Nányì èrdào xuèmài túlùn 難易二道血脈圖論
Treatise with Blood-Lineage Diagrams of the Two Ways: the Difficult and the Easy by 顯意 Ken’i (記)
About the work
A single-fascicle illustrated doctrinal treatise by 顯意 Ken’i, presenting the Two Ways doctrine — the difficult way (難行道 nan-gyō-dō — i.e. the Way of Sages) and the easy way (易行道 i-gyō-dō — the Pure-Land Way) — through kechimyaku-zu 血脈圖 (“blood-lineage diagrams”). The two-ways classification originates with Nāgārjuna’s Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā 十住毘婆沙論 (Shí-zhù pípóshā lùn) ch. 9 Yi-xíng pin 易行品, was developed by Tánluán in the Wǎngshēng lùn-zhù 往生論註, and was canonized in Japan by 源空 Hōnen as the central doctrinal frame of Jōdo-shū. Ken’i’s contribution here is to render the doctrine visually through patriarchal-lineage diagrams (the surviving Taishō text indicates [IMAGE] [IMAGE] placeholders where the original woodblock diagrams were rendered).
Abstract
The opening lays out the doctrinal frame: the difficult way (the way of practitioner-effort, of monastic discipline, of Mahāyāna sūtra-and-treatise study) is contrasted with the easy way (the way of taking refuge in Amitābha’s Original Vow through nenbutsu recitation). Ken’i then traces the patriarchal lineage of each way: the difficult way through the Indian bodhisattva-mārga and the Chinese Way-of-Sages schools (Tiāntái, Huáyán, Chán, Mìzōng); the easy way through Nāgārjuna → Vasubandhu (Tiānqīn) → Bodhiruci → Tánluán → Dàochuò → Shàndǎo (the Pure-Land Five Patriarchs) → Hōnen → Shōkū → Ryūkū → Ken’i himself, the Seizan-Fukakusa-line kechimyaku through the eighth generation.
The closing summation: “[these] enable the practitioner to follow this practice, suddenly entering the Buddha-house and returning to the nature-ocean — to be known accordingly” (令學者依此修行。頓入佛家歸性海故應知). The text functions both as a doctrinal taxonomy and as a patriarchal-lineage credo, fixing Ken’i’s place in the canonical succession.
Diagrams. The original printed edition (and the Taishō text) preserves kechimyaku-zu — visual ancestor-charts of the patriarchal succession in both Ways, with the Easy Way diagram giving the Pure-Land lineage from Nāgārjuna to Ken’i and the Difficult Way diagram giving the parallel Way-of-Sages succession. These diagrams are foundational documents for the medieval Japanese-Buddhist kechimyaku-soshi (founding-lineage) tradition and are continuous with similar diagrams in the Shingon kanjō-kechimyaku and the Tendai honbu-kechimyaku genres.
Date. Ken’i’s mature scholarly period (post-1268 and pre-1304); no internal precise date. The kechimyaku-diagram genre developed in late-Kamakura Pure-Land specifically as part of the medieval kuden (oral-transmission) institutionalization, so a date in the 1280s–1290s is plausible.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. The Two-Ways doctrine in its medieval Japanese reception is treated in: Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002); Fujimoto Kiyohiko 藤本淨彦, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988); Inada Hiroen 稲田廣演 (ed.), Ken’i Shōnin zenshū (Jōdo-shū Seizan Fukakusa-ha Shūmu-sho, 2003); the kechimyaku-zu genre is treated in Mark Teeuwen and Fabio Rambelli (eds.), Buddhas and Kami in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).
Links
- CBETA online
- Companion works by same author: KR6t0337, KR6t0339–KR6t0341