pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

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lotwell
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pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by lotwell »

I am writing an article in which I make the claim that pure land buddhism is a concept that has its roots first and foremost in Japanese Buddhism (namely with Honen and Shinran) and later with Japanese Buddhist Studies. However, I argue, this concept has been anachronistically applied to Chinese pure land practices, which were not necessarily divorced from other practices and goals.

If anyone is able to recommend some resources that deal with this topic, or example of works that demonstrate this anachronistic application, I would be extremely grateful!

Warm regards,

Lotwell
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Astus
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Astus »

It seems a fairly common knowledge among those who study Chinese Buddhism now that the whole sectarianism of Japanese Buddhism has been projected on China, including not only PL but Chan as well. If you look at the four big schools of Taiwanese Buddhism you find that they are all inclusive of the "eight schools". Also, there has never actually been an independent Chinese PL church ever.

May check some works by Robert Sharf, like On Pure Land Buddhism and Chan/Pure Land Syncretism in Medieval China and Coming to Terms With Chinese Buddhism.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Admin_PC »

Depends if you take Shan-Tao's teachings of Exclusive Single Practice seriously or not. Julian Pas didn't and wrote that horrible book. Most everyone else who's actually read Shan-Tao's writings has repeated that he promoted exclusive practice. There's a school in Taiwan that solely follows Shan-Tao's writings in endorsing exclusive practice and 13th Pure Land Patriarch Yin Kuang references Shan-Tao as well when endorsing not mixing Pure Land practice with other methods.

The Japanese were not the first and only Ch'an/Zen teachers to speak out against Pure Land practices being mixed with meditation either. A similar strain took root in China and traveled down to Vietnam. I can dig up more on that later.

TLDR, I happen to disagree with Astus, the link above is proof enough that the phrase "ever" is incorrect.


EDIT: you have to remember that China lost Shan-Tao's writings for a very long time due to the persecution of Buddhism and only found them again at the end of the 19th century ~ early 20th century.
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Astus
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Astus »

PorkChop wrote:Depends if you take Shan-Tao's teachings of Exclusive Single Practice seriously or not.
The Chinese monastic system is Vinaya based, followed by the way political forces influenced its operation. So even Chan and Tiantai were not as exclusive as in Japan, although they did establish a loose organisational structure based on lineage families. That resulted in today's situation where almost every monastery is nominally Chan. Pure Land practices did not form the basis of a similar monastic organisation, and it should be recognised that various forms of nianfo are ubiquitous. Monks and nuns have always enjoyed a relative freedom in what studies and practices they pursued, so even if one happened to reside in a monastery led by an abbot with a specific affiliation, they were not hindered by that.
Most everyone else who's actually read Shan-Tao's writings has repeated that he promoted exclusive practice. There's a school in Taiwan that solely follows Shan-Tao's writings in endorsing exclusive practice and 13th Pure Land Patriarch Yin Kuang references Shan-Tao as well when endorsing not mixing Pure Land practice with other methods.
While the list of the so called 13 Chinese PL patriarchs include Shandao, it begins with Huiyuan, who emphasised visualisation, and includes people like Yongming Yanshou, who was more like a well educated bodhisattva monk with an all around knowledge of Mahayana, Lianchi Zhuhong, who was similarly an educated monastic proficient in the teachings, Chan, and Pure Land, just like Ouyi Zhixu. They were definitely not exclusivists. And that is what you can find from modern luminaries as well like Yinshun and Shengyan.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Admin_PC »

We need to be careful how we define "Pure Land Buddhism". So there was no Pure Land vinaya platform nor a pristine Pure Land lineage like Ch'an's mind-to-mind transmission from master-to-master, that does not mean that there was no "Pure Land Buddhism". This idea that there was no such thing as exclusive Pure Land practice schools is easily evidenced as fallacy. Dating back to the times of Shan-Tao there were always temples that specialized in exclusive Pure Land practice, whether or not it was exclusive Nianfo practice is up for debate.

EDIT: Sharf's point is actually much more subtle than the basis for the article as described by the OP.
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Astus
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Astus »

Pure Land devotionalism could include a diversity of practices for a variety of purposes: for example, meditation on the heroic vows of Amitabha, visualization of his features, cultivation of one's desire to be reborn in the Pure land, visualization of the Pure land, invoking the name of Amitabha either to be reborn in the Pure land or as a means to calm the mind as preparation for other forms of meditation, etc. By way of contrast, what is unique about the outlook of Tao-ch'o and Shan-tao is the force with which they singled out Pure Land devotionalism as the only practice needed and available to Buddhists of that time which could guarantee salvation. T'an-luan and Tao-ch'o both were plagued by a lack of confidence in the effectiveness with which they could master other forms of traditional Buddhist training. T'an-luan distinguished between the "difficult path" and the "easy path of the Pure Land," while Tao-ch'o divided the "path of the sages" from the "path of the Pure land." In fact, the An-lo-chi of Tao-ch'o primarily consists of an extended argument demonstrating the appropriateness and necessity of Pure Land devotion as the only effective practice because of the trauma of the times and the decrease in man's capacities. Thus, the Shansi Pure land thinkers were concerned to stress the differences between Pure land practice and other methods, even though Chinese Pure Land never rejected these other methods as harmful in the way that occurred among Japanese Pure Land thinkers.
The ascendancy of Pure Land devotion as a necessary, sufficient, all-consuming and finally inclusive religious orientation is an extreme development in China. Even at its height, Shansi Pure Land activity never radically separated from a monastic, philosophical, and meditational base, nor did it form a distinctive institutional structure or formalized methods of succession, as it did in Japan. Chinese Pure Land sectarianism was neither based on an exclusive organization nor limited to particular religious practices, but was a loosely-knit association of those who were committed to single-minded devotion to Amitabha and rebirth in his Pure Land as the only guaranteed source of salvation. Although the names in the lineages highlight individual leaders, they also show that the separatist movement existed for a relatively brief period of time in Chinese Buddhist history, principally extending from the sixth to the ninth centuries. Approximately, it was during these centuries that Chinese Buddhism generally was specializing in many different directions and all the major "schools" were formed.
It should be emphasized, therefore, that Chinese Pure land thinkers never went to the extreme of the Japanese Pure Land movement which actively rejected other practices as detracting from reliance on Amitabha. In China nien-fo (nembutsu) was decisive for salvation but not exclusive, and Pure Land thinkers always assumed that it would be supplemented by other forms of meditation and purifying practices. A good illustration of this difference between China and Japan is the fate of Hsuan-chung-ssu, the birthplace of Pure Land sectarianism in China. Unlike Japanese Buddhism or Christianity in the West, Buddhist schools in China are lines of practice and thought, not institutionally-strong, property-holding denominations. Accordingly, a monastery took its identity from the activities of its members, and especially its abbot. Because of its local autonomy, any monastery could include a number of "lines" or Buddhist schools, or change from one to the other as the attitudes of people changed. Accordingly, Michihata discovered that by the late T'ang Dynasty the Hsüan-chung-ssu was most famous for its ordination platform and expertise in rituals and precepts, and had become known as a Vinaya Monastery (lü-ssu). At other times, because of the prominence of its meditation hall, it was called a Ch'an Monastery (ch'an-ssu). In the early Sung, after the destructive losses suffered by Buddhism during persecution and war, the Hsüan-chung-ssu became active as a center for making metal buddha-images. Thus, the "ten-thousand practices" (wan-hsing) subordinated by Tao-ch'o as inadequate, which were renamed the "mixed practices" (tsa-hsing) and again deemphasized by Shan-tao, became the main focus of attention in the eyes of later generations as the rich symphony of Chinese religious eclecticism supplemented and absorbed the single sound of chanting Amitabha's name.


(The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, p 144-146)
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

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Chinese Pure Land sectarianism was neither based on an exclusive organization nor limited to particular religious practices, but was a loosely-knit association of those who were committed to single-minded devotion to Amitabha and rebirth in his Pure Land as the only guaranteed source of salvation.
Sentence is self-contradictory and basically shoots down your entire argument up till now.

Seriously man, you're grasping.

EDIT: in fact the whole passage establishes; without a doubt, that there were Pure Land school(s) exclusively devoted to Amitabha. The OP never mentioned lineage, nor Nianfo, merely Pure Land, which is defined by exclusive devotion to Amitabha and the exclusive goal of rebirth in his Pure Land.
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Astus »

PorkChop wrote:Sentence is self-contradictory and basically shoots down your entire argument up till now.

in fact the whole passage establishes; without a doubt, that there were Pure Land school(s) exclusively devoted to Amitabha. The OP never mentioned lineage, nor Nianfo, merely Pure Land, which is defined by exclusive devotion to Amitabha and the exclusive goal of rebirth in his Pure Land.
My argument has not been that there was no Pure Land Buddhism in China, since they have invented the whole thing and it is still the most popular teaching there. What I have been saying is that there was no independent organisation established, unlike in Japan, and that's what the quote talks about as well.
1 Myriad dharmas are only mind.
Mind is unobtainable.
What is there to seek?

2 If the Buddha-Nature is seen,
there will be no seeing of a nature in any thing.

3 Neither cultivation nor seated meditation —
this is the pure Chan of Tathagata.

4 With sudden enlightenment to Tathagata Chan,
the six paramitas and myriad means
are complete within that essence.


1 Huangbo, T2012Ap381c1 2 Nirvana Sutra, T374p521b3; tr. Yamamoto 3 Mazu, X1321p3b23; tr. J. Jia 4 Yongjia, T2014p395c14; tr. from "The Sword of Wisdom"
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Admin_PC »

lotwell wrote:I am writing an article in which I make the claim that pure land buddhism is a concept that has its roots first and foremost in Japanese Buddhism (namely with Honen and Shinran) and later with Japanese Buddhist Studies. However, I argue, this concept has been anachronistically applied to Chinese pure land practices, which were not necessarily divorced from other practices and goals.

If anyone is able to recommend some resources that deal with this topic, or example of works that demonstrate this anachronistic application, I would be extremely grateful!

Warm regards,

Lotwell
The bolded parts are what I'm arguing against. There are definitely schools/temples of Pure Land Buddhism in China that taught Pure Land practices with the explicit goal of rebirth in Sukhavati and nothing else. Shan-Tao's Ojoraisan liturgy as practiced in his temple is proof of this in practice, the writings of certain Pure Land masters, including Shan-Tao, Ven Yin Kuang, and others are proof of this in doctrine.
Serenity509
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Serenity509 »

Seriously, guys, who cares if exclusive Pure Land practice began in Japan or not? If you accept the concept of impermanence, doesn't that suggest that Buddhist doctrine and practice is something which can evolve over time? If one is looking to Shandao, which Shandao? Which period of his life or phase of his teaching are we talking about? I think that, whether or not a practice resonates with you and leads you to enlightenment matters more than when or where it started.
Caodemarte
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Caodemarte »

Sure, but it is an interesting historical discussion that may cast light on the concepts involved. Just like a discussion of Einstein's life has no bearing on the validity of his theories, but has other values.
lotwell
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by lotwell »

Hi all,

Thank you for your many replies. And I'm sorry if my response comes too late on this expired thread.

I just wanted to share that I finished my paper, my thesis in fact, and it's currently under review. I can share it with you all on Academia.edu later for those who are interested. It mainly concerns "Pure Land Buddhism", if I may use the term, in Tibet.

Warm regards,

Lotwell
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Sentient Light »

I think there are different concepts here. I don't think we can deny that there has always been a tradition of Pure Land within China that teaches exclusive practice toward Pure Land methods and exclusive devotion to Amitabha and aspiration for birth in Sukhvati; now, I do not think that necessarily means that there has been any sustained tradition of exclusive Buddha-recitation, even if it has been encouraged as the bulk of the practice. And this is likely because of the loss of Shan-Tao's teachings, but the fact remains that the traditions emanating from China, while they encourage Buddha-recitation as the primary mode of practice, have for centuries never promoted the idea that one shouldn't do other practices as well, and dedicating the merit of these actions toward rebirth in the Pure Land.

edit: didn't realize this convo was from so long ago.. but curious about the paper!
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Re: pure land buddhism as anachronistic concept

Post by Admin_PC »

Sentient Light wrote:... I do not think that necessarily means that there has been any sustained tradition of exclusive Buddha-recitation, even if it has been encouraged as the bulk of the practice. And this is likely because of the loss of Shan-Tao's teachings, but the fact remains that the traditions emanating from China, while they encourage Buddha-recitation as the primary mode of practice, have for centuries never promoted the idea that one shouldn't do other practices as well, and dedicating the merit of these actions toward rebirth in the Pure Land.
Well the crazy thing to me is that the other Pure Land schools that are supposedly "exclusive Buddha-recitation" paths, don't necessarily only do "Buddha-recitation"; as much as they get beat up for eschewing other practices.

Honen (Jodo Shu) write a book on the subject of the selection of Nembutsu, but in it, he still covers all 5 main practices & 4 modes of practice from ShanTao - and his descendants have been incorporating them for a very long time. They also aspire to generate bodhicitta, recite & take bodhisattva vows, dedicate merit, give/take precepts, pay respect to the bodhisattvas, etc.

Even Jodo Shin Shu, which is the school that claims to eschew practice altogether, in actual temples they still maintain other practices such as dedicating merit, incense offerings, praising Amida (and the patriarchs), reading/reciting the sutras, and generally encouraging lawful behavior. Heck, they even contemplate the "splendid view of Amida and that land" when they contemplate Shinran's word's: "Supreme Buddha is formless, and because of being formless is called jinen (naturalness)." Also, "the dharma-body, being formless, takes on all forms." There's even a whole chapter on the topic. So you could argue that the 5 main practices are maintained here as well.

I think it's important to point out that even though a school might claim teachings that minimize things to the Nth degree, that doesn't mean they are so limited in the actual activities of real life groups.
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