Púsà yuándùn shòu jiè guàndǐng jì 菩薩圓頓授戒灌頂記
An Account of the Round-Sudden Bodhisattva Precept-Conferral Consecration by 惟賢 (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle doctrinal-procedural account of the kanjō-style esoteric consecration as applied to bodhisattva-precept reception by Yuiken 惟賢 (also read Igen), the abbot of Hosshō-ji 法勝住持 and a 14th-century Kurodani-lineage master of the Hiei-zan precept-revival movement. The work documents the unique Kurodani 黑谷 tradition of conferring the bodhisattva precepts through a Vajra-realm consecration (guàndǐng 灌頂 / kanjō) ceremony — a fusion of Tendai-Esoteric initiation with bodhisattva-precept reception that existed only in the Kurodani sub-lineage and that Yuiken seeks here both to describe and to defend against critics.
Abstract
Authorship and date. The work bears Yuiken’s signature: “Hosshō-ji Abbot śramaṇa Yuiken, seal of authority.” The key dating-event is recorded internally: “After the consecration ceremony had been interrupted for over twenty years, on the 25th day of the 7th month of Jōwa 5, jǐ-chǒu year [= September 1349 CE], at the Seiryū-ji 青龍寺 cloister of Kurodani, Yuiken was for the first time conferred [the kanjō]. The Master had seen good signs in advance of the day; Yuiken at his peak year experienced a numinous dream. Pondering this master-disciple influence-and-response — is this not the marvel of the Buddha-Dharma?” Yuiken adds that nine fellow-disciples entered this same initial platform after him, “and from then on it has continued unbroken year after year.” The work was therefore composed after Yuiken’s 1349 initiation and during his subsequent tenure at Hosshō-ji. notBefore = 1349, notAfter = 1380 is conservative.
The preface lays out the work’s doctrinal-defensive purpose: “The round-sudden inconceivable precept is the ultimate of consummating right-awakening. Discussed in the whole of [the Buddha’s] dispensation, the standard of the hidden round precepts has not been broken; investigated in the eight years [of the Lotus-period preaching], the transmission of the manifest-prior-precept is most precious. The three-body Tathāgatas all conferred it; the four-land beings to be transformed all received it.” Yuiken then identifies the controversy: “Therefore this consecration-precept ceremony in antiquity was definitely not limited to a single lineage or a single school. Yet among the various transmission-of-precepts lineages, the consecration ceremony has died out. Only in the Kurodani 黑谷 lineage alone has the praiseworthy track of double-reception remained. But the jealous houses and slanderous parties say, ‘In the holy teaching of the Venerable Ryōnin 良忍上人 [1073–1132, founder of Yūzū Nenbutsu], there is no such purport; in the legacy traces of the Venerable Zen’e Shōnin 善惠上人, there is also no such ceremony.’ They abundantly spit out slanderous words and at every turn produce mocking thoughts. This indeed is like the five-thousand who withdrew from the assembly [in the Lotus]; it can be called the ninety [-five non-Buddhist] heterodox paths.”
The body of the work documents the kanjō-precept procedure in detail, drawing on the Vajraśekhara-yi-jué 金剛頂義訣 and Tendai-Esoteric ritual manuals. The text exposits the five-fold consecration integrated into the precept-conferral: (1) Light-Radiance Consecration (光明灌頂) — the Buddhas and bodhisattvas emit light; (2) Amṛta Consecration (甘露灌頂) — the consecrated water of the heart-section’s principal mantra; (3) Seed-Syllable Consecration (種子灌頂) — the seed-syllable of the section’s principal Buddha is inscribed on the body and mind; (4) Wisdom-Mudra Consecration (智印灌頂) — the mudra of the principal Buddha is bestowed; (5) Phrase-Meaning Consecration (句義灌頂) — the mantra of the principal Buddha and the meaning of the maṇḍala-altar are fully transferred to the recipient’s mind. The work then unfolds the twelve sub-categories of kanjō and applies them to the precept-platform.
The work is a unique witness to a distinctive Kurodani-lineage ritual tradition that other Tendai sub-schools rejected. It is the canonical statement of the fusion of Taimitsu consecration with Mahāyāna ordination that the Kurodani movement uniquely preserved.
Translations and research
- No complete Western-language translation located.
- Paul Groner, “Tradition and Innovation: Eison’s Self-Ordinations and the Establishment of New Orders of Buddhist Practitioners,” in Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005), for the Kamakura precept-revival context.
- Hazama Jikō 硲慈弘, Nihon bukkyō no tenkai to sono kichō (Sanseidō, 1948), for the medieval Tendai precept revival.
Other points of interest
The work’s narrative of the “twenty-year interruption” of the kanjō-precept ceremony is historically interesting: it suggests that the Kurodani lineage’s distinctive ritual practice had lapsed by 1320s–1330s and was revived in the late 1340s by Yuiken’s teacher. The text records the renewal of this institutional tradition at a precise moment of late-Kamakura / Nanboku-chō religious-political reconstruction.