Qǐxìn zá shuō 啟信雜說
Miscellaneous Discourses for Awakening Faith by 周思仁 (Lùchéng Zhōu Ānshì Sīrén, 輯)
About the work
A single-juǎn Pure Land apologetical anthology compiled (jí 輯) by the early-Qīng lay-Buddhist scholar 周思仁 Zhōu Sīrén 周思仁 (1656–1739, zì Ānshì 安士, conventionally cited as Zhōu Ānshì 周安士 or as Ānshì xiānshēng 安士先生) of Lùchéng 鹿城 (= Kūnshān 崑山, Jiāngsū). The work is one of the constituent parts of Zhōu’s celebrated late-Kāng-xī / Yōng-zhèng-era Ānshì quánshū 安士全書 (“the Complete Works of Ānshì”), the most influential late-imperial lay-Buddhist popular-pastoral treatise.
Abstract
Zhōu’s preface (signed Lùchéng Zhōu Ānshì Sīrén jí 鹿城周安士思仁輯) frames the work explicitly as Pure Land apologetics directed at the fellow Confucian literati (wúbèi dúshū rén 吾輩讀書人): persuading the wise to take up Pure Land practice is easy because they have karmic merit; persuading the simple is also easy because they have no preconceived prejudices; persuading Confucian literati, however, is “very hard” because they are obstructed by yī zhǒng chénfǔ zhī zhí 一種陳腐之執 (“a particular stale-and-rotten dogmatic prejudice”) that closes them off to the Buddhist dharma. The anthology therefore gathers passages from widely-respected sources that are doctrinally allied to Pure Land devotion, organised as a series of apologetic essays.
The contents include:
- Rúrú jūshì Yán Bǐng 如如居士顏丙 quàn xiūxíng wén 勸修行文 (the lay Buddhist Yán Bǐng’s exhortation to cultivation);
- Lǐ zhàng gèng shèn yú yù 理障更甚於欲 (intellectual obstructions are more severe than desire);
- Xiān yào zhī sān shì zhī shuō 先要知三世之說 (one must first acknowledge the three-times doctrine);
- Yòu yào míng yīnguǒ zhī lǐ 又要明因果之理 (one must clarify the principle of cause-and-effect);
- Sān shì zhī lǐ Kǒngzǐ bìdìng shuō guò 三世之理孔子必定說過 (Confucius certainly taught the three-times doctrine);
- Zhìzhě wù yǐ duǎnmìng zìdài 智者勿以短命自待 (the wise should not give themselves over to short-life resignation);
- Yǒu zhì zhě bù kě ài qí jiànwén 有智者不可隘其見聞 (the wise should not narrow their range of inquiry);
- Zàngjīng bù kě bù dú 藏經不可不讀 (one cannot fail to read the Buddhist canon);
- Zhuàngshī shàn yú zhé fā 奘師善於哲發 (Xuánzàng was an outstanding philosophical inquirer);
- Dāng yú ròuqū shēng yànlí xīn 當於肉軀生厭離心 (one should cultivate revulsion toward the fleshly body);
- Dà xiào rén bù yuàn rù tāi 大孝人不願入胎 (the truly filial do not wish for further rebirth);
- Dà guì rén xū zhī zìcán 大貴人須知自慚 (the eminently noble must know self-shame); and further apologetic-doctrinal sections in the same vein.
The anthology is a characteristic work of the Zhōu Ānshì late-Kāng-xī / Yōngzhèng lay-Buddhist literati apologetic, designed to overcome Confucian literati resistance to Pure Land devotion via appeal to canonical Confucian and historical authority. It belongs alongside the better-known constituent parts of Zhōu’s Ānshì quánshū — the Yīnzhì wén guǎng yì 陰騭文廣義 (the gloss on the Wénchāng Yīnzhì wén), the Wàn shàn xiān zī 萬善先資 (the anti-killing tract), and the Yùhǎi huí kuáng 欲海回狂 (the anti-lust tract). Zhōu died in Qiánlóng 4 (1739).
Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1201. The dating bracket adopted (1700–1739) covers Zhōu Ānshì’s mature Pure Land scholarly period.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent and David A. Palmer. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
- Brokaw, Cynthia J. The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991 — for the broader morality-book tradition into which Zhōu Ān-shì’s lay-Buddhist apologetic fed.
- Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China. New York: Columbia UP, 1981.
Other points of interest
The Ānshì quánshū — the larger work to which the present Qǐxìn záshuō belongs — was the most widely-circulated lay Buddhist popular text of the late-imperial and Republican periods, with continuous reprinting from the early-eighteenth century through the present. Yìnguāng 印光 (1861–1940), the great Republican-era Pure Land master, made the Ānshì quánshū one of the central texts of his pastoral programme; it remains in active circulation in Chinese Pure Land circles today.