Rùchū èrmén jìsòng 入出二門偈頌
Verses on the Two Gates of Entering and Departing by 親鸞 Shinran (作)
About the work
A single-fascicle verse-and-prose composition by 親鸞 Shinran (self-designation Gutoku Shaku Shinran) treating the doctrine of the Two Gates (二門 ni-mon) drawn from Vasubandhu’s Wǎng-shēng lùn 往生論 (Sanskrit: Sukhāvatī-vyūhopadeśa): the entering gate (入門 nyū-mon, the practitioner’s taking refuge in the Pure Land) and the departing gate (出門 shutsu-mon, the bodhisattva-style returning into the saha world to assist others). The two gates frame the entire bodhisattva-Pure-Land soteriology, with the entering gate providing the ōso-ekō (往相廻向 vow-direction merit-transfer to one’s own rebirth) and the departing gate providing the gensō-ekō (還相廻向 return-direction merit-transfer to other-sentient-beings).
Abstract
The opening notice cites the canonical source: “The Wúliángshòu jīng lùn 無量壽經論 one fascicle: translated by the YuánWèi Tiānzhú Sānzàng Bodhiruci 元魏天竺三藏菩提留支” — i.e. Vasubandhu’s Wǎngshēng lùn in Bodhiruci’s 6th-century Chinese translation (T1524), the foundational treatise on Pure-Land doctrinal structure. Shinran’s work then proceeds through extensive verse-and-prose treatment of the two-gates schema, drawing on both Vasubandhu and on Tánluán’s Wǎngshēng lùnzhù (T1819, the magisterial Chinese commentary on the Wǎngshēng lùn) which Shinran considered foundational.
The verses develop the two-gates doctrine into Shinran’s signature nishu-ekō (二種廻向 — the two-fold merit-transfer) scheme, which is then more fully treated in KR6t0363 Nyorai nishu-ekō-mon: that Amitābha bestows on the practitioner both the merit-transfer toward the practitioner’s own rebirth (ōsoekō) and the merit-transfer toward the practitioner’s return-into-the-saha-world-to-save-others (gensōekō). Both transfers come from Amitābha — neither from the practitioner — making the bodhisattva-vocation of the practitioner itself a Buddha-bestowed gift.
Date. Shinran’s mature post-Kyōgyōshinshō period; no internal precise date. A composition in the late Hitachi or early late-Kyoto period (c. 1230s–1250s) is plausible.
Translations and research
English translation: in Hongwanji Translation Series, The Collected Works of Shinran (Hongwanji-ha, 1997), with critical introduction; Inagaki Hisao (trans.), Nyū-shutsu nimon ge: Verses on the Two Gates of Entering and Departing (Hongan-ji Office of International Affairs, 1989). Treated in Hisao Inagaki, Nāgārjuna’s Discourse on the Ten Stages: A Study and Translation (Ryukoku Univ., 1998), ch. on the Wǎng-shēng lùn tradition; Hee-Sung Keel, Understanding Shinran: A Dialogical Approach (Asian Humanities Press, 1995); critical text in Shinran Shōnin zenshū 親鸞聖人全集 (Hongan-ji, 1985).
Links
- CBETA online
- Companion: KR6t0363 (Shinran, Nyorai nishu-ekō-mon — the two-fold merit-transfer essay)
- Doctrinal source: Vasubandhu’s Wǎngshēng lùn (T1524)
- All Shinran’s works: KR6t0352–KR6t0368