Yúyào chāo 愚要鈔
Notes on the Essentials [Composed for] the Foolish by 明秀 Meishū (撰)
About the work
A three-fascicle vernacular-Japanese Pure-Land catechetical compendium by Meishū 明秀, shamon of Nankii Sōji-ji 南紀總持寺 — the Chinzei-line monastery in Kii province. The title’s gu 愚 (“foolish”) is a self-deprecatory rhetorical device (the work is “for the foolish — i.e. for unschooled lay practitioners”), and signals the work’s distinctive feature: comprehensive Pure-Land doctrinal exposition presented in plain vernacular Japanese rather than in the literary Chinese of scholastic Chinzei tradition. The Edo-period printer’s preface (Bunsei 2 / 6 / 10 = 1819-07-31) characterizes the work as “the true composition of our school’s founder, the great master; the words are plain and the meaning deeply prolonged; the self-witness of one [Chinzei] family; the wondrous principle of the three levels: in this is the good-and-beautiful exhausted” (淨土愚要鈔三卷者。吾開山大和尚眞撰。文字平易。意味深長。一家己證。三重妙旨。善美斯盡).
Abstract
The text proceeds through extensive question-and-answer treatments of the central Pure-Land doctrines. The opening question sets the format: “Question: How did Amitābha establish his Original Vow for the rebirth of sentient beings, and how did he accomplish it? Answer: The Buddha Amitābha, in his former existence as the bhikṣu Dharmākara, established forty-eight vows. Among these forty-eight vows, the eighteenth vow is the King-of-Vows of his original-vow…” (問。今ノ阿彌陀佛 … 殊ニ第十八ノ願ガ王本願ナリ).
Meishū then sets out the canonical text of the eighteenth vow (設我得佛。十方衆生。至心信樂。欲生我國。乃至十念。若不生者。不取正覺) — Amitābha’s foundational senchaku-hongan vow — in classical Chinese followed by extensive vernacular-Japanese gloss. The body of the work expands through the standard Chinzei-line doctrinal-practical scheme:
- The Original Vow (本願 hongan) and its eighteenth-vow specification;
- The single-mind (一心 isshin) — extensively contrasted with the parallel “single-mind” doctrines of the eight Way-of-Sages schools: Kegon (the Three Realms = Mind-Only), Tendai (the Three Truths = One Principle), Shingon (the Akṣara A-no-fushō), Sanron (the Eight-Negations Middle Way), Hossō (the Five-Layer Mere-Consciousness), Zen (the Direct-Pointing Single-Transmission) — and shown to differ from all of these in being the single-mind of taking refuge in Amitābha’s vow (not a contemplative single-mind);
- The threefold marvellous principle (三重妙旨 — alluded to in the printer’s preface): the three-level doctrinal scheme distinctive to Meishū’s Chinzei sub-line, integrating anjin, kigyō, and kōjō (settled-mind, arising-practice, and merit-transfer) into a unified salvific economy.
The work was the principal catechetical textbook of the Sōji-ji-line of Chinzei in Kii and adjacent provinces, and was widely copied in manuscript through the 16th and 17th centuries before its first woodblock printing in Hōei 4 / 1707 and a re-engraved edition in Bunsei 2 / 1819.
Date. Meishū’s composition-period cannot be precisely fixed; the earliest extant manuscript-transmission is from Tenbun 10 / 1541 (a copy made at Yoshimine-Zendō-ji 普光山善導寺 in Kōzuke province), giving a firm terminus ante quem. A composition in the late-Muromachi period (15th–early 16th c.) is most plausible.
Translations and research
No Western-language translation has been located. The work is discussed briefly in: Itō Yuishin 伊藤唯眞, Jōdo-shū no seiritsu to tenkai (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1981); Ōhashi Shunnō 大橋俊雄, Jōdo-shū no kyōdan-shi (Daizō Shuppan, 1972); critical text in Jōdo-shū zensho 浄土宗全書 vol. 14.