Juédìng wǎngshēng jí 決定往生集
The Anthology of Certain Rebirth by 珍海 Chinkai (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Pure Land doctrinal treatise by Chinkai 珍海 珍海 (1092–1152), the foremost Sanron scholar of the late Heian period and a senior Pure Land practitioner of the Tōdai-ji lineage. Chinkai was the immediate disciple of Yōkan 永觀 and continues the Sanron-Pure Land synthesis that Yōkan had initiated.
Abstract
The work argues that certain (決定 ketsujō) rebirth in the Pure Land is the necessary outcome of properly understood Pure Land practice. The argument is technical and addresses, especially, the scholastic objection that karma — being an inescapable causal chain — cannot be circumvented even by Amida’s vow. Chinkai’s response is that Amida’s vow does not violate karma but fulfills it: the practitioner’s nenbutsu is the karmic seed that, by the working of the vow, ripens infallibly into rebirth. The treatise distinguishes carefully between certain rebirth in the true reward-land of the tariki shinjin practitioner and uncertain or graded rebirth in the kemman-do of the jiriki practitioner.
The work is doctrinally important as a Sanron-scholastic treatment of Pure Land questions — most Pure Land treatises of the period are Tendai-scholastic. Chinkai’s Madhyamika training enables a different style of argument: the emptiness of karma is the foundation for its malleability by the vow.
Date. Composition is in Chinkai’s mature career, c. 1130–1152; he died in Nimpyō 2 / 1152.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T84N2684) records the work as a single-fascicle treatise by Chinkai with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Taishō vol. 84. No English translation. Japanese: Hayami Tasuku, Heian kizoku shakai to Bukkyō 平安貴族社会と仏教 (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1975), ch. on Chinkai; Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon Jōdo-kyō seiritsu-shi no kenkyū (Yamakawa, 1956); Mark L. Blum, The Origins and Development of Pure Land Buddhism (Oxford UP, 2002).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 珍海 (Chinkai)
- Companion: KR6t0396 (Chinkai, An’yō chisoku sōtaishō)
- Lineage: 永觀 (Yōkan) → Chinkai