Pure Land Buddhism ("...compassionate expedients of enlightening beings.")

Pure Land Buddhist Temple in Vancouver, British Columbia

Pure Land Buddhism has long been the most popular type of Buddhism throughout East Asia. Though Ch'an/Zen and Pure Land Buddhism outwardly seem quite different, they have been amalgamated from time to time by practitioners of both types of school, and two of the patriarchs or Grand Masters of the parent tradition of Pure Land Buddhism in China were also recognized Ch'an Masters.

Pure Land practice is centered on invocation of the name of Amitabha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, to purify the mind and experience spiritual rebirth in Amitabha's Pure Land in the West. The West is the direction of the setting sun, which symbolizes the cessation of mundane thoughts.

Just like so-called fundamentalists in other religions, followers of Buddhism lapsed from time to time into literalistic and dogmatic views of scriptural teachings. Hui-neng's resurrection of the inner meaning of the Pure Land symbolism is repeated over and over again in Ch'an and Zen lore through the ages. In his Dream Conversations, Zen Master Muso explains,

..Among masters of the various schools of Buddhism, including Zen Buddhism, have been those who encourage the Pure Land Buddhist practice of chanting the name of the Buddha of Infinite Light. Some types of Pure Land Buddhist teaching and practice are elementary and incomplete, but this is a matter of perspective. The Nirvana-sutra says, "Coarse words and fine speech all end up in ultimate truth." The Lotus Sutra says, "Productive labor and business do not contravene the character of reality." When you have awakened to the principle of the Great Vehicle, then all talk in the world, all activity, is the Great Vehicle of Perfect Meaning; so recitation of a Buddha name could hardly be called a lesser vehicle.

The masters who set up Pure Land Buddhism understood the profound principle of the Great Vehicle in their own minds, yet temporarily distinguished the Pure Land from the defiled land in order to guide ignorant people, drawing a distinction between self-power and Other-power. They were not ignorant themselves; these teachings are compassionate expedients of enlightening beings. Among believers in Pure Land Buddhism, however, there are those who invoke the Buddha's name with the notion that there is a Pure Land outside this defiled land. This cannot be called the Great Vehicle of Perfect Meaning.

Avalokitesvara and Mahasthamaprapta are names of supernal bodhisattvas traditionally associated with Amitabha Buddha. Shakyamuni is one of the names of Gautama Buddha. Hui-neng's symbolic interpretation of these names is typical of classical Ch'an and Zen teachings. Supernal bodhisattvas are often called "gods" or "goddesses" in Western writings on Eastern art and religion, but this is incorrect and misleading, as can be seen from the teachings of the masters themselves.

---Thomas Cleary, in his notes on the Sutra of Hui-neng---