Zhíchí chāo 執持鈔
The Anthology of [Faith-]Holding by 覺如 Kakunyo (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Shinshū doctrinal treatise by Kakunyo 覺如 覺如 (1270–1351), the third monshu (head abbot) of the Hongan-ji, composed in Karyaku 1 / 1326. The title — Shitsuji-shō — refers to the shitsuji (執持, “tenacious holding”) of the Buddha-name invoked in the Amida-kyō 阿彌陀經 phrase shū-ji myōgō 執持名號 (“holding tenaciously to the name”), which the work interprets in Shinshū terms as the Buddha-given grasping (攝取不捨) of the practitioner by Amida, not a practitioner-volitional discipline.
Abstract
The work argues, in six sections, that the shitsuji of the Amida-kyō should be understood as the tariki-holding by which Amida holds the practitioner of shinjin, not as the practitioner’s jiriki effort to hold the name in mind. This reading is the doctrinal pivot of Kakunyo’s project to scholasticize Shinran: where Shinran’s own writings tend to vernacular paraphrase of the Pure Land sūtras, Kakunyo provides canonical-scholastic glosses of the Pure Land scriptural vocabulary in technical Shinshū terms.
The treatise is one of the Kakunyo go-bu-shō 覺如五部抄 — the “Five Anthologies of Kakunyo” — the foundational scholastic corpus of the early Hongan-ji branch of Shinshū, together with the Kuden-shō KR6t0374, Hongan-ji shōnin Shinran den-e KR6t0375, Hōon kōshiki KR6t0376, and the lost Shūjishō 拾遺鈔. The Shitsuji-shō is the earliest of the five and the most narrowly doctrinal.
Date. Internally dated Karyaku 1 / 1326, ninth month, when Kakunyo was 57; he was already monshu and had begun the campaign for central recognition of the Hongan-ji as the legitimate Shinshū head temple, in opposition to the rival Senju-ji and Bukkō-ji branches.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T83N2662) records the work as a single-fascicle treatise by Kakuyo Shūshō 覺如宗昭 (Kakunyo’s clerical name) with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Shinshū shōgyō zensho 真宗聖教全書, vol. 3 (the Kakunyo go-bu-shō are bundled together). No complete English translation; sections discussed in James C. Dobbins, Jōdo Shinshū (Indiana UP, 1989), ch. 5; Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002). Japanese commentaries: Inaki Sen’e 稲城選惠, Shitsuji-shō kōgi (Hongan-ji, 1968).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 覺如 (Kakunyo)
- Companion: KR6t0374 (Kuden-shō), KR6t0375 (Den-e), KR6t0376 (Hōon kōshiki)