Héngchuān shǒuléngyányuàn èrshíwǔ sānmèi shì 横川首楞嚴院二十五三昧式
Lecture-Liturgy of the Twenty-Five Samādhi [Society] of the Yokawa Śūraṅgama Hall by 源信 Genshin (撰)
About the work
A single-fascicle kōshiki (lecture-liturgy) by Genshin 源信 源信 (942–1017), composed at the Shuryōgon-in 首楞嚴院 (Śūraṅgama Hall) on the Yokawa 横川 (the northern, Northern Pagoda complex of Mt. Hiei) in Kanna 2 / 986. The work is the liturgical companion to Genshin’s better-known Ōjō yōshū KR6t0393 (composed 985) and serves as the ritual handbook for the Twenty-Five Samādhi Society (二十五三昧會 Nijūgo Zanmai-e) — a fellowship of 25 Mt. Hiei monks who bound themselves to mutually support each other in the deathbed devotional practices prescribed in the Ōjō yōshū.
Abstract
The Twenty-Five Samādhi Society was one of the most famous devotional confraternities of Heian Japanese Buddhism. Its 25 members — a deliberate reference to the Lotus Sūtra’s 25 great Bodhisattvas and the Avataṃsaka-sūtra’s 25 samādhi — bound themselves by formal vow to: (1) mutually visit and chant at the deathbed of each fellow member; (2) chant the nenbutsu continuously during the dying member’s final hours; (3) after the death, perform memorial services and Pure Land rebirth observances; (4) preserve the records of each member’s death and apparent rebirth-omens as evidence for the efficacy of the practices.
The Yokawa Shuryōgon-in nijūgo zanmai-shiki is the liturgical handbook for these practices. It contains: (1) the vow-text that each member recites on joining the society; (2) the deathbed-chanting liturgy to be performed at the dying member’s bedside; (3) the post-mortem memorial liturgy; (4) the doctrinal exhortations on the efficacy of the practices and the Ōjō yōshū doctrinal basis.
The work is foundational for the entire medieval Japanese deathbed-Pure-Land practice tradition. The Twenty-Five Samādhi Society itself disbanded in the 11th c. but its practices were widely emulated; the raigō welcoming-descent visualizations, the deathbed-nenbutsu chanting, and the Pure Land rebirth-omens recording — all became standard features of the Pure Land devotional culture of subsequent centuries.
Date. Internally Kanna 2 / 986, Mt. Hiei Yokawa, when Genshin was 45.
Structural Division
The CANWWW entry (div25.xml, T84N2723) records the work as a single-fascicle kōshiki by Genshin with no internal toc sub-list and no related-text cross-references tabulated.
Translations and research
Critical edition: Taishō vol. 84. Hanayama Shinshō, Eshin Sōzu zenshū 恵心僧都全集 (Hieizan senshū-in, 1927–28, repr. Shibunkaku, 1971), vol. 1. Standard study: Robert F. Rhodes, Genshin’s Ōjōyōshū and the Construction of Pure Land Discourse in Heian Japan (Hawai’i, 2017). Japanese: Hanayama Shinshō, Ōjō yōshū no kenkyū (Daitō shuppan, 1957); Hayami Tasuku, Genshin (Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1988); Niels Guelberg, Buddhistische Zeremoniale (kōshiki) (Stuttgart, 1999).
Links
- CBETA online
- Author: 源信 (Genshin)
- Companion: KR6t0393 (Genshin, Ōjō yōshū), KR6t0435 (Genshin, Nijūgo zanmai kishō)