Pure Land school, China

Pure Land school, China. Strictly speaking, there is no Pure Land ‘school’ in China. Although one may speak of specific teaching lineages and social or religious movements at various points in Chinese history, there has never existed a unified school with a geographically located headquarters (such as T'ien-t'ai), a set of standard scriptures and commentaries (such as San-lun), or single, continuous lineage of masters and disciples (such as Ch'an or esoteric Buddhism). The two main sources for positing any unity to this mode of belief and practice are (1) the belief that a Buddha named Amitābha vowed prior to his attainment of Buddhahood that, as a condition of his achievement of perfect enlightenment (saṃbodhi), he would create a Pure Land to which unenlightened beings could come for instruction, practice, and enlightenment; and (2) a line of thirteen patriarchs (Chin., tsu) who, at various times, reinvigorated or provided a credible apologia for the tradition. However, unlike Ch'an and esoteric lineages, this line does not consist of masters and disciples, nor are its members contiguous in time or region of activity; rather the list itself is the result of a later reconstitution of the tradition, and it omits several significant Pure Land thinkers. In China, this school is sometimes also referred to as the ‘Lotus School’ (Chin., Lien tsung).

Recent scholarship has shown that, even in India during the early years of the development of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the idea took root that Buddhas, rather than simply going into extinction, remained active in the world to help beings still trapped in suffering. This being the case, it followed that the environments in which they dwelt must reflect the purity of their own wisdom, and thus the idea of the ‘Buddha-land’ or ‘Buddha-field (Skt., Buddha-kṣetra) came into being. Somewhat later, one particular Buddha, Amitābha, came to predominate in popular consciousness, and his Buddha-land, called Sukhāvatī, the ‘Land of Bliss’, became a destination to which even ordinary beings could aspire. According to the Longer and Shorter Sukhāvatī-vyūha Sūtras, this Buddha, while still a Bodhisattva, made a series of vows including one which said that he would not enter into final Buddhahood unless he brought into being a ‘Pure Land’ to which all could come if they but heard and recollected his name. With the popularization of these texts, devotees came to believe that, through faith (śraddhā) in Amitābha's vow, they could come into his Pure Land without first becoming pure and enlightened themselves, and, once there, they would have a perfect instructor in the person of the Buddha, and ideal conditions for study, practice, and enlightenment. Several significant Indian Buddhist thinkers, such as Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu, and Aśvaghoṣa, contributed to the systematization of this mythologem into theological form.

The first appearance of Amitābha-centred thought and practice in China came in 179, when Lokakṣema produced a translation of the Pratyutpanna Sūtra, a work that extolled the value of a type of meditation which would cause all the Buddhas to appear before the practitioner. In one brief passage, this work states that the practitioner should be aware that Amitābha dwells in the land of Sukhāvatī many millions of Buddha-lands off to the west, and that, by simply calling him to mind, the practitioner can attain a vision of him and all the Buddhas of the present cosmos. Although Amitābha practice receives only this brief mention, and although the goal of the practice is a vision of the Buddha in this life rather than rebirth in Sukhāvatī after death, the appearance of this work is counted as the first appearance of Pure Land belief in China, and provided the textual basis for the first instance of organized Pure Land practice.

Based on this text, in the year 402 the monk Lu-shan Hui-yüan (334–416) gathered together a group of 123 clergy and local literati in the Tung Lin Temple (in modern Chiang-hsi Province) where he resided, where they all practised this visualization of Amitābha together, with the intention of gaining rebirth in Sukhāvatī. The emphasis of their practice was very much on visualization, not on oral repetition of the Buddha's name, and Hui-yüan corresponded with the Kuchean monk and translator Kumārajīva (343–413) on a number of points, including the nature of the image of the Amitābha seen in one's dreams. The group that Hui-yüan formed came in later centuries to be known as the White Lotus Society (Chin., Pai-lien she), and Hui-yüan himself was later placed first on the list of Pure Land patriarchs.

Subsequent developments took place in the north central part of China, around the imperial capitals of Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang. The appearance of translations of the scriptures that were to become known as the three Pure Land sūtras (the Longer and Shorter Sukhāvatī-vyūha Sūtras and the Meditation Sūtra) provided a fuller recounting of the Pure Land mythos of Amitābha Buddha, his Pure Land, and his vows, providing the basis for new accountings of Pure Land theology and practice. The master T'an-luan (476–542), frightened by a serious illness, left behind the conventional life of the monk-scholar and devoted himself to the oral invocation of Amitābha's name as a means of gaining rebirth, based upon the record of the 48 vows of the Buddha as recorded in the Longer Sukhāvatī-vyūha Sūtra. He also devoted himself to teaching others to follow this practice, and so became one of the first popularizers of the method of Nien-fo (Buddha-recitation). Another master, Tao-ch'o (562–645), discouraged by the turmoil of the Northern and Southern dynasties period, counselled people to recite the Buddha's name as much as possible as a way of purifying the mind, and instructed them to use beans as counters. He wrote a commentary on the Meditation Sūtra called the An-lo chi (Collection of Ease and Bliss) that included an anthology of scriptural passages supporting the efficacy of the practice and defending it against its detractors. His disciple Shan-tao (613–81) also wrote in support of the oral recitation of the Buddha's name and composed a number of liturgical works for societies formed to practise together, but he devoted his intellectual energy to composing a commentary on the Meditation Sūtra, a work which teaches a complex set of difficult visualizations as a means of attaining a vision of Amitābha in this life, and advocated ‘auxiliary practices’ to be done in combination with the ‘true practice’ of chanting the name. These three masters and their successors formed the leadership for a Pure Land movement concentrated in the north that devoted itself more or less exclusively to Pure Land practice.

There were other streams of Pure Land thought outside of this movement as masters identified with other schools sought to incorporate Pure Land practice and the Pure Land mythos into a wider set of doctrinal and practical options. For example, Chih-i (538–97), the founder of the T'ien-t'ai school, included meditative practices aimed at the visualization of Amitābha in this life and rebirth in the Pure Land in the afterlife within his encyclopedia of meditation, the Mo-ho chih-kuan (Great Calming and Insight). In this work, Pure Land practice was very demanding and exhausting: the practitioner, after initial purifications and consecration, was to repair to a specially assembled room with an image of Amitābha in the centre, and was to circumambulate it for 90 days without stopping, sitting, or sleeping. Other masters outside of the Pure Land ‘school’ wrote commentaries on the three Pure Land sūtras as part of their overall scholarly programme: Chih-i, the San-lun master Chi-tsang (549–623), and Ching-ying Hui-yüan (523–92; not to be confused with Lu-shan Hui-yüan), among others, also composed commentaries on the Meditation Sūtra that often differed significantly with commentaries written within the movement (such as that of Shan-tao) on many important points: whether the appearance of the Pure Land was an expedient means devised by Amitābha for the benefit of impure beings or whether it reflected his own enlightened nature; whether the Amitābha seen in visualization was a manifestation of his Emanation Body (nirmāṇa-kāya) or his Enjoyment Body (saṃbhoga-kāya); whether the activity of visualization was phenomenal (Chin., shih) or noumenal (Chin., li); and so on.

Many Pure Land thinkers in China devoted themselves to the task of apologetics. The central claim of Pure Land thought—that beings could escape from saṃsāra and dwell in a purified Buddha-land without becoming either pure or enlightened themselves—offended the sensibilities of many Buddhists. Many critics argued, following the Platform Sūtra and the Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra, that to posit a Pure Land over against the present, impure world, and a Buddha who literally existed outside of the practitioner's own mind, constituted an impermissible dualism when seen in light of the teaching of emptiness (śūnyatā). They argued that the Pure Land is nothing more than the present world of suffering seen correctly, and the Buddha was only the practitioner's own mind free of all misconceptions. Later controversial literature labelled this position ‘Mind-Only Pure Land’ (Chin., wei hsin ching-t'u).

To this, many Pure Land apologists, ranging from Tao-ch'o and Tz'u-min Hui-jih (680–748) in the early period to later figures such as (Yün-ch'i) Chu-hung (1535–1615), Yüan Hung-tao (1568–1610), Ch'o-wu (1741–1810), and Yin-kuang (1861–1940) replied that such a critique was circular. To criticize unenlightened beings for not having an enlightened view of the world only castigated them for not being enlightened before achieving enlightenment (bodhi), a criticism that was self-contradictory. They explained that Pure Land teachings were compassionately given by the Buddha for people in this world of suffering who did not have the time, inclination, or talent for the strenuous and uncertain path to the attainment of enlightenment in this world. Once reborn in the Pure Land, they would have perfect conditions for the attainment of enlightenment, at which point they would come to the realization that the Pure Land really was only the world of suffering seen correctly. For the time being, however, they needed expedient teachings that, though admittedly dualistic, would nevertheless lead them skilfully to the goal. This position, which left room for a literal reading of the Pure Land myth as the way things really are, came to be characterized as ‘Western Direction Pure Land’ (Chin., hsi fang ching-t'u).

As scholars have long observed, after the persecution of 845, only a few schools of Buddhism remained viable in China: Ch'an and Pure Land because of their portability and independence from economic and political centres of power, and T'ien-t'ai because of its ongoing identification with a central headquarters. During the Sung dynasty (960–1279) some new developments took place in Pure Land thought and practice. In terms of social movements, one sees the first appearance of large-scale Buddha-recitation societies boasting thousands of members, most of which were formed under the auspices of T'ien-t'ai masters working along the south-eastern seaboard of Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces. Other developments took place in the interaction of Pure Land and other styles of cultivation. The master Yüng-ming Yen-shou (904–75) attempted to harmonize Pure Land with other Buddhist schools of thought such as Ch'an into a system in which both could be cultivated without contradiction; this came to be known as the ‘joint practice of Ch'an and Pure Land’ (Chin., ch'an-ching shuang-hsiu). The main manifestation of this ‘joint practice’ was the so-called Nien-fo kung-an (Jap., Nembutsu kōan), advocated by Chung-fang Ming-pen (1262–1323), T'ien-ju Wei-tse (14th century), and Chu-hung. The practitioner, while reciting Amitābha's name, would periodically stop and consider the kōan, ‘Who is this who is reciting the Buddha's name?’

Other masters, however, resisted this syncretism, insisting on maintaining the integrity of Pure Land practice. Yin-kuang, for example, decried any ‘psychological’ reading of Pure Land thought and forcefully defended the literal existence of the Pure Land and the self-sufficiency of Pure Land practice done without resort to kōan practice or any other extraneous method. While all defenders of Pure Land practice in China have accepted its characterization as an ‘easy path’ opposed to the ‘difficult path’ of conventional Buddhist practices, one must understand that the practice as envisaged by these Chinese masters was far from easy. In contrast to the Pure Land school in Japan, which at its extreme held that a single utterance of Amitābha's name sufficed to assure rebirth in the Pure Land, the Chinese tradition always saw it as a constant striving for a purity of mind and an attunement with the Pure Land and its Buddha. As Ch'o-wu wrote, speaking for the tradition as a whole, Pure Land practice, whether seen as a complex practice of meditative visualization or simple repetition of the Buddha's name, has purification of the mind as its goal. However, the mind is constantly changing: an instant of verbal repetition of the name purifies the mind completely in that instant, but a return to worldly thought in the next instant defiles it once again. The point of Tao-ch'o's use of beans as counters and the later use of rosaries was to encourage practitioners to constancy of repetition in order to keep the mind pure at all times. In addition, visualization and repetition both served to harmonize the practitioner's mind with that of the Buddha in order to create karmic links with Sukhāvatī so as to strengthen the likelihood of achieving rebirth there. The ultimate goal was to have the mind focused on Amitābha and the Pure Land at the critical moment of death; distraction at that instant could nullify the results of years of faithful recitation of the name and cause one to veer back into saṃsāra. Thus, constant practice was necessary in order to make it more and more likely that one's mind, fortified by habituation, would be unshakably attuned to the Pure Land right at the point of death.

Since the Sung dynasty, Pure Land practice has not been the province of any single Pure Land school, despite the acknowledgement of a central line of patriarchs. With very few exceptions, Chinese Buddhists accept that the chances of attaining enlightenment so complete that it guarantees one an exit from saṃsāra at the end of this life through the unaided strength of one's own practice are very slim, and that one must have Pure Land practice and the hope of rebirth in Sukhāvatī as a kind of insurance policy, regardless of what other practices or studies one does. Thus, Pure Land thought and practice pervades all of Chinese Buddhism as foundation and guarantor of the path one treads towards Buddhahood.