Jìngtǔ kǒujué jí 淨土口決集
Collection of Oral-Decisions on the Pure Land (anon., Seizan-school kuden compendium)
About the work
A single-fascicle anonymous compendium of Seizan-line oral-transmissions (口決 kuketsu — “oral-decisions”), organized as a sequence of question-and-answer doctrinal articles in vernacular-Japanese-mixed (wakan konkō) prose. The genre — kuketsu-shū 口決集 — is a medieval Japanese-Buddhist literary form for preserving kuden (oral-transmission) teachings in writing while signaling their authority as oral preservations rather than free scholastic compositions; the form was widely used in Seizan-school, Tendai, and Shingon contexts from the late Kamakura through the Muromachi periods.
Abstract
The opening question illustrates the method and the doctrinal terrain: “Question: as to bodhi-mind (菩提心): is there a position of “discarding” the bodhi-mind, a position of “embracing” the bodhi-mind, a position of “practising” the bodhi-mind? Answer: it is indeed so. Therefore the bodhi-mind of the fourteen practice-rows: what is called “the bodhi-mind of the Pure Land” is the Buddha-fruit — during the fruit-attainment, it is called the bodhi-mind of the Pure Land…” (問云。菩提心モ廢スル位ノ菩提。攝スル位ノ菩提。行スル位ノ菩提可有哉 / 答。爾也 …).
The articles cover the standard Seizan-school doctrinal-practical terrain — the Three Minds, the bodhi-mind in its Pure-Land transposition, the kihō ichinyo and ichinen go-jō doctrines, the raigō welcoming-descent, the deathbed protocols, the anjin/kigyō distinction — but in each case framing the answer as the transmitted oral position of the school rather than the author’s own scholastic argument. This kuketsu framing is the work’s distinctive feature: it is a documentary record of school-line teaching rather than a free-standing doctrinal treatise.
Author. Anonymous. The Seizan-school orientation is clear from the doctrinal positions taken (ichinen go-jō, kihō ichinyo, etc.); the precise sub-line (Senjō-ji / Saidani vs. Fukakusa vs. Sanjō-ke vs. Saga-ke) cannot be confidently identified from internal evidence.
Date. Composition undatable from internal evidence; a late-Kamakura to Muromachi date is most plausible on stylistic and doctrinal grounds.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. Discussed in: Fujimoto Kiyohiko 藤本淨彦, Seizan jōdokyō no kenkyū (Hōzōkan, 1988); critical text in Seizan zensho (1928–35). On the kuketsu-shū genre across medieval Japanese Buddhism, see Lucia Dolce and Mark Teeuwen (eds.), Buddhism and Shintō in Japan: Honji Suijaku as a Combinatory Paradigm (Brill, 2008).
Links
- CBETA online
- Cf. companion Seizan-school kuketsu: KR6t0334 (Jōon, Seizan kuketsu denmitsu-shō)