Jìngtǔ jiùshēng chuán shī 淨土救生船詩
Verses on the Salvation-Boat of the Pure Land by 寬量 (Sìmíng Yíndōng shāmén Kuānliàng Yuánhǎi, 集)
About the work
A single-juǎn annotated Pure Land verse-treatise composed (jí 集) by the late-Qīng Sìmíng 四明 (= Níngbō) monk 寬量 Kuānliàng 寬量, zì Yuánhǎi 源海, hào Dànyún 澹雲 / Xīduò 西舵, native of Yíndōng 鄞東 (eastern Yín county). The work is a sequence of 48 seven-character four-line juéjù poems on Pure Land themes, each accompanied by an extended zhù 注 (commentary) of several hundred to several thousand characters. The 48 verses correspond by number to Amitābha’s forty-eight vows.
Abstract
A xù 序 by the prefacer (whose own name is not given in the surviving text but who identifies himself as a Jīngāng jīng 金剛經 commentator) is dated Guāngxù èrshí yǒu èr nián tài suì zài róu zhào 光緒二十有二年太歲在柔兆 (= Guāngxù 22 = 1896). The author’s zìxù (self-preface) is dated Guāngxù bǐngshēn suì zhòngchūn yuè dīngchǒu rì 光緒丙申歲仲春月丁丑日 (= a dīngchǒu day of the 2nd month of Guāngxù 22 = early 1896). A postface by Xià Zhènwǔ 夏震武 of Fùyáng 富陽 is dated Guāngxù èrshíèr nián jiǔ yuè èrshíliù rì 光緒二十二年九月二十六日 (= 1 November 1896).
The prefacer’s framing situates the work within the Pure Land verse-tradition: from the Lúshān bāshíbā xián 廬山八十八賢 (慧遠 Huìyuǎn Lúshān community) Niànfó sānmèi shī 念佛三昧詩 of the Eastern Jìn through 楚石梵琦 Chǔshí Fànqí’s seventy-seven Huái jìngtǔ shī 懷淨土詩 of the late Yuán to the Jìngtǔ jiùshēng chuán of Kuānliàng — the prefacer judges Kuānliàng’s contribution superior because he has supplied an extended self-commentary on each verse, drawing out the sān guān yuán xiū 三觀圓修 (round-cultivation of the three contemplations) and the shìlǐ yī xīn 事理一心 (event-and-principle one-mind) doctrine. Particularly, Kuānliàng addresses the two sectarian errors of the Pure Land debate: those who hold “the Buddha appears from the mind alone, and there is no Western Buddha” (the radical wéixīn jìngtǔ error), and those who hold “the Buddha came from the West, and there is no manifest mind” (the Pure-Land-as-mere-place error). Kuānliàng treats both as xié jiàn 邪見 (heterodox views) and asserts the shìlǐ yuántōng 事理圓通 (event-and-principle round-interpenetration) of the orthodox position.
The work returns repeatedly to the xìnyuànxíng 信願行 triad as the doctrinal framework, and supplements it with strict chíjiè 持戒 (precept-keeping) emphases — quàn xiào 勸孝 (urging filial piety), jiè yín 戒淫 (prohibiting lust), and a generally austere moral programme appropriate to Sìmíng monastic practice.
The author’s autobiographical note records his self-designation as “bùxiào yúxià fánfū sēng 不肖愚下凡夫僧” (“unworthy stupid-and-low ordinary-fellow monk”) — a characteristic self-effacing late-Qīng monastic register. Preserved in the Xùzàngjīng 卍續藏 as X1216. The dating bracket adopted (1880–1896) covers the late period of composition culminating in the 1896 publication.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located.
Other points of interest
The postfacer Xià Zhènwǔ 夏震武 (1854–1930) is a notable late-Qīng / early-Republican Confucian-Buddhist zhèngxué 正學 figure, native of Fùyáng 富陽 (Zhèjiāng), known for his strict Sòng-Míng-school neo-Confucian orthodoxy and his late-life Buddhist turn. His participation in the editorial circle of Kuānliàng’s Jìngtǔ jiùshēng chuán documents the late-Qīng Confucian-Buddhist yánxué 巖學 (rigorist) elite’s reception of orthodox Pure Land devotion.