Chè xuǎnzé běnyuàn niànfó jí 徹選擇本願念佛集
Penetrating [Commentary on] the Collection on the Selection of the Original Vow of Nenbutsu by 辨阿 Benchō (撰)
About the work
A two-fascicle exegetical commentary on Hōnen’s Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū KR6t0314, composed at Zendō-ji 善導寺 in Chikugo by Hōnen’s principal Kyūshū-based disciple 辨阿 Benchō (1162–1238), the second patriarch (二祖) of the Chinzei 鎮西 line of Jōdoshū. The colophon dates the work to Katei 3 / 6 / 25 (lit. the rains-retreat-nenbutsu period) = 1237-07-19, Benchō then “an eighty-year-old man on the verge of decrepitude” (八旬窮老 — actually 76 by Western count), making it the last major doctrinal work of his life — completed less than nine months before his death in Ryakunin 1 / 2 / 29 = 1238-04-15.
Abstract
The Tetsu senchaku is structured as a chapter-by-chapter commentary mirroring the sixteen sections (篇 / 章門) of Hōnen’s Senchakushū, glossing each of the cardinal doctrinal moves: the Two-Gates Doctrine (聖道淨土二門), the Selection of nenbutsu by Amitābha’s Original Vow, the priority of Calling-the-Name (稱名) over Contemplation, the rejection of the miscellaneous practices (雜行), and the universal accessibility of nenbutsu across all moral and intellectual conditions. The closing colophon makes explicit Benchō’s intellectual genealogy: the work reproduces, as a written record, the oral teaching that Benchō received from Hōnen at Yoshimizu 吉水 over a period of seven years, written down now as a testamentary deposit “to bequeath to future worthies” (留贈後賢).
The text occupies a doctrinally pivotal position in the Chinzei line’s transmission of Hōnen’s thought: it is the principal source through which Benchō’s reading of the Senchakushū was passed to his disciple 良忠 Ryōchū, whose own Senchaku denkō ketsugi-shō KR6t0316 in turn formalised the Chinzei interpretation as orthodox Jōdoshū. Benchō here reads Hōnen’s senju nenbutsu doctrine in a comparatively moderate, non-exclusivist direction (sometimes called jo-jo 助助 or suketsuke — “the auxiliary disciplines aiding nenbutsu”), maintaining the priority of nenbutsu but admitting the value of subsidiary practices including the precepts — a position that distinguished the Chinzei line from the more exclusivist ichinen-gi 一念義 (Kōsai 幸西) and the tariki-ichigi (Shinran’s Jōdoshinshū) readings, and which became the doctrinal ground for the institutional Edo-period Jōdoshū.
The textual transmission has been continuous since 1237; the work was a Chinzei-line school text from the medieval period and circulated widely in early Edo-period printings before its critical inclusion in Taishō vol. 83, no. 2609.
Translations and research
No complete Western-language translation has been located. The text is discussed in: Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism: A Study and Translation of Gyōnen’s Jōdo Hōmon Genrushō (Oxford UP, 2002), pp. 90–108 (Benchō and the Chinzei line); James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (Indiana UP, 1989); Tamura Enchō 田村圓澄, Hōnen-shōnin den no kenkyū 法然上人傳の研究 (Hōzōkan, 1956 / repr. 1972); Ishii Kyōdō 石井教道, Senchaku-shū zenkō 選擇集全講 (Heirakuji Shoten, 1959); Jōdo-shū zensho 浄土宗全書 vols. 7–8 (Sankibō, 1907–14) reprints earlier woodblock editions and commentaries.
Links
- CBETA online
- Parent text: KR6t0314 (Hōnen, Senchaku hongan nenbutsu shū)
- Chinzei-line continuation: KR6t0316 (Ryōchū, Senchaku denkō ketsugi-shō)