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Introduction to Pure Land Tradition
Introduction
The Pure Land teaching is a generally popular aspect of
Mahayana Buddhist history which had its most distinctive
developments in China and Japan.
While it has permeated the Buddhist tradition in those
countries, it had its roots in India, though there never was an
organized movement there.
What we know as the Pure Land tradition focusses on Amitabha
Buddha-Omitofu-Amida Butsu and his Pure Land to the West.
However, we should understand that every Buddha has his own Pure
Land where he resides in his Body of Enjoyment which is  one
category of the concept of Trikaya or Three Bodies of the Buddha.
This concept systematizes various concepts of the Buddha that grew
up in Mahayana thought. Generally speaking, the highest level is
the Law-Body, which metaphysically is formless, absolute reality,
Reward Body which is the mythological form of the Buddha, and
Transformed Body which is the historical manifestation of the
Buddha.
The name Amitabha or in its alternate form Amitayus means
Infinite light and Eternal Life respectively. The name is
generally used in its transliterated form based on the Sanskrit.
The Pure Land may be viewed as kind of paradise. However, it does
not have the sensuous features found in other concepts of heaven
or paradise. In the Pure Land the sounds of the dharma pervade and
the dharma is constantly proclaimed. Bodhisattvas travel from
worlds to worlds delivering the suffering.  Nevertheless, there is
no suffering in the Pure Land. It is bliss and tranquility. In
some interpretations it is the launching place for attaining
Nirvana because there is a perfect environment centered on
Amitabha Buddha. In some interpretations it is a symbolic
expression of Nirvana itself. Once born there one never returns to
the vale of suffering.
We shall concentrate in this lecture on the developments that
led to the formation of the popular tradition centered on Amitabha
Buddha.
I. The textual basis for Pure Land Teaching
There are several hundreds of texts related to the Amitabha
Pure Land tradition in China, as well as Korea and Japan. However,
three texts formed the foundation for the teaching. These are The
Larger Pure Land Sutra, The  Sutra of the Contemplation on the
Buddha of Eternal Life and The Amitabha Sutra or The Smaller Pure
Land Sutra.
The Larger Pure Land Sutra is a lengthy text which is
important because it relates the story of the Bodhisattva
Dharmakara who had been a king. Dharmakara renounced his throne
and sought enlightenment in order to create an ideal realm where
all suffering, ignorance and evils would be abolished. This was
the Pure Land.  He practised the Bodhisattva disciplines for 5
kalpas aeons and became Amitabha Buddha, residing in his Western
Pure Land millions of miles from this world. It now ten kalpas
since that time when Sakyamuni Buddha is portrayed as revealing
this teaching.          As the basis of his discipline and creation of
this pure realm, Dharmakara made forty eight vows which establish
the contents of the land, the people residing there and how to
gain entrance.  Among the Vows the 18, 19, 20th Vows became the
basis for the popular formation of the tradition.
The 18th Vow indicates that if people sincerely believe, and
think on the Buddha for as few as ten thoughts and desire to
be born in his land, that person will be born there, except
for those who commit the great sins or defame the dharma. The
concept of ten thoughts came to be  defined in various ways.
It could mean meditation-visualization, reciting the name of
the Buddha, or faith. These interpretations developed during
the evolution of the tradition. The prractice of reciting the
name which became the central practice of the popular
tradition came to be called  Nien-fo or Nembutsu in Chinese
or Japanese. The term Nien or Nen has been interpreted in
various ways throughout the centuries.
The 19th Vow specified that with the practice of mortalty and
meditation, the Buddha would meet devotees and escort them to
the Pure Land at their death.
The 20th was defined as specifying the recitation of ther
name of Amitabha as the means of cultivating the root of
virtue.
In general the 18th Vow was regarded as the central Vow in
the popular tradition, especially when it was identified with
the means of reciting the name.
The second important text is the Sutra of Contemplation on
the Buddha of Eternal Life. This text was most probably composed
in China and is a manual of meditations designed to cultivate
visionary experiences of the Pure Land. The context of the
practices is a story of a wicked Prince Ajatasatru who imprisoned
his mother and his father, Bimbisara, and brought about his death.
At the mother's request Buddha taught a series of meditations. The
text is in two parts with the latter part indicating that through
the recitation of the name of Buddha even on the death bed, will
bring about the purification of aeons of sins and birth into the
Pure Land. This teaching provided the practical warrant for
popular Pure Land doctrine.
The smaller Pure Land Sutra or Amitabha Sutra gives a
description of the Pure Land and also advocates the recitation of
the name of Buddha.
It should be noted that the practices authorized in these
texts were generic, except in these texts they were applied to
Amitabha Buddha, rather than other Buddhas.
II. Major Teachers of Pure Land Tradition
There were numerous teachers who made commentaries on one or other
Pure Land text. Some scholars detect various lines of
transmission. However, an overall historical lineage did not
really appear as we may find in Zen Buddhism. Because the Pure
Land teaching became a subsidiary teaching of other schools or
lines of thought, scholars in various lineages wrote commentaries
interpreting the teaching in terms of the philosophical
perspective they represented.
The Meditative-monastic stream of Pure Land is generally
represented by Lu-shan Hui yuan (334-416). He is sometimes called
the founder of Chinese Pure Land, but this may be an
overstatement. Recently, our Professor Tanaka, a graduate of U.C.
Buddhist Studies program, has studied Ching ying Hui yuan (523-
592) and has shown a very early treatment of The Sutra of
Contemplation.
The popular formation of the tradition draws attention to
three focal figures. These are T'an luan, Tao ch'o, and Shan tao.
T'an luan is interesting because he drew upon the philosophy of
Nagarjuna, an important Indian Buddhist philosopher, Vasubandhu,
an Indian Buddhist teacher and aspects of Taoist religion.
T'an luan (476-542), according to his biography, was seeking
for eternal life or longevity, as the result of an illness, in
order to have more time to develop his Buddhist studies. However,
he met the Indian Buddhist teacher, Bodhiruci, who converted him
from his Taoist pursuits. He maintained that true eternal life
could only be found through Buddhism. T'an luan burned his taoist
texts and studied Buddhism which was the Pure Land teaching. He
wrote commentary to a Pure Land work of Vasubandhu and interpreted
the doctrine from the standpoint of Nagarjuna.
Nagarjuna's philosophy was the Madhyamika teaching which has
become a basic feature of Mahayana Buddhism. This teaching attacks
the dualism implicit in human thinking and the objectivistic way
of perceiving the world and believing that things have their own
self or independent natures. He applied the principle of Dependent
Co-origination to all things and even ideas. Everything is a
composite set of relationships which are essentially empty or void
of essence. In effect there are two levels of truth, the absolute
which we may experience through meditative practice and the
conventional level which we require for communication but are not
themselves the truth. They provisionally exist as means to forward
our spiritual development or in other ways to obstruct it, if
taken as the truth.
With respect to Pure Land teaching, Nagarjuna was believed to
have written a commentary on the Bodhisattva stages and one of
these chapters was called the section on easy practice. A contrast
was made between difficult practices and easy in the training of
bodhisattvas.  T'an luan used these terms to distinguish the more
difficult routines of monastic practice and the way of reciting
the name of Buddha for the ordinary person.
Vasubandhu provided the Pure Land tradition with a framework
of practice involving meditations, worship, praise, offerings,
recitations etc. as means to gain visualization of the Pure Land.
Based on these teachings, T'an luan also introduced the
distinction of self-power and other power. Self power was like
riding a donkey a road to get to a destination, while other power
was to ride a boat or to be borne in the sky by a great wheel
rolling king (chakravartan). These terms became basic to Pure Land
vocabulary. The Buddha's power became embodied in his name whose
merit became ours through the recitation. This was seen as based
in the Buddha's Vow.
In order to justify such distinctions, T'an luan indicated
that as we get further in time from the Buddha, the capacities of
people to attain enlightenment decrease and require an easier way
for the masses of people.
The second teacher, inspired by T'an luan, was Tao ch'o who
gave further justification to the teaching through the concept of
Mo fa (Chinese) or Mappo (Japanese). according to this teaching
based on a variety of Buddhist texts, Buddhism declines with the
passing of the Buddha. The true teaching lasts about 500 years.
Here there is teaching, practice, and realization. This period is
followed by the period of Semblance or Seeming Dharma where there
is teaching and practice but no realization. In the last period,
Mappo, there is only teaching, no practice or realization.  For
this last period, only the way of Pure Land teaching and the
recitation of the name is assured. Tao ch'o distinguished Sage
Path teaching, the way of the capable and the Pure Land gate.
The third teacher was Shan tao who had been a student of Tao
ch'o. He contributed greatly to the development of Pure Land
teaching by focussing it more clearly on Amitabha as the chief
Buddha with the promise of rebirth in the Pure Land. Though he
maintained the traditional stress on the monastic, meditative
practices, he also presented the recitation of the Buddha's name
as the meaning of the Buddha's Vow where it teaches ten thoughts.
Along with these several teachers there were numerous other
exponents of Pure Land who helped either to develop the thought,
or to create worship ceremonies. The meditative stream continued.
III. Japanese Development of Pure Land
In Japan Pure land teaching arrived early, during the 6th
century, and Amitabha Buddha quickly gained a prominent position
as an object of worship. There were some notable exponents such as
Kuya (903-972) who is called the Saint of the Market Place. He
advocated the recitation of the name among the people in the Heian
period. Also in this period was Genshin (942-1017)who wrote among
other things the Ojoyoshu, The Essentials  of Rebirth which
compares to Dante's Divine Comedy in its presentation of heavens
and hells. It became a manual for street preachers. He also worked
with aristocratic lay people encouraging Pure Land faith.
There were numbers of Nembutsu hijiri, wandering monks who
taught the recitation of the name. As well, there were
compilations of stories relating miraculous births into the Pure
Land or tales of woe for unbelievers. These stories travelled from
China to Japan and were designed to encourage faith.
With the great transition in Japanese society  that came with
the shift from the aristocratic Heian age to the warrior Kamakura
period (1175-1332) some new trends developed in Pure Land. Honen
initiated what became the first independent movement of Pure Land.
He emphasized the sole practice of Nembutsu and the virtual
exclusion of all other practices. His later followers, some 6 in
number, disagreed over the extent of this exclusion. Some employed
what they considered subsidiary practices as an augment to the
Nembutsu. Others held more strictly to the recitation as the only
practice suitable for the last age in the demise of dharma.
The teaching came to be regarded by the established sects
such as Tendai and Shingon which had great monasteries and land
holdings as subversive to religion and society through its
emphasis on the common person, a more egalitarian viewpoint, and a
more simple and individualistic approach to deliverance, rendering
unneccesary the great pageantry and ceremonies of these sects.
Honen and his disciples were sent into exile and a few were
executed. Pure Land teaching appealed more the the lower classes
and the dispossessed.
One of Honen's disciples was Shinran (1173-1263). He opened a
distinctive path in Pure Land through his emphasis on faith alone.
Shinran varied from other such teachers by holding that the true
cause of deliverance is faith, endowed by the Buddha. The practice
of Nembutsu was, therefore, not a purifying practice, but a matter
of gratitude for the compassion of the Buddha which assures
deliverance. Shinran's emphasis was  more on attaining deliverance
in order to be able to deliver others.
Shinran was not well-known in his own day, but through the
efforts of the 8th Abbot Rennyo, Shinran's teaching which became
known as Jodo Shinshu, the True Teaching of the Pure Land, became
formidable social body in later medieval times. It became one of
the largest of Buddhist denominations and the major tradition of
the immgrant Japanese who came to America near the end of the 19th
century.
A disciple of a disciple of Honen was Ippen. He is important
because of the approach to deliverance which be brought to the
Pure Land. In his view the deliverance of Amitabha is so sure that
one need not even have faith. He went about the country having
people sign a scroll and giving tickets to the Pure Land. With
these one might be assured of rebirth into the Land.
Conclusion
Pure Land teaching as it was presented in East Asia appears
to be a mass teaching for those unable to undergo the more
rigorous monastic life. It was considered a secondary teaching, an
upaya, as a means of giving hope to ordinary people. However, with
Honen and Shinran, the teaching became more exclusivistic and
theologically developed. In general the teaching is otherworldly,
where the Pure Land contrasts with the corruption and evils of
this world. Some have regarded it as negative and pessimistic,
because it views people as passion-ridden and incapable on their
own to attain enlightenment as taught by the Buddha Sakyamuni. In
Shinran's thought, the teaching was redirected to this life
through the experience of faith. Deliverance was secure in this
world.  Therefore, followers were freed from fears of afterlife,
as wells as fears of evil deities and spirits.
Efforts are being made today to revitalize the teaching and
to apply it more meaningfully in modern society.