Jūshì fēndēng lù 居士分燈錄
Branch-Lamp Record of Householders
compiled by 朱時恩 Zhū Shí’ēn, late Míng (preface 1631)
About the work
A two-juan late-Míng compilation devoted exclusively to lay (jūshì 居士) Chán practitioners — the title means “Branch-Lamp Record of Householders” — covering laymen (and a small number of laywomen) of substantive Chán attainment from the Táng through the Míng.
Abstract
A focused supplement to the lamp-record literature, abstracting the lay-practitioner material from the standard genealogical compilations and presenting it as an independent register. The work testifies both to the maturity of late-Míng lay Chán practice and to the increasing readiness of monastic compilers to grant lay practitioners formal recognition within Chán genealogical schemes.
Translations and research
No English translation. Treated within scholarship on Sòng-Míng lay Buddhism: Beata Grant, Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventeenth-Century China (UH Press, 2009), draws on this and related lay-practitioner records.
Other points of interest
The work’s exclusive focus on lay practitioners is unusual within the lamp-record genre and makes it a particularly useful concentrated source for the social and intellectual history of late-imperial Chinese lay Chán.