Shěn Shàndēng 沈善登 (1830–1902)
A late-Qīng lay-Buddhist scholar; native of Tóngxiāng 桐鄉 (Zhèjiāng). CBDB person id 79759 (1830–1902).
He is the author of the 《報恩論》 Bàoēn lùn KR6p0124 (X1205), a substantial two-juǎn lay-Buddhist Pure Land doctrinal treatise composed in 1878 at the Dèngwèi Shèngēnsì 鄧尉聖恩寺 (the Shèngēnsì at Mt. Dèngwèi, Sūzhōu region) during a fifty-three-day collaborative jié tán 結壇 of unceasing niànfó and sūtra-copying convened by Shěn together with Zhāng Chángxīng 張常惺 (zì Zǐjiǎn 子簡) of Hǎiyán and three further practitioners. He dictated; Zhāng recorded. The work remained in manuscript circulation for almost twenty years and was published in 1897 with extensive supplementary materials added by the elderly Shěn to forestall what he saw as a Pure Land tendency to “drift into Chán syncretism” and lose its scriptural-doctrinal anchoring. He died in 1902.
His doctrinal position is the zhèngjīng 證經 (sūtra-attestation) defence of orthodox Pure Land soteriology, drawing extensively on the Jìngtǔ sānjīng corpus and on the Wéishí 唯識 (Yogācāra) school. His work is read alongside 彭際清 Péng Jìqīng’s late-eighteenth-century Yīshèng juéyí lùn and Huáyán niànfó sānmèi lùn KR6e0148 as the principal lùn-genre lay Pure Land doctrinal treatise of the late-Qīng period.