Sìxìn wǔpǐn chāo 四信五品鈔
The Anthology of the Four Faiths and Five Stages by 日蓮 Nichiren (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle Nichiren doctrinal letter by Nichiren 日蓮 日蓮 (1222–1282), composed at Minobu in Kenji 3 / 1277 / 4th month / 10th day, when Nichiren was 55, addressed to his Suruga-province lay disciple Tomi-no-hara Jirō 富野原次郎 (later known as Toki Jōnin’s nephew). The Shi-shin go-bon-shō — “The Four Faiths and Five Stages” — addresses the doctrinal question of graded religious practice in the mappō age, drawing on the Lotus Sūtra’s Bunbetsu kudoku-bon 分別功徳品 (chapter 17, “Distinguishing Merits”).
Abstract
The treatise distinguishes the four faiths (四信 shi-shin) of the Lotus’s ch. 17 — applicable to those present at the Buddha’s preaching — and the five stages (五品 go-bon) of post-Buddha practice. Nichiren’s distinctive doctrinal argument is that in the mappō age, only the first of the five stages — the stage of welcoming with joy (随喜品 zui-ki-bon) — is practically attainable and is all that is required for the practitioner.
This is the scriptural foundation of Nichiren’s distinctive minimalist practice doctrine: the practitioner in mappō need not (and cannot) attain the higher stages of practice required in the shōbō age; simple welcoming joy at the daimoku and honzon is sufficient. The doctrine has the same simplifying function in Nichiren Buddhism that senju-nenbutsu has in Hōnen’s Pure Land Buddhism — it makes the path accessible to lay practitioners who lack the time and capacity for elaborate meditative or scholarly disciplines.
The doctrine is doctrinally significant because it locates the lay-accessible dimension of Nichiren Buddhism in the scriptural authority of the Lotus Sūtra itself, rather than in extra-scriptural concessions to lay practice. The Nichiren-school lay-accessibility argument is structurally parallel to but doctrinally distinct from the Pure Land lay-accessibility argument.
Date. Internally Kenji 3 / 1277 / 4th month / 10th day, at Minobu.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div29.xml, T84N2696) records the work as a single-fascicle treatise by Nichiren with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
English translations:
- SGI (eds.), The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin (1999), vol. 1, pp. 783–795.
- Burton Watson (trans.), in Selected Writings of Nichiren (Columbia UP, 1990).
Major studies: Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment (Hawai’i, 1999); Tamura Yoshirō, Nichiren Shōnin (Kōdansha, 1973); Asai Endō, Nichiren shōnin kyōgaku no kenkyū (Heirakuji, 1976).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 日蓮 (Nichiren)
- Other Nichiren writings: KR6t0399–KR6t0409