Shíxián 實賢 / Xǐng’ān 省庵 (1685–1734)
A leading early-Qīng Pure Land master, conventionally counted as the Eleventh Patriarch of the orthodox Chinese Pure Land lineage. Hào Xǐng’ān 省庵 / 省菴 (“Reflection-Hut”); zì Sīqí 思齊. Native of Chángshú 常熟 (Jiāngsū); lay surname Shí 時. Born in 康熙 24 (1685); died in 雍正 12 (1734) at age 50, sénglà 25. He was active principally at Fèngshān 鳳山 in Hángzhōu and at Méifēngsì 梅峰寺 in Chángshú.
His major Pure Land works, all preserved in the Xùzàngjīng, are the 《淨土生無生論註》 Jìngtǔ shēng wúshēng lùn zhù — his sub-commentary on 傳燈 Yōuxī Chuándēng’s Lùn KR6p0056; the 《西方發願文註》 Xīfāng fāyuàn wén zhù KR6p0087, his commentary on 袾宏 Yúnqī Zhūhóng’s Xīfāng yuànwén KR6p0064; the 《東海若解》 Dōnghǎi ruò jiě KR6p0097, his exegetical work on the Dōnghǎi ruò of 柳子厚 Liǔ Zǐhòu (Liǔ Zōngyuán); and his recorded sayings — the 《省菴法師語錄》 Xǐng’ān fǎshī yǔlù KR6p0098 — edited by 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng and his lay-Buddhist circle.
His most famous individual composition is the 《勸發菩提心文》 Quàn fā pútí xīn wén (“Essay Exhorting [the Generation of] Bodhicitta”), a brief but highly influential pastoral essay on the cultivation of bodhicitta in the Pure Land tradition that has remained in continuous active use as a standard pastoral text in Chinese Pure Land monasticism through the late-imperial and Republican periods to the present. DILA Authority A001113.