Wéixìn chāo 唯信抄
Anthology on Faith Alone by 聖覺 Seikaku (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle vernacular-Japanese Pure Land devotional treatise by Seikaku 聖覺 聖覺 (1167–1235), the most learned of 源空 Hōnen’s senior disciples and a senior fellow-disciple of 親鸞 Shinran. The work was composed in Kenpō 1 / 1213 and became the single most widely-circulated early-Kamakura Pure Land devotional text, copied by Shinran himself repeatedly (multiple Shinran-autograph copies survive at the Nishi Hongan-ji) and commented upon by Shinran in the Yui-shin-shō mon’i KR6t0368.
Abstract
The work consists of fifteen short sections on the yui-shin — “only-faith” — doctrine: the doctrine that single-minded faith in Amida’s vow is alone sufficient for rebirth, requiring no supplementary practice. Seikaku’s yui-shin is doctrinally distinct from the radical senju-ichinen-gi of Kōsai 幸西 (the Tannishō-i-gi 6) in that Seikaku affirms the practice of nenbutsu — but as an expression of yui-shin faith, not as an additional salvific element. This is the position Shinran later adopted and codified as Shinshū shinjin doctrine; the Yui-shin-shō is therefore the direct textual ancestor of Shinran’s mature shinjin doctrine.
The work’s vernacular Japanese style is the model for Shinran’s own vernacular essays of the 1250s (KR6t0367, KR6t0368). Seikaku’s prose is devotionally direct but doctrinally precise — he is the most theologically articulate of the Hōnen-circle and his Yui-shin-shō is the work that most clearly bridges Hōnen’s earlier senjaku-hongan doctrine and Shinran’s mature tariki shinjin doctrine.
Date. Internally Kenpō 1 / 1213. Seikaku was 47.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T83N2675) records the work as a single-fascicle treatise by Seikaku with a reltexts-old list pointing to T83N2658 (which corresponds to KR6t0368 Yui-shin-shō mon’i in its Taishō recensions 2658A/2658B). This cross-reference identifies the Yui-shin-shō as the object of commentary for Shinran’s Yui-shin-shō mon’i.
Translations and research
English translation: Yoshifumi Ueda & Dennis Hirota (trans.), in The Collected Works of Shinran (Hongwanji-ha, 1997), vol. 1. 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); Sōhō Machida, Renegade Monk: Hōnen and Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (UC Press, 1999). On Seikaku: Ōhara Shōjitsu, Hōnen kyōgaku no kenkyū (Ryūbunkan, 1956).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 聖覺 (Seikaku)
- Shinshū commentary: KR6t0368 (Shinran, Yui-shin-shō mon’i)