3. Pure Land in Chinese Buddhism:
3.2. Issues regarding a Pure Land school and lineage
A question receiving particular attention in the scholarly literature is whether or not Chinese Pure Land should be considered an independent school (宗), especially with regard to issues of lineage. As Yü Chün-fang notes in her 1981 study, the Pure Land patriarchy was created retrospectively: there exists no direct historical relationship between the different Pure Land patriarchs, thus the Pure Land patriarchal tradition obviously meant something very different to the Chan patriarchal tradition; it does not emphasize a teacher-disciple lineage relationship between the patriarchs.134
132 Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 286-387.
133 Nattier, “The Indian Roots,” 179–201.
134 Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism, 37.
Chen Chien-Huang similarly argues that the Pure Land Patriarchate differs from that of the Chan tradition. He states that it was created retrospectively to express esteem for the contribution of accomplished masters, who were looked up to as exemplars.135
Author Text 1st patriarch 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th First attempt to create a Pure Land patriarchate by Song Tiantai monks136
Yü determines that attempts to create a Pure Land patriarchal lineage began in the Song dynasty.137 She relates these lineage construction attempts to competition between the Tiantai and Chan lineages that existed at the time. It was during the Song that Chan, the dominant school of Chinese Buddhism at the time, constructed its notion of a patriarchal lineage.138 Since the monks who constructed the Pure Land patriarchate belonged to the declining Tiantai School, their attempts can be viewed as Tiantai’s response to a
precedent set by the construction of the Chan lineage.139
135 Chen Jianhuang, “Jindai queli huazong shisan wei zushi de jingguo jiqi shiyi,” Jingtu zong 4 (2013): 8-15.
136 Chart based on: Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism, 36, and Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 291-292.
137 Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism, 36-37.
138 Morton Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute Over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2010).
139 Yü, The Renewal of Buddhism, 37.
Daniel Getz suggests that the construction of a Pure Land patriarchal lineage was a means used by Tiantai monastics to re-impose monastic control over flourishing lay Pure Land groups during the Southern Song.140 He attests a close relationship between Tiantai and Pure Land communities at the time. Developing Stanley Weinstein’s definition,141 Getz defines school as possessing “a discrete self-contained doctrinal system, a continuous lineage, and/or some form of institutional autonomy.”142 Thus he too concludes that Chinese Pure Land doesn’t constitute an independent Buddhist school.
In an article about Pure Land and Chan in medieval China, Robert Sharf argues that the wish to be reborn in a Pure Land was present in all Chinese (lay and monastic) forms of Buddhism from the beginning and has its precursors in Indian Mahayana. Nianfo
practice, faith in Amitabha, and the so-called Pure Land sutras are common features of all Chinese Buddhists schools.143 Sharf, too, claims that there was no independent Pure Land school in medieval China, in the sense that there is no historical lineage of Pure Land Patriarchs and no distinctively Pure Land approach to Pure Land scriptures or practice,144 but rather that the notions of an orthodox Pure Land and an independent Chinese Pure Land school were first developed by Honen (法然) and further elaborated on by the Japanese Jodoshu (浄土宗) and Jodoshinshu (浄土真宗) schools.145 Sharf believes that even the term Pure Land-Chan syncretism is misleading because it presupposes the
140 Daniel A. Getz, Jr., “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies and the Creation of the Pure Land Patriarchate,” in Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, Jr., eds, Buddhism in the Sung (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 502.
141 Stanley Weinstein, “Buddhism, Schools of: Chinese Buddhism,” in Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987).
142 Getz, Jr., “T’ien-t’ai Pure Land Societies,” 477.
143 Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 282-331.
144 Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 302.
145 Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 298-301.
existence of two independent entities which are to be combined,146 and argues that there was never a particular Chan approach to Pure Land, but only different approaches, all based on Mahayana philosophy. 147
On the other hand, however, Damian John Gauci claims that Chinese Pure Land can indeed be seen as an autonomous sect. He argues that Pure Land possesses its own doctrinal corpus, philosophical underpinnings and a historical lineage. Gauci refers to Jiacai’s (唐迦才) oeuvre: his compiled biographies of the earliest devotees of the seventh-century Pure Land movement, and his philosophical work the Jingtulun (淨土 論). Regarding religious practice, Gauci highlights the role of Shandao’s (善導, 613-681 CE) Five Right Practices (五正行) and their emphasis on invocational nianfo (持名念 佛).148
An in-depth discussion of this question falls outside the scope of this paper. But of interest for this study is the fact that there have always existed a variety of approaches to Pure Land in Chinese Buddhism. Regardless of whether or not Chinese Pure Land existed as an independent school, the truth remains that it was practiced by both Chan and Tiantai adherents and constitutes a part of Chinese mainstream Buddhism in general. Also
noteworthy is the importance of Pure Land practices in lay Buddhism. I will therefore first discuss Pure Land’s relationship to lay Buddhist practice, and then return to an examination of different approaches to Pure Land within Chinese Buddhism.
146 Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 285.
147 Sharf, "On Pure Land Buddhism," 302.
148 Damian John Gauci, “Chan-Pure Land: An Interpretation of Xu Yun’s (1840-1959) Oral Instructions,” Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 24 (2011): 107.