唯信鈔文意

Wéixìn chāo wényì 唯信鈔文意

The Meaning of the Passages in [Seikaku’s] Yui-shin-shō by 親鸞 Shinran (撰)

About the work

A single-fascicle vernacular-Japanese commentary by 親鸞 Shinran on the Yui-shin-shō 唯信抄 KR6t0386 of 聖覺 Seikaku (1167–1235) — the central early-Pure-Land devotional treatise on faith-alone (唯信 yui-shin). Conventionally dated to Kōgen 2 / 1257, contemporary with KR6t0367 Ichi-nen ta-nen mon’i. The Taishō presents the work in two recensions: A (the present 2658A) and B (the variant KR6t0369).

Abstract

The opening gloss illustrates the vernacular-Japanese method: “The term Yui-shin-shō means: ‘Yui’ means ‘only this one thing’; it dislikes the having-of-two-in-a-row…” (唯信抄トイフハ。唯ハタタコノコトヒトツトイフ。フタツナラフコトヲキラフコ …). Shinran proceeds through each phrase of Seikaku’s text with a vernacular-Japanese paraphrase-and-extension, drawing out the Shinshū-distinctive doctrinal implications.

The work is doctrinally significant for the transmission-chain Hōnen → Seikaku → Shinran: Seikaku was a senior fellow-disciple of Shinran under 源空 Hōnen, and his Yui-shin-shō (composed Kenpō 1 / 1213) was one of the most widely-circulated early-Kamakura Pure-Land devotional texts. Shinran himself copied the Yui-shin-shō repeatedly (the Hongan-ji preserves multiple autograph Shinran-copies) and recommended it to his disciples as the principal devotional companion to his own scholastic Kyōgyōshinshō. The Yui-shin-shō mon’i is thus the Shinshū canonical reading of Seikaku — placing Seikaku, alongside Hōnen, in the doctrinal genealogy of Jōdo Shinshū as a de facto additional patriarch.

The doctrinal substance:

1. The yui-shin (“only-faith”) doctrine of Seikaku is read as anticipating Shinran’s shinjin (faith) doctrine, with yui-shin understood as the Buddha-given absolute-grace faith-consciousness;
2. The various nenbutsu-practices Seikaku enumerates (recitation, contemplation, the Three Minds, the Four Cultivations) are reinterpreted as expressions of yui-shin rather than as practitioner-volitional disciplines;
3. The deathbed doctrines of Seikaku’s text are read in light of Shinran’s ichinen go-jō doctrine that a single moment of shinjin already accomplishes the karma of rebirth — making the deathbed moment a recognition of an already-accomplished gift, not a final salvific act.

Date. Conventionally Kōgen 2 / 1257, Shinran age 84. The text falls in his late-Kyoto period along with the other late vernacular-essays KR6t0367 and KR6t0368.

Translations and research

English translation: Yoshifumi Ueda & Dennis Hirota (trans.), Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone’: A Translation of Shinran’s Yuishin-shō mon’i (Hongwanji-ha, 1979); also in Hongwanji Translation Series, The Collected Works of Shinran (1997). Treated in: James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū (Indiana UP, 1989); Alfred Bloom, Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace (1965); Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002); critical text in Shinran Shōnin zenshū 親鸞聖人全集 (Hongan-ji, 1985).

Links

• CBETA online
• Object of commentary: KR6t0386 (Seikaku, Yui-shin-shō)
• Variant recension: KR6t0369
• Companion: KR6t0367 (Shinran, Ichi-nen ta-nen mon’i)