Jìngyè tòng cè 淨業痛策
The Painful Whip of Pure Karma by 照瑩 (Cényáng Kōnglíng dàshī Zhàoyíng, 集)
About the work
A single-juǎn Pure Land jǐngcè 警策 (admonitory-stimulus) anthology composed by the late-Qīng Cényáng 涔陽 (Húběi) monk 照瑩 Zhàoyíng 照瑩, zì Kōnglíng 空靈 (“Empty-Numinous”), hào Guīxī 歸西 (“Returning-West”), with an alternate sobriquet Liànxī dàshī 戀西大師 (“Master Yearning-for-the-West”). The title — tòngcè 痛策 (“painful whip”) — uses the standard jǐngcè idiom in its most intensified form: a whip-stroke administered with deliberate severity to startle the somnolent practitioner into urgent Pure Land practice.
Abstract
The Jìngyè tòng cè fùkè xù 淨業痛策附刻序 (preface to the supplementary printing) is by Xīnyǒng 心永, a Jìngyè xuérén 淨業學人 of Shānyīn fǎyuánān 山陰法源庵, dated Guāngxù sān nián mèngxià yuè 光緒三年孟夏月 (= early summer 1877). According to Xīnyǒng’s preface, Zhàoyíng’s Tòngcè was originally a freestanding work; Xīnyǒng re-edited and re-issued it as a supplement (fùkè 附刻) bound together with 古崑 Gǔkūn’s Jìngtǔ bìqiú KR6p0107 (X1188), at the express direction (qīnzhǔ 親囑) of the master Liànxī 戀西 — i.e. of the author Zhàoyíng himself. The work was thus originally circulated, then subsequently anthologised together with the Gǔkūn anthology in the late 1870s, and is now transmitted independently in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1199.
The work also contains a Mí-tuó-jīng lǐ-xiǎng yí 彌陀經禮想儀 (“Ritual of Veneration and Visualisation according to the Sukhāvatī-vyūha”) composed by Liàn-xī (Zhào-yíng) following the Mí-tuó xíng-yí 彌陀行儀 prescribed by Jiān-zǔ 堅祖 (= the Pure Land patriarch Jiān-mì 堅密 / Xǐng’ān Shí-xián 省庵實賢, 1686–1734). The text contains pastoral exhortations urging the practitioner to take Pure Land devotion as the only effective deliverance from saṃsāra and intersperses passages of intense devotional rhetoric (the “painful whip” of the title) with practical instructions for the zǎo-wǎn kè-sòng 早晚課誦 (morning and evening recitation).
Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1199. The dating bracket adopted (1860–1880) covers the late-Tóng-zhì / early-Guāng-xù horizon of composition.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.