Shíyí hēigǔ shàngrén yǔdēng lù 拾遺黒谷上人語燈録
Gleanings to the Record of the Lamp of Words of the Saint of Kurodani by 源空 Hōnen, compiled by 了惠 Ryōe Dōkō (輯)
About the work
The three-fascicle supplement (拾遺 shūi, “gleanings”) to KR6t0317, collecting additional writings by 源空 Hōnen that came to the compiler 了惠 Ryōe Dōkō after the main Gotōroku was completed in 1274–75, or that did not fit the main Gotōroku’s seventeen-chapter doctrinal scheme. Internal evidence (cross-references to KR6t0317) places the supplement shortly after the main work, c. 1275–80. The opening line of fascicle 1 styles the editor “Enkin-shamon Ryōe” 厭欣沙門了惠 — “the yearning-for-rebirth-loathing-the-saha śramaṇa Ryōe” — using the technical Pure-Land aspirational title.
Abstract
The structural arrangement is by genre: upper fascicle, Sinitic-language pieces (漢語); middle and lower fascicles, vernacular-Japanese pieces (和語) — though as in the parent Gotōroku only the Sinitic items are fully preserved in the Taishō text. Notable items include:
- Sanmai-hottoku-ki 三昧發得記 (with appended Mukan-shōsō-ki 夢感聖相記) — Hōnen’s first-person record of his samādhi-experiences from Kenkyū 9 / 1198 (the same year he composed the Senchakushū), describing the appearance of the jewel-ground (瑠璃地), the bejewelled trees, and other Pure-Land visions during seven-day bestu-ji nenbutsu sessions. This is the most important first-person spiritual document of Hōnen’s mature career, fixing his own report of the kanjō visions that authenticated his exclusive-nenbutsu doctrine.
- Jōdo zuibun-ki 淨土隨聞記 (with appended Rinjū-shōzui-ki 臨終祥瑞記) — recorded teachings on the deathbed, rinjūshōnen (final-moment nenbutsu) practice, and the shōzui auspicious-omens at the death of nenbutsu practitioners.
- Tō-hakuriku-mon-sho 答博陸問書 — Hōnen’s responses to questions from the Kanpaku 博陸 = Kujō Kanezane 九条兼実 (1149–1207, Hōnen’s principal lay patron and the patron of the Senchakushū); this is a major early-Pure-Land doctrinal correspondence.
The Sanmai-hottoku-ki is particularly valuable as historical documentation: it records Hōnen at age sixty-six (建久九年 = 1198) in the period immediately preceding the composition of the Senchakushū, performing seven-day betsuji nenbutsu sessions and reporting the appearance of the Pure-Land vision-marks (the jewel-ground, the blue-and-red jewelled trees, the amita light). The text is signed by Hōnen himself (per Ryōe Dōkō’s transmission) and represents his own authentication-experience of the nenbutsu path.
Translations and research
The Sanmai-hottoku-ki has been translated into English several times in studies of Hōnen, most notably in: Sōhō Machida, Renegade Monk: Hōnen and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (Univ. California Press, 1999); Jōji Atone and Yōko Hayashi (trans.), The Promise of Amida Buddha: Hōnen’s Path to Bliss (Wisdom, 2011); Senchakushū English Translation Project, Hōnen’s Senchakushū (Univ. Hawai’i Press, 1998), introductory matter. The Tō-hakuriku-mon correspondence is treated in James L. Ford, Jōkei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan (Oxford UP, 2006), and in the magisterial Tamura Enchō 田村圓澄, Hōnen-shōnin den no kenkyū 法然上人傳の研究 (Hōzōkan, 1956); critical text in Ishii Kyōdō 石井教道 (ed.), Shōwa shinshū Hōnen-shōnin zenshū 昭和新修法然上人全集 (Heirakuji Shoten, 1955).
Other points of interest
The Sanmai-hottoku-ki records Hōnen’s vision-experiences in extraordinary detail and provides the empirical core of Hōnen’s senju-nenbutsu doctrine. The auto-biographical character of the document (rare for a medieval Japanese Buddhist patriarch) and the specificity of the dated entries (正月朔日 = 1198-01-01 onward; 七月下旬 = late seventh month, etc.) have made it indispensable for modern Hōnen-scholarship — though some twentieth-century critics have read it as a post-Hōnen Chinzei-line apologetic composition rather than as a genuine Hōnen autobiograph, on grounds of its strikingly vision-oriented religious psychology (which contrasts with the senju doctrine’s apparent indifference to such kanjō).
Links
- CBETA online
- Parent collection: KR6t0317 (Kurodani Shōnin Gotōroku)
- Subject: 源空 Hōnen