Was Pure Land once considered to be west of China?

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Lazy_eye
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Was Pure Land once considered to be west of China?

Post by Lazy_eye »

In an earlier thread, I was challenged to back up a claim I made. The claim was that "people once believed Sukhavati was located to the West of China."

As we were getting off-topic, I said I would start a new thread. This thread is to fulfill that commitment.

Here is my argument. Firstly, a more orthodox or conservative interpretation of Pure Land exists even today, and it insists that West is to be taken literally. It is not just a symbol having to do with the setting sun; when the scriptures say West, they mean an actual direction:
Question: Some say Amituofo’s (Amitābha Buddha) Pure Land is only figuratively said to be far to the West. Is this true?

Answer: The brief answer is that Amituofo’s Pure Land is indeed literally, as in physically, a long distance to the West of our world.
(from here)

Secondly, most people in East Asia during the ancient and medieval eras believed in a flat earth, with China (the Middle Kingdom) located at the center. In such a scenario, "a long distance west of our world" would be a long distance to the west of China. Prior to mechanized transportation, people had a different sense of scale; Central Asia, for example, would have been a vast distance from the East Asian coast.

If we put 1) and 2) together, then we see that from the perspective of medieval Japanese, Koreans or Chinese the Pure Land would have been located somewhere west of China. If the earth is flat, that's where it has to be.

Thirdly, an ancient tradition actually does associate Sukhavati with a specific geographical location: the Kunlun mountains. See here and here and plenty of other sources.

The association of paradise with the Kunlun mountains actually predates Pure Land. Kunlun was thought to be the abode of the Talost Queen Mother of the West:
The Western Regions are traditionally associated with the Land of the Immortals in Han immortality cults, such as Xiwangmu's (the Queen Mother of the West) abode on the Kunlun mountains. However, since Amitabha's domain is the Western Pure Land, Sukhavati is also translated as xitian (Western Heaven) or xifang jingle guotu (Land of Purity and Bliss in the West). Thus Xiwangmu's Kunlun mountains, Maitreya's Tusita and Amithaba's Sukhavati have become interchangeable, all of them being desirable destinations for the deceased.
Because syncretism has long been a feature of Chinese religious practice, it would have been easy for people to conflate the Taoist and Buddhist concepts of Paradise. Even if Sukhavati was believed to be in the sky rather than on earth, it would have been in the sky somewhere above Kunlun.

An ancient wall painting at Dunhuang depicting the Pure Land may have been modeled in part on the Kunlun tradition.

What I had been trying to illustrate with the Pure Land example was that people at an earlier age had a different relationship to religious scriptures and traditions; they did not separate the "factual" from the "mythological" as we do, because there would have been no reason to do so. There were no established facts contradicting the belief that Sukhavati is a physical place located to the geographical West on or above a flat earth.
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Re: Was Pure Land once considered to be west of China?

Post by Admin_PC »

That book is filled with factual errors.
Tusita and Sukhavati are not interchangeable.
The fact remains, no Pure Land teacher of any salt taught that Sukhavati was a specific location in China proper or around Kunlun/Dunhuang.

Furthermore, a "world" in that old cosmology consisted of Mt Meru at the center, Jambudvipa to the south, etc.
There were multiple of these world systems.
Sukhavati was never said to be in this world system.
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Re: Was Pure Land once considered to be west of China?

Post by Lazy_eye »

PorkChop wrote:That book is filled with factual errors.
Tusita and Sukhavati are not interchangeable.
The fact remains, no Pure Land teacher of any salt taught that Sukhavati was a specific location in China proper or around Kunlun/Dunhuang.

Furthermore, a "world" in that old cosmology consisted of Mt Meru at the center, Jambudvipa to the south, etc.
There were multiple of these world systems.
Sukhavati was never said to be in this world system.
Fair enough. My purpose was to lay out a basis for my earlier claim, so that you (or others) can critique it.

One minor point: this is more about popular belief than doctrinal accuracy. The question is whether such a belief was widespread.
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Re: Was Pure Land once considered to be west of China?

Post by Admin_PC »

Lazy_eye wrote:Fair enough. My purpose was to lay out a basis for my earlier claim, so that you (or others) can critique it.

One minor point: this is more about popular belief than doctrinal accuracy. The question is whether such a belief was widespread.
The ideas that the Pure Land are in this world, west of China, or that it's in the sky couldn't be widespread among anybody who actually read the sutras.
"In the sky" is actually much more indicative of Christianity, so you may want to keep an eye on how much of that you read into Pure Land Buddhism.
Since actually expecting people to go out and read the sutras before they comment on here, I'll make it easier.

Here is an animated video of the (Smaller) Sukhavati Sutra with subtitles:
phpBB [video]


Here is an animated video of the Infinite Life (Larger Sukhavati) Sutra with subtitles:
phpBB [video]


Here is another animated video of the Larger Sukhavati Sutra with subtitles:
phpBB [video]


Here is the first on a 10 part series of the Visualization Sutra in English:
phpBB [video]
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