Lìshí zuòfǎ 例時作法
The Customary-Time Liturgical Procedure
(anonymous, Japanese Tendai)
About the work
A single-fascicle daily-recitation liturgical handbook of the Japanese Tendai tradition — the Reiji sahō — providing the procedural-textual content for the reiji 例時 (“customary times,” i.e., the regular daily hours) of monastic recitation. Together with KR6t0117 Fǎhuá chànfǎ it constitutes the principal Hiei-zan daily-liturgical pair of the medieval and modern Tendai institutional tradition.
Abstract
Authorship. Anonymous. The catalog meta and Taishō edition record no author. The liturgical tradition is institutional rather than individual.
Date. The Japanese-Tendai Reiji sahō tradition develops from Saichō onwards, but the specific recension in Taishō is conventionally dated to the Heian-to-Kamakura period.
Content. The text opens with the four-line gātha of preliminary repentance:
“The many wrongdoings, like frost and dew — the sun of wisdom can dissolve and dispel them. Therefore one should, with utmost mind, confess [the wrongdoings] of the six-sense roots.” 衆罪如霜露／慧日能消除／是故應至心／懺悔六情根
Followed by the procedural rubric: “First, three reverences” 先三禮 — performed in unison (同音) by the assembled monks. The body of the work proceeds through the standard reiji liturgical sequence: (1) three reverences and refuges; (2) the principal Amitābha-name recitation (the reiji-nenbutsu 例時念佛 — Saichō’s foundational kemmitsu synthesis of Lotus-Pure-Land devotion); (3) the Six-Time / Five-Time mindfulness formulas; (4) the Six-Confession formulas; (5) dedication and closing.
The work is the liturgical complement to the Hokke-senbō (the Lotus-repentance liturgy of KR6t0117): where the Hokke-senbō is the principal Lotus-repentance daily-rite, the Reiji sahō covers the night-and-morning customary recitations and the nenbutsu cycle that constitute the rest of the daily monastic-liturgical schedule. The Saichō-foundational synthesis of Lotus / nenbutsu / kanjō practice — the kemmitsu enki 圓密圓戒 program of integrated Tendai-esoteric-Pure-Land discipline — is preserved precisely in this paired daily-liturgical structure.
Significance. The Reiji sahō is the canonical Hiei-zan daily-liturgical procedural text, foundational for the medieval and modern institutional Tendai life. The pairing of Lotus-repentance with nenbutsu-recitation in the daily liturgy is the distinctive Hiei-zan institutional formula that produced the doctrinal context out of which both the Pure-Land-school separation (Hōnen 法然, 1133–1212; Shinran 親鸞, 1173–1263) and the Lotus-school separation (Nichiren 日蓮, 1222–1282) emerged in the early Kamakura period.
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation located.
- Paul Groner, Saichō: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School (Hawaii, 2000) — for the institutional-liturgical context of the early Tendai daily-liturgy.
- Stone, Jacqueline I., Right Thoughts at the Last Moment: Buddhism and Deathbed Practices in Early Medieval Japan (Hawaii, 2016) — extensively discusses Reiji and related daily-liturgical structures.
Links
- CBETA: T77n2418
- Liturgical companion: KR6t0117 Fǎhuá chànfǎ.