Xīshān kǒujué chuánmì chāo 西山口決傳密鈔
Notes Transmitting the Secret of the Seizan-line Oral-Transmission by 淨音 Jōon (記)
About the work
A single-fascicle digest of Seizan-line oral-transmissions (口決 kuketsu) on key doctrinal topics, by 淨音 Jōon, the founder of the Saidani / Senjō-ji sub-line. The colophon signature gives Jōon’s institutional title as “Saidani Jōon” 西谷淨音 — Jōon of the Western Valley sub-line. The work is the principal documentary witness to the oral-transmission tradition (kuden / kuketsu) within the Seizan school, which transmitted Shōkū’s doctrinal positions teacher-to-disciple in a manner that resisted full scholastic codification.
Abstract
The text is organized as a numbered table-of-contents (目録 mokuroku) followed by article-by-article expositions, each preserving the kuden on a specific doctrinal-practical topic. The opening articles are:
- The two-vow oral-transmission: general vow and specific vow of Amitābha (就彌陀總願別願二願口決) — i.e. the distinction between the universal general vow of all Buddhas and the specific forty-eight vows of Amitābha;
- The general vow before-and-after the specific vow (別願已前已後總願口決) — the chronology of the Dharmākara bodhisattva’s pre-Buddhic vow-period;
- The kihō ichinyo doctrine (practitioner-and-dharma identical);
- The ichinen go-jō doctrine (a single moment of nenbutsu accomplishes the karma of rebirth);
- The raigō welcoming-descent and the yōjin (mental disposition) of the practitioner at the moment of death;
- Further articles on jōzen / sanzen, anjin / kigyō, and the Three Minds.
The text’s distinctive feature is its self-conscious oral-transmission framing: each topic is presented as preserving the kuketsu received by Jōon from Shōkū (and through Shōkū from Hōnen), with explicit acknowledgement that these are not free scholastic compositions but the authoritative preservation of an oral-line teaching. This framing makes the Denmitsu-shō the principal documentary source for the doctrinal positions of the Saidani-ryū specifically, as distinct from the Sanjō-ke, Saga-ke, and Fukakusa-ke positions of the other Seizan sub-lines.
Date. Jōon’s Saidani master period, c. 1247–1271; the text post-dates Shōkū’s death (1247) since it preserves Shōkū’s transmissions, but no precise internal date is given.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. Discussed in: Fujimoto Kiyohiko 藤本淨彦, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988); Itō Yuishin 伊藤唯眞, Jōdo-shū no seiritsu to tenkai (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1981); critical text in Seizan zensho (1928–35).