Bàoēn lùn 報恩論
Treatise on Repaying Grace by 沈善登 (Tóngxiāng Shěn Shàndēng, 述) and 張常惺 (Hǎiyán Zhāng Chángxīng, 校錄)
About the work
A two-juǎn Pure Land doctrinal treatise composed (shù 述) by the late-Qīng lay-Buddhist scholar 沈善登 Shěn Shàndēng 沈善登 (1830–1902) of Tóngxiāng 桐鄉 (Zhèjiāng), with collaborative editing and recording (xiào lù 校錄) by 張常惺 Zhāng Chángxīng 張常惺 (zì Zǐjiǎn 子簡) of Hǎiyán 海鹽. The title — bàoēn 報恩 (“repaying grace”) — has dual reference: to the Bàoēnsì 報恩寺 from which the work takes its name, and to the soteriological “repayment of grace” owed by the practitioner to the Buddha-saviour Amitābha.
Abstract
The Zào lùn shù yì 造論述意 (statement of compositional intention) at the head of the work records the genesis with unusual precision. In the spring of Guāngxù wùyín 光緒戊寅 (= 1878), in connection with an affair concerning the Xiǎo Huòshān móyá 小霍山摩崖 (the cliff-inscription at Lesser Huòshān, Hangzhou), Shěn Shàndēng convened with Zhāng Chángxīng and three further companions at the Dèngwèi Shèngēnsì 鄧尉聖恩寺 (the Shèngēnsì at Mt. Dèngwèi) for a fifty-three-day-and-night jié tán 結壇 (altar-establishment) of unceasing niànfó and sūtra-copying. The five practitioners formed three rotating shifts; the discipline was timed by incense-burning intervals; each day comprised four full rotations with three quarter-hour breaks. After two-plus weeks of continuous practice, the Bàoēn lùn was composed, drawing on the Wèi-translation of the Wúliàngshòu jīng 無量壽經 (Kāng Sēngkǎi 康僧鎧’s recension), with Shěn dictating and Zhāng recording. The product was five piān 篇 of doctrinal discourse, twenty-five záshuō 雜說 (miscellaneous discussions), and several shīgē 詩歌, totalling some 20,000 characters.
The work was named Bàoēn lùn on the analogy of the Bàoēn in the host monastery’s name (the Shèngēnsì), and to acknowledge the dynastic bàoēn — the dynasty’s continuous patronage of Buddhism alongside Confucianism, as a constituent element of the social order.
The text remained in manuscript circulation for nearly twenty years before publication. In Guāngxù dīngyǒu xià 光緒丁酉夏 (= summer 1897), the elderly and ailing Shěn issued the work for printing, supplementing the original five-piān / twenty-five-záshuō core with a substantial new Zhèng jīng 證經 (“scriptural attestations”) section drawing extensively on the Jìngtǔ sānjīng and the Wéishí 唯識 corpus, designed to forestall what Shěn perceived as the late-Qīng Pure Land tradition’s tendency to “abusively absorb the Chán school” (làn rù chánzōng, gāotán xuánmiào 濫入禪宗高談元妙) and to “split Buddhist and worldly law into two pieces” (fófǎ shìfǎ, dǎ chéng liǎng jué 佛法世法打成兩橛). The 1897 cǎiqí xù (preface to the printing) is signed Shěn Shàndēng zhì 沈善登識.
The extant text comprises:
- a Zào lùn shù yì 造論述意 statement of intention;
- a Zhèng jīng shí’èr zé 證經(十二則) (twelve scriptural attestations);
- a Dá wèn èrshíwǔ zé 答問(二十五則) (twenty-five Q&A discussions);
- the body Zhèng (proper) split across upper and lower volumes (juǎn zhèng shàng 卷正上, juǎn zhèng xià 卷正下);
- and an appendix.
It is one of the most doctrinally sustained late-Qīng Pure Land treatises by a lay author, and is read alongside 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng’s Yīshèng juéyí lùn and Huáyán niànfó sānmèi lùn KR6e0148 as the principal lay-Buddhist lùn-genre Pure Land doctrinal treatise of the post-Péng late-Qīng tradition. Shěn’s particular contribution is to insist on the zhèngjīng 證經 (sūtra-attestation) basis of Pure Land doctrine over and against the Chán-Pure Land syncretist drift.
Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1205. The dating bracket adopted (1878–1897) covers from the original 1878 composition through the 1897 printing.
Translations and research
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Late Qing Buddhist Lay Movements.” In Modern Chinese Religion II. Leiden: Brill, 2016 — for the broader late-Qīng lay-Buddhist intellectual context to which Shěn belongs.
- Jones, Charles B. Chinese Pure Land Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019.
Other points of interest
The 1878 composition at Dèngwèi Shèngēnsì is itself a notable instance of the Qīng-era jié tán 結壇 / bìguān 閉關 retreat-practice tradition, with five lay and clerical practitioners forming a niànfó assembly that produced a substantial doctrinal treatise as a by-product. The composition of the Bàoēn lùn in this collaborative jié tán setting, with one practitioner dictating and another recording, may be compared with the Sòng-era model of imperially-commissioned doctrinal treatises composed under controlled-recitation conditions.