Ānyǎng zhīzú xiāngduì chāo 安養知足相對抄
Comparison of [the Western Pure Land of] Sukhāvatī and [the Maitreyan Heaven of] Tuṣita by 珍海 Chinkai (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Pure Land comparative treatise by Chinkai 珍海 珍海 (1092–1152), addressing the perennial late-Heian devotional question of whether the practitioner should aim at rebirth in Sukhāvatī — the Western Pure Land of Amida, known as An’yō (安養) — or at rebirth in Tuṣita — the heaven of the future Buddha Maitreya, known as Chisoku (知足). The two devotional cults — Amida-Sukhāvatī and Miroku-Tuṣita — were the dominant post-mortem soteriological options in late-Heian Japanese Buddhism, and the choice between them was a live doctrinal question.
Abstract
Chinkai argues, point by point, that Sukhāvatī is preferable to Tuṣita as the goal of the practitioner. The key arguments are: (1) Sukhāvatī is a Buddha-land (irreversibly conducive to enlightenment) whereas Tuṣita is a deva-realm (a heavenly rebirth from which one can still fall back into the lower realms); (2) Amida’s vow provides a guaranteed path to Sukhāvatī accessible even to lay and morally compromised practitioners, whereas Tuṣita requires more demanding meritorious practice; (3) the scriptural attestations of Sukhāvatī are more extensive and more emphatic than those of Tuṣita; (4) the patriarchal tradition — Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, Tánluán, Dàochuò, Shàndǎo — consistently favors Sukhāvatī.
The work is doctrinally important as one of the principal late-Heian texts that closed off Tuṣita devotion as a serious soteriological option in favor of Sukhāvatī. After the Anjyō chisoku sōtai-shō and the more famous treatments by Genshin (in the Ōjō yōshū KR6t0393) and Hōnen (in the Senjaku-shū), Maitreyan devotion gradually receded from mainstream Japanese Buddhism — though it was preserved in particular contexts (most prominently the Hossō school of the Kōfuku-ji, and in the later miroku-shinkō of medieval Japan).
The treatise should be read alongside Jōkei 貞慶 貞慶’s slightly later Miroku kōshiki KR6t0440 (1196), which is the counter-argument for Tuṣita from the Hossō side.
Date. Composition in Chinkai’s mature career, c. 1130–1152.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T84N2685) 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 (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1975); Sueki Fumihiko 末木文美士, Nihon Bukkyō shisō-shi ronkō 日本仏教思想史論考 (Daizō shuppan, 1993). On the Sukhāvatī / Tuṣita devotional contest: James L. Ford, Jōkei and Buddhist Devotion in Early Medieval Japan (Oxford UP, 2006), ch. on the Maitreyan cult.
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 珍海 (Chinkai)
- Companion: KR6t0395 (Chinkai, Ketsujōōjōshū)
- Counter-text from Hossō side: KR6t0440 (Jōkei, Miroku kōshiki)