Jìngtǔ zōng jiànlì sījì 淨土宗建立私記
Personal Record on the Establishment of the Pure-Land School by 顯意 Ken’i (述)
About the work
A single-fascicle doctrinal supplement to Ken’i’s imperially-commissioned KR6t0341 Sentō sanjin-gi mondō-ki, composed by 顯意 Ken’i on receipt of follow-up imperial questions. The opening colophon-notice is precise: “Einin 3 / 11 / 21 = 1295-12-29, when the Three-Minds question-and-answer record was personally brought [to the Sentō], on the occasion of being received-in-audience further [questions] were submitted by imperial command” (永仁三年乙未十一月二十一日。三心問答記持參之時。隨勅問重立申). The closing colophon dates Ken’i’s response: “Einin 4 / 1 / 6 = 1296-02-09, the śramaṇa Ken’i, age 59 years” (永仁四年正月六日 沙門顯意生年五十九) — making the work a precisely-dated continuation of the 1295/1296 imperial-Pure-Land scholarship project.
Abstract
The opening choku-mon 勅問 (“imperial question”) raises a problem with Ken’i’s 1295 Three-Minds treatise: “The matter of the sincere mind: the gradually-emptied (漸空) doctrinal position has its tradition; let it be set out further…*” — i.e. the Sentō requests further elucidation on the relation between the sincere mind and the doctrine of progressive emptying of conceptual contents in deepening contemplation. Ken’i’s reply takes up the doctrinal question and, in the course of treating it, presents a comprehensive account of the establishment of Jōdoshū as a doctrinal school — its founding by Hōnen, its differentiation from the Way of Sages, its institutional crystallization in the Seizan-Chinzei branches, and its claim to status as the one-vehicle true-school (ichijō shinshū — Ken’i’s signature term, cf. KR6t0337).
The body addresses (i) the gradually-emptied doctrine in its Shàn-dǎo basis and Seizan-school reading; (ii) the relation between self-view (我見 ga-ken) and empty-view (空見 kū-ken) — concluding with the famous Nāgārjuna-attributed dictum from the Daśabhūmika-vibhāṣā: “Better that one should give rise to self-view as great as Mount Sumeru than that one should give rise to empty-view as small as a mustard-seed” (寧起我見如須彌山。不起空見如芥子計). This citation — which warns against the antinomian abuse of śūnyatā doctrine — is the doctrinal heart of the reply: Ken’i argues that the Three Minds must be understood as constructive religious dispositions, not as empty-view deconstructions of all mental contents; the sincere mind, the deep mind, and the aspiration-mind are substantial faith-dispositions, not nominalist nullities.
Date and circumstances. The two dated entries — Einin 3 / 11 / 21 (1295-12-29) for the receipt of the imperial question, and Einin 4 / 1 / 6 (1296-02-09) for the submission of the response — fix the composition to a six-week window in late 1295 / early 1296. The “59 years” self-statement is the principal evidence for Ken’i’s birth-year: counting back kazoe-doshi, this implies a birth-year of 1238 (or, allowing for the count being given at the start of the lunar year, 1237) — slightly earlier than the conventional 1239 sometimes given in modern reference works.
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 藤本淨彦, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988).
Links
- CBETA online
- Parent work: KR6t0341 (Ken’i, Sentō sanjin-gi mondō-ki) — the work to which this is a follow-up supplement
- Companion works: KR6t0337–KR6t0340