Liánxiū qǐ xìn lù 蓮修起信錄
Record for Awakening Faith in Lotus-Cultivation by 程兆鸞 (Hǎilíng Chéng Zhàoluán, 錄存)
About the work
A six-juǎn Pure Land devotional anthology recorded and preserved (lù cún 錄存) by the late-Qīng lay-Buddhist scholar 程兆鸞 Chéng Zhàoluán 程兆鸞 of Hǎilíng 海陵 (= Tàizhōu 泰州, Jiāngsū). The work is a major late-Qīng anthology of planchette spirit-writing (fēi luán 飛鸞) materials on Pure Land themes — a substantial mid-to-late-nineteenth-century parallel to the better-known seventeenth-century Xīfāng quèzhǐ KR6p0110 (X1191).
Abstract
The work opens with a doctrinal fēi luán defence (Luán shuō 鸞說) that closely parallels 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng’s 1773 hòuxù to the Xīfāng quèzhǐ: the fēi luán manifestation has been operative since antiquity, mediating divine guidance through a planchette-instrument; its operation cannot be reduced to the spirit alone or to the apparatus alone, since the two operate inseparably; the gods of the sānjiè 三界 (three realms) include both zhèng 正 (orthodox) gods who urge good conduct, and xié 邪 (heterodox) gods who deceive — and the orthodoxy of the fēi luán communications is to be discerned by the doctrinal correctness of their content.
A series of prefatory texts attests the late-Qīng anthology’s reception:
- a Jìngyún púsà xù 淨雲菩薩敘 — the editorial preface by the (planchette-revealed) Jìngyún púsà 淨雲菩薩, written for Chéng Zhàoluán;
- a xù by Chén Mùqīng 陳沐清 of Dōngtíng 東亭, dated Guāngxù shísì nián qīnghé yuè 光緒十四年清和月 (= 4th month of Guāngxù 14 = May 1888);
- a further xù by Zhāng Jìngguān 張淨觀, dated Guāngxù èrshí nián jiǎwǔ zhòngdōng èr rì 光緒二十年甲午仲冬二日 (= 11th month of Guāngxù 20 = early 1895);
- and Chéng Zhàoluán’s own self-preface dated Guāngxù jiǎwǔ nián mèngdōng yuè 光緒甲午年孟冬月 (= 10th month of 1894), in which he describes himself as a liùliù lǎosǒu 六六老叟 (“sixty-six-year-old greybeard”), implying birth c. 1828.
The autobiographical preface records that Chéng came from a Hǎilíng (Tàizhōu) literati family of the Dàoguāng era; his father served on the staff of two successive Gāoyóu 高郵 prefects in the Dàoguāng era (Fàn 范 and Wèi 魏); the family migrated to Gāoyóu in consequence; in the Xiánfēng 咸豐 era they suffered the disruptions of the Yuèkòu 粵寇 (the Tàipíng 太平 rebels). The Pure Land turn appears to have followed these traumas. The anthology is therefore both a planchette-revealed devotional collection and an autobiographical document of a Tàizhōu lay-Buddhist family across the late-Dào-guāng / Xiánfēng / Tóngzhì / Guāngxù period.
The body of the work is organised across six juǎn and contains fēi luán-revealed doctrinal exhortations, hagiographical accounts, prayers, and devotional verse, drawn from the spirit-writing assemblies in which Chéng participated. Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1204.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2022.
- Goossaert, Vincent and David A. Palmer. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
- Katz, Paul R. “Spirit-Writing and the Development of Chinese Cults.” History of Religions (1995).
Other points of interest
The Liánxiū qǐ xìn lù is one of the two principal Pure Land fēi luán (spirit-writing) anthologies in the Buddhist canonical corpus — the other being the seventeenth-century Xīfāng quèzhǐ KR6p0110 (X1191). Together they document the continuous interface of Pure Land devotion with the fēi luán movement across the late-imperial period.