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顯淨土眞實教行證文類

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Text ID
KR6t0352
Date
1224–1247
Dynasty
日本

Xiǎn jìngtǔ zhēnshí jiàoxíngzhèng wénlèi 顯淨土眞實教行證文類

A Topical Anthology of Passages Manifesting the True Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Realization of the Pure Land by 親鸞 Shinran (撰)

About the work

The magnum opus of 親鸞 Shinran (1173–1263) and the foundational doctrinal text of Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗 (Shin Buddhism). Six fascicles. Conventionally known by the abbreviated title Kyōgyōshinshō 教行信證 — “Teaching, Practice, Faith, Realization”. The traditional 立教開宗 Rikkyō kaishū (the “establishment-of-the-school” date) of Jōdo Shinshū is Gennin 1 / 1224, which marks the completion of the editio princeps draft of the Kyōgyōshinshō. Shinran continued to revise the text through his Hitachi and late-Kyoto periods (1224–c. 1247), so the final received recension is the product of two decades of authorial revision.

Abstract

The work’s full title — Manifesting-the-Pure-Land’s-True-Teaching-Practice-and-Realization, an Anthology of Passages — declares its methodology: it is an anthology (monrui 文類, “classified passages”), structured as a sequence of six chapters corresponding to the six theological-soteriological topics, each chapter consisting of cited passages from the canonical and patristic sources (the Three Pure Land Sūtras, the Wǎngshēng lùn of Vasubandhu, the commentaries of Tánluán, Dàochuò, and Shàndǎo, the works of 源空 Hōnen, and many others) selected and arranged to manifest (顯 kenji) Shinran’s signature doctrines. Shinran’s own voice enters only as the editorial-doctrinal arrangement of the citations, and in the prefatory and interjectional passages set off from the citations.

The six chapters:

  1. The True Teaching (顯眞實教 Ken-shinjitsu-kyō): the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra is the true teaching of the Pure Land — not the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha or the Contemplation Sūtra, both of which are expedient (upāya) teachings;
  2. The True Practice (顯眞實行 Ken-shinjitsu-gyō): the Name of Amitābha (Namo Amida Butsu) is the true practice — but Shinran reframes “practice” radically: it is not a practitioner’s act, but the Buddha’s gift to the practitioner. The nenbutsu is Buddha’s own self-naming in the practitioner’s mouth, not a practitioner-volitional recitation.
  3. The True Faith (顯眞實信 Ken-shinjitsu-shin): shinjin 信心 — the absolutely-bestowed Buddha-mind in the practitioner — is the true faith. This is the heart of Shinran’s doctrine. Shinjin is not the practitioner’s act of trust but the Buddha’s bestowal of a saving faith-consciousness. Shinran’s “three minds” doctrine (here developed at length) accordingly reads the Three Minds of the Guānjīng as a unitary Buddha-given faith-mind, not as three serial practitioner-acts.
  4. The True Realization (顯眞實證 Ken-shinjitsu-shō): rebirth in the Pure Land is realization-in-this-lifetime for the practitioner of shinjin — not a post-mortem attainment;
  5. The True Buddha-Land (顯眞佛土 Ken-shinbutsudo): the Pure Land is the fulfilled-body Buddha-land (報佛土 hōbutsudo) of Amitābha, not a phenomenal-physical western realm;
  6. The Transformation-Body Land (顯化身土 Ken-keshin-do): the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha and Contemplation Sūtra describe the transformation-body (應化身 ōge-shin) Buddha-land — an upāyic teaching for less developed practitioners — which must not be confused with the fulfilled-body land of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha.

The opening preface (“竊以。難思弘誓度難度海大船 …”) sets out the doctrinal frame in compressed parallel-prose. The closing preface — known as the Go-jo-mon 後序 (postface) — is one of the most important first-person documents in medieval Japanese religion: Shinran here gives an autobiographical account of his Hōnen-discipleship, the 1205 Senchakushū copy-event, his 1207 exile to Echigo (recorded with the famous Gutoku Shaku-shi Shinran self-designation: “the foolish-shorn-monk Śākya[muni’s] Shinran”), and the doctrinal evolution that led to the Kyōgyōshinshō. The Go-jo-mon is the primary source for Shinran’s own self-understanding as the senchaku tradition’s radicalized exponent.

Date. Conventional Jōdo Shinshū tradition fixes the Rikkyōkaishū (school-founding date) at Gennin 1 / 1224 on the basis of an early draft-completion. The currently-received text reflects approximately two decades of Shinran’s continued revision through to c. 1247 (his mid-70s). The earliest extant manuscript is the Sakamoto-bon 坂東本 — Shinran’s autograph manuscript at Higashi-Hongan-ji 東本願寺, preserved as a National Treasure.

Significance. The Kyōgyōshinshō is one of the three or four most consequential single works in the history of Japanese Buddhism (alongside Saichō’s Sange-gakushō-shiki, Kūkai’s Sokushinjōbutsugi, and Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō). Through it Shinran founded Jōdo Shinshū, which by the late-Sengoku period (16th century) under the leadership of Rennyo 蓮如 KR6t0379 had become the largest Buddhist denomination in Japan, with two principal branches (Higashi-Hongan-ji and Nishi-Hongan-ji) and millions of adherents through the modern period.

Translations and research

The Kyōgyōshinshō has been translated into English in full multiple times:

  • D. T. Suzuki (trans.), The Kyōgyōshinshō: The Collection of Passages Expounding the True Teaching, Living, Faith, and Realizing of the Pure Land (Eastern Buddhist Society, 1973) — the first complete English translation; idiosyncratic but historically pivotal.
  • Inagaki Hisao 稻垣久雄 (trans.), Kyōgyōshinshō: On Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Enlightenment (Numata Center, 2003 / BDK English Tripitaka 105-I) — the standard scholarly translation, with full apparatus.
  • Yoshifumi Ueda & Dennis Hirota (trans.), The True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way: A Translation of Shinran’s Kyōgyōshinshō, 4 vols. (Hongwanji Translation Center, 1983–90) — the Hongan-ji official translation.
  • Hisao Inagaki & Harold Stewart (trans.), in The Three Pure Land Sutras (BDK, 1995) — translates the Sūtra-citations.

Principal English-language monographs: Alfred Bloom, Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace (Univ. Arizona Press, 1965 / repr. 1968); James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū: Shin Buddhism in Medieval Japan (Indiana UP, 1989 / repr. Univ. Hawai’i Press, 2002); Dennis Hirota (ed.), Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World (SUNY, 2000); Mark L. Blum & Shin’ya Yasutomi (eds.), Rennyo and the Roots of Modern Japanese Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2006); Galen Amstutz, Interpreting Amida: History and Orientalism in the Study of Pure Land Buddhism (SUNY, 1997). The Japanese-language critical-edition literature is vast; foundational works include Akamatsu Toshihide 赤松俊秀, Shinran (Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1961); Hoshino Genpō 星野元豐, Shinran Shōnin-den no kenkyū 親鸞聖人傳の研究 (Hōzōkan, 1968); Sasaki Gesshō 佐々木月樵, Shinran zenshū 親鸞全集 (1916 onward). German: Hartmut Rotermund, Shinran (Cerf, 1986).

Other points of interest

The Kyōgyōshinshō opens with one of the most famous passages in Japanese religious literature, the parallel-prose preface beginning Hisoka ni omon-mireba (竊以) — “Quietly considering: the broad-vow that is hard to fathom is the great ship that ferries [us] across the hard-to-cross sea; the unobstructed light is the sun of wisdom that breaks the darkness of ignorance …” This jo preface, paired with the go-jo-mon postface, frames the entire work as a personal-testimonial offering and is the primary documentary source for Shinran’s spiritual self-understanding.

The text was preserved through the medieval period as a closely-guarded himaki (秘巻 — secret-scroll) of Hongan-ji, accessible only to the most senior disciples. Its public dissemination begins with Rennyo’s late-15th-century revival; full critical text-and-translation work is a phenomenon of the late-19th and 20th centuries.

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