Xiāndòng sānxīn yì wèndá jì 仙洞三心義問答記
Record of the Question-and-Answer on the Meaning of the Three Minds, [Submitted to] the Retired-Emperor’s Palace by 顯意 Ken’i (奉勅錄)
About the work
A single-fascicle imperially-commissioned doctrinal treatise by 顯意 Ken’i, composed in response to questions submitted from the Sentō 仙洞 (the “Hermit-Cave” — a respectful designation for the retired-emperor’s palace) on the doctrine of the Three Minds (三心 sanjin) — the principal Pure-Land mental-disposition doctrine drawn from the Guānjīng. The colophon signature explicitly identifies the work as prepared on imperial command (奉 勅錄 hō-choku roku), giving it the highest documentary status of any of Ken’i’s writings. The compilation-colophon dates the work precisely: Einin 4 / 6 / 12 = 1296-07-13, at the Reizan Shōju-in 靈山勝壽院 sub-cloister of Higashiyama, copied from Ken’i’s autograph manuscript.
Abstract
The opening preface, in elaborate parallel-prose, sets out the doctrinal frame: “The Buddha-dharma is deep and broad — the great chasm cannot match it; the supreme way is high and great — the round-canopy [of heaven] cannot cover it. Of the gradual and sudden teachings, of the doctrines of emptiness and being — each accords with capacity-and-occasion, mutually contesting between the provisional and the real. Beyond the gates of the eighty-thousand [scriptures], there is this one direct path [of Pure-Land]: the Buddha’s wisdom is its [foundational] schoolroot, the [Buddha’s] vow-power is its work-effort, faith-and-understanding arise in the truth-mind, practice-action is conveyed in exclusive-cultivation; one moment is already right-mindfulness, attaining-rebirth is non-rebirth…” (伏惟。佛法深廣 … 一念既正念。得生即無生).
The body of the text addresses the doctrine of the Three Minds — shijōshin 至誠心 (sincere mind), jinshin 深心 (deep mind, = shinjin faith), and ekō-hotsugan-shin 廻向發願心 (mind aspiring-to-rebirth-by-merit-transfer) — drawn from the Guānjīng and codified in Shàndǎo’s Guānjīng shū. The Seizan-line reading (following Shōkū) maintains that the three minds are a single unified faith-mind (一心 isshin), not three distinct mental factors operating in serial order. Ken’i, on imperial commission, formalizes this reading for the Sentō — i.e. for the cloistered emperor (probably Go-Fukakusa-in 後深草院, r. 1246–1259, cloistered 1259–1304, who died in 1304 — making him a likely interlocutor for Ken’i’s 1296 commission).
Date and circumstances. The closing colophon-block gives a detailed transmission-record: “[the Sentō command was] communicated through the Sama-no-kami Tameyada Ason 為忠朝臣; on the 21st [day of the month] [the text] was personally brought and presented; received by direct imperial-messenger, without an intervening secretary. Einin 4 / 6 / 12 = 1296-07-13, at the Reizan Shōju-in thatched-hut, copied from the Shōnin [Ken’i]‘s own autograph original” (…永仁四年六月十二日。於靈山勝壽院草菴。以彼上人自筆正本書寫畢). The text is therefore a dated, imperially-commissioned, original-autograph-derived document of the first order — among the most authoritative documents of late-Kamakura Pure-Land scholasticism.
Significance. The work is the principal documentary witness to Pure-Land doctrine in the retired-imperial court of late-Kamakura Japan, and shows Ken’i operating at the highest level of court-Buddhist intellectual life. The Three-Minds doctrine — central to Pure-Land soteriology — was contested between the Chinzei (which read the three minds as serially distinct) and the Seizan (which read them as unified); Ken’i’s imperial commission codifies the Seizan reading as the authoritative position for the cloistered emperor’s religious instruction.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. Treated in: Inada Hiroen 稲田廣演 (ed.), Ken’i Shōnin zenshū (Jōdo-shū Seizan Fukakusa-ha Shūmu-sho, 2003); Fujimoto Kiyohiko, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988); the Three-Minds doctrine across Pure-Land schools is treated in James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (Indiana UP, 1989), and Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002).
Links
- CBETA online
- Companion works by same author: KR6t0337–KR6t0340