Xiūxī jí yào 修西輯要
Essentials of Cultivating [Rebirth in] the West, Selected by 信庵 (Wǔlín bǐqiū Xìnān, 輯)
About the work
A single-juǎn Pure Land devotional anthology compiled (jí 輯) by the late-Qīng monk 信庵 Xìnān 信庵, designated Wǔlín bǐqiū 武林比丘 (“Hangzhou monk”). The work selects (jí yào 輯要) the principal pastoral and doctrinal passages of the late-imperial Pure Land patristic tradition and arranges them into a compact pastoral handbook organised around the xìnyuànxíng 信願行 triad with particular emphasis on tālì 他力 (other-power = Buddha-Amitābha’s saving power).
Abstract
The Xiūxī jí yào xù 修西輯要序 by Běnpǔ 本普, a Jìngyè xuérén 淨業學人, dated Guāngxù shí nián shí yuè shuò 光緒十年十月朔 (= 1st day of 10th month of Guāngxù 10 = 18 November 1884), frames the editorial conception. Běnpǔ opens with a doctrinal meditation on the impossibility of stabilising past, present, and future moments of consciousness — yet, while these are perpetually in flux, the Mítuó shìhǎi 彌陀誓海 (Amitābha’s ocean-vow) and his mínghào 名號 (Name) are themselves invariant and invariably present. He then identifies the soteriological mechanism: the practitioner’s “exchange of bodies at the death-passage” (jiāng yǐ fēnduàn shēn, huàn chéng zhōngyīn shēn 將以分段身換成中陰身) is itself dangerous, but where the “title is not exchanged” (lǎoshí niànfó, mò huàn tímù 老實念佛莫換題目 — citing Liánchí Zhūhóng’s 袾宏 famous deathbed admonition), the fólì 佛力 (Buddha-power) supervenes and exchanges the zhōngyīn shēn 中陰身 (intermediate-state body) for the liántāi 蓮胎 (lotus-womb of Pure Land rebirth).
Běnpǔ specifies the doctrinal alignment: Xìnān’s editorial selection foregrounds the tālì (other-power) doctrine of 智顗 Tiāntái Zhìyǐ’s Shí yí lùn KR6p0008; this distinguishes the work from those Pure Land anthologies that emphasise self-power zìlì practice, and aligns Xìnān with the jìngtǔ tālì 淨土他力 strand of the late-Qīng tradition. The work is therefore both a pastoral primer and a doctrinal positioning within the contemporary Pure Land scholarly debate.
The body of the text opens with a section Shí niàn zhēn yīn 十念真因 (“the true causes of the ten-recitation [practice]”) and continues with selected passages from the standard Pure Land patristic literature. Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1203. The dating bracket adopted (1870–1884) covers Xìnān’s mature period through the 1884 publication.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.