土 doctrinal grounding.
The body of the text gathers extracts from the Pure Land canonical sources (Jìngtǔ sānjīng), the Léngyán and Guān sūtras, and selected late-imperial Pure Land patristic and pastoral writings, organised thematically around the yīxīn jìngtǔ doctrinal frame. The work is more doctrinally ambitious than Gǔkūn’s elementary Liánzōng bìdú KR6p0116 — Gǔkūn’s own subsequent tící (in Jìngtǔ suí xué) describes the Shénzhū as an exhaustive dìwǎng yìng qiānguāng 帝網映千光 (“Indra’s net reflecting a thousand lights”) of Pure Land doctrinal content, suitable to all gēnqì 根器 (capacities of practitioners) “with no high-low distinction.”
Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1198, with a parallel transmission in the Jiāxīng 嘉興 collection. The dating bracket adopted (1860–1890) covers Gǔkūn’s principal active period.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.