Xīnxìng zuìfú yīnyuán jí 心性罪福因緣集
Anthology of [Tales of] Mind-Nature, Sin-and-Merit, and Karmic Causation
attributed to 延壽 (Yánshòu / Zhìjué chánshī 智覺禪師, 904–975, 注 / annotation)
About the work
A 3-juan early-Sòng anthology of didactic Buddhist anecdotes and karmic-cause tales, attributed in the Xùzàngjīng colophon to 大宋國智覺禪師注置 (“annotated and arranged by the Great-Sòng-state Chán-master Zhìjué”). The conventional identification of “Zhìjué chánshī” is the great early-Sòng Fǎ-yǎn-school synthesist Yǒngmíng Yánshòu 永明延壽 (904–975), whose posthumous shì was Zhìjué — but the attribution is not secured by any internal colophon to Yánshòu’s other works and several modern scholars have raised the possibility of a homonymous alternative or a later pseudepigraphic ascription. The text presents itself as a doctrinally-organised anthology of tales, with each section opening on a doctrinal gatha and proceeding through illustrative anecdotes of the karmic working-out of the principle in question. Transmitted in the Xùzàngjīng as X1640.
Prefaces
The work has no separate preface; the opening gatha serves as a programmatic framing: “Bowing the head to the Buddha of three bodies, / The teachings revealed and concealed, half and full, / The worthy and sage saṅgha of the three vehicles, / And the protectors of the True Dharma — / I now record in brief / The conditions of mind-nature and of sin-merit. / I do not include what was spoken from the golden mouth, / Because the sūtra-text is plainly there. / I do not produce the words of the worthies and sages, / Because in the śāstras they are clear. / Since Śākyamuni entered nirvāṇa / And after the True Dharma had been exhausted, / In the Five Indias and the borderlands, / Among the Four Communities of recent ages, / Faith and unbelief, right and wrong — / The wise should observe all these. / Therefore [in this anthology], from what I have seen, / Or what I have heard from elsewhere, / In order to admonish and exhort future generations, / I record only a small portion. / Those who hear, see, praise, or slander — / All shall enter together the Dharma-nature ocean.”
Abstract
The work is divided into doctrinal sections, each beginning with a thematic frame and proceeding through illustrative tales:
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Contemplation of the Three Bodies (觀三身功德): tales illustrating the karmic outcomes of devotional and disciplinary attention, or inattention, to the trikāya — including the case of Sēngduōluó 僧多羅 of Central India, a monk who, despite full ordination, neglected sūtra study and discipline.
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Mind-Nature (心性): tales bearing on the practitioner’s attention to the deeper structure of consciousness.
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Karmic Causation of Sin (罪緣) and Karmic Causation of Merit (福緣): the bulk of the work — a long sequence of moral exempla illustrating, in the gǎnyìng mode, how specific moral acts produce specific karmic outcomes in this and future lives.
The tales are drawn from a wide range of sources — Indian Buddhist avadāna literature, Chinese gāosēng zhuàn anecdotes, contemporary Sòng monastic-and-lay reports, and the unattributed oral-transmission tradition — and are presented in the relatively informal narrative mode characteristic of the Sòng-period yīnyuán jí genre. The work is closely related typologically to the 《冥報記》 Míngbào jì of Táng Lín 唐臨 (Tang) and the 《法苑珠林》 KR6s0002 Fǎyuàn zhūlín of Dàoshì 道世 (Tang), but takes a more doctrinally-anchored approach: each tale is explicitly framed as the working-out of a specific Buddhist principle.
The conventional attribution of the work to Yǒngmíng Yánshòu is plausible but not secure: Yánshòu’s other principal works (the 100-juan 《宗鏡錄》 KR6q0092, the 《萬善同歸集》 KR6q0093) are doctrinal-synthetic in mode, very different from the anecdotal-anthological mode of the present work, but the present work could plausibly be a later-life or early-career composition. The work is not listed in the standard early-Sòng Buddhist bibliographies and survives only through the Xùzàngjīng line of transmission, which is consistent with its having had a more limited circulation than Yánshòu’s principal works.
The dating bracket — 960 to 975 — follows the conventional attribution to Yánshòu’s Yǒngmíngsì period. If the attribution is mistaken, the work could date anywhere from the early Sòng through the early Yuán.
Translations and research
- 阿部肇一, 《中國禪宗史の研究》(Tōkyō: Seishin shobō, 1986) — context for the Yán-shòu attributions in late-imperial Chán bibliography.
- Albert Welter, Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing lu (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2011) — does not treat the Xīn-xìng zuì-fú jí explicitly, but provides the framework for assessing Yán-shòu attributions.
- No substantial monographic study of the Xīn-xìng zuì-fú yīn-yuán jí has been located.
Other points of interest
If the Yánshòu attribution is correct, the work is the only narrative-anthological work in his otherwise doctrinal-systematic corpus and would supply important evidence for the anecdotal-popular dimension of his pastoral activity at Yǒngmíngsì. The question of authorship merits further philological investigation than it has received.
Links
- CBETA: X88n1640