Zhēntiáo shàngrén fǎyǔ 眞迢上人法語
Dharma-Discourse of Master Shinchō
(recorded by his disciples; teaching of 眞迢)
About the work
A single-fascicle disciple-record of vernacular Japanese Dharma-discourse by Shinchō 眞迢, senior disciple of Shinsei 眞盛 (眞盛) in the Tendai Shinsei-shū lineage at Saikyō-ji 西教寺. The work preserves Shinchō’s doctrinal-instructional teaching on the integration of fudan-nenbutsu with the Tendai enmyō (perfect-interpenetration) doctrinal framework.
Abstract
Authorship and recording. The work is a record of Shinchō’s oral teaching, gathered by his disciples; the recorder is not named. The catalog meta records no author/recorder; the Taishō edition labels the work as Shinchō shōnin hōgo.
Date. Within Shinchō’s career, conventionally 16th century.
Content. The work opens with a question-and-answer drawn from Shinchō’s Pòxié xiǎnzhèng jì 破邪顯正記 (“Record of Smashing-the-Heterodox and Manifesting-the-Orthodox”), beginning at the third page:
“Question. The practitioner of the enkyō round-and-sudden teaching — in walking, standing, sitting, and lying, his mind clears like still water in the principle of true-suchness; in his every moment of dropped-thought he conveys his thought to the Pure-Light root-territory. Why, then, the Taimitsu scholars’ expectation of the phenomenally-existing Sukhāvatī world? — Answer. In sum, this Sahā-realm of sentient beings is what they aspire to, and the lands…”
The discourse proceeds through the harmonization of two apparently-contrary positions:
- The principial / round-and-sudden position (理 / 圓頓) — Sukhāvatī as non-distant from this present mind.
- The phenomenally-existent position (事) — Sukhāvatī as an actual, separate, Western paradise.
Shinchō’s resolution: the non-duality of the two — that Sukhāvatī is both (a) the practitioner’s present-moment realisation in fudan nenbutsu, and (b) the actual phenomenal land into which one is reborn at death — and that the apparent contradiction dissolves in the Tendai enmyō integration.
Significance. The work documents the doctrinal articulation of the second-generation Shinsei-shū, by Shinsei’s senior disciples. It is part of the Saikyō-ji hōgo corpus collected at KR6t0122–KR6t0124 alongside Shinsei’s own discourses (KR6t0120–KR6t0121).
Translations and research
- No Western-language translation located.
- Jacqueline I. Stone, Right Thoughts at the Last Moment (Hawaii, 2016) — for the broader Tendai-Pure-Land synthesis context.
- Saikyō-ji head-temple sources.