Jìngtǔ zōng yàojí 淨土宗要集
Compendium of the Essentials of the Pure-Land School (anon., Seizan-Fukakusa-ha doctrinal compendium)
About the work
A three-fascicle doctrinal compendium transmitted in the Seizan-Fukakusa branch (西山流深草派 Seizan-ryū Fukakusa-ha) of Jōdoshū. The opening table-of-contents labels the work explicitly Seizan-ryū 西山流, and the closing colophon — dated Jōkyō 3 / 龍集丙寅 / 仲春十九日 = 1686-04-12 — identifies the editor as Gyōkū 行空, then incumbent abbot of Enpuku-ji 圓福寺 (the head temple of the Seizan-Fukakusa branch). Gyōkū’s colophon explicitly states that he was preparing the work for woodblock printing on the basis of an older manuscript brought by his disciples: “recently the disciples of my school sought to engrave this and publish it to the world; they came to me with the old manuscript and asked me to verify and correct it; I therefore perused it several times in detail, found that there were many lacunae and accretions in the text and many errors in the reading-marks, and finally added and excised passages to fulfil their wish” — making the 1686 edition the critical recension of an underlying medieval compendium of unknown precise composition-date.
Abstract
The work is structured as a doctrinal compendium (要集 yōshū — “essentials-collection”) covering:
- Fascicle 1, doctrinal taxonomy (教相 kyōsō): the doctrinal foundation of Jōdoshū — including the Seizan-ryū classification of the Buddha’s teachings, the distinction between Way of Sages and Pure-Land Way, and the proper definition of self-power (自力 jiriki) within the Pure-Land schema (specifically: whether exclusive name-recitation should still be called self-power, addressed as the second article — “捨聖道諸行一向專稱名號。猶可有名自力事”);
- Fascicle 2, practice taxonomy: the actual disciplines of Pure-Land practitioners — jōzen / sanzen, the Three Minds, the Four Cultivations, the betsuji retreats;
- Fascicle 3, soteriology: the raigō welcoming-descent, the Nine Grades, the deathbed protocols, and the Seizan-Fukakusa distinctive doctrines.
The work is one of the principal medieval Seizan-Fukakusa documents, transmitting the doctrinal-practical scholasticism of the Ryūkū-line 立空流 (Seizan-Fukakusa sub-line, founded by Ryūkū 立空 = Saiō 西翁, d. c. 1257). Gyōkū’s 1686 critical edition is the source-text of the Taishō.
Date. The underlying composition is undatable from internal evidence beyond post-Shōkū (1247) and pre-Gyōkū (1686). A late-13th to early-14th-c. date is most likely on doctrinal-stylistic grounds.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. The Seizan-Fukakusa branch is treated 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) and Jōdo-shū zensho vol. 9.
Links
- CBETA online
- Cf. parent Seizan tradition: KR6t0326–KR6t0332 (Shōkū)