monotheistic elements in early pure land buddhism

MONOTHEISTIC ELEMENTS IN EARLYPURE LAND BUDDHISMRoger J. Corless

In Bodhgaya, India, there is a somewhat neglected pink andwhite shrine bearing the following inscription :

Shree Buddha Gaya Stupa .

1944 A.D. - 2001B .S . This Stupa is built through the charity ofShreeman Raja Seth Baldev Das Birla of Pilano,Jaipur in memory of Lord Buddha the ninth incar-nation of Vishnu and is maintained by Arya(Hindu) Dharma Seva Sangh .Although the Pali Canon gives no indication that

Buddha regarded himself as God, and in fact is at pains toshow just the opposite (1), that he was 'god beyond gods'(devatideva) and 'teacher of gods and men', the Mahayana,while denying the existence of a Supreme God (Paramesvara)appears sometimes to accord monotheistic honours to one oranother Buddha. Of these, the best known is AmitabhaBuddha, whose Western Paradise of Sukhavati ('The HappyPlace', but more usually known in the Far East as, 'ThePure Land'), many universes beyond the setting sun, isdescribed in various sutras (2) . Devotion to Amitabhaappears at first glance to be so clearly monotheistic thateven such a carefully trained observer as the seventeenth-century Jesuit Father Nicolas Trigault, hearing the invo-cation to Amitabha in its Chinese form of A-mi-t'o andsomehow making of it Tolomg, presumed that he had found acorrupt Christian sect originally established by SaintBartholomew (Bartholomm) (3) .

It is my purpose here to open up discussion as to howclosely the figure of Amitabha fits with a monotheisticmodel . The Sino-Japanese cult of Amitabha shows a steadydevelopment from the time of the Sanskrit sutras (normallyassigned to around the beginning of the Christian era) upto the founding of J5do Shinshu ('True Pure Land Sect') by

Roger J . Corless 177

Shinran in 1262 A.D .

I shall restrict myself to discussingthe Wang-shgng-lun Chu (a), of T'an-luan (b), probablywritten near modern Taiyuan (h), Shanshi, between A .D. 534and 554, which is the earliest extant text to summarise andcodify the cult of Amitabha for the Sino-Japanese tradi-tion (4) . it is a sub-commentary on a hymn (gaths) with anauto-commentarial explanation in the form of a 'discussion'(upadesa), claiming (uncertainly) to have been written inSanskrit by Vasubandhu, and translated into Chinese by theNorth Indian Master Bodhiruci, who had arrived in China inA.D. 508 . Van-luau first comments on the gather, and thencomments on the upadega, which itself reproduces the gathera second time ; this makes for a meditative penetration ofthe subject matter, rather than a briskly read treatise .I shall concentrate on what Van-luau himself has to sayabout Amitabha, and ignore the titillating and much raisedquestion of whether or not the cult was influenced byChristianity, or Iranian sun-worship, or other non-Buddhistideas, except to remark in passing that I have found nothingin Van-luau that I cannot explain as a quite naturaldevelopment out of certain elements in classical Madhyamikaand Y'ogacara : the evidence for any extraneous influencesseems to me entirely circumstantial and insufficientlyliberated from the lost cause of the search for PresterJohn.

After a brief sketch of the life and works of T'an-luan, at present largely unknown to Western scholars, Ishall attempt the awesome task of defining God, or rather,Monotheism, and then try to fit T'an-luan's Amitabha intothis definition .

It is my hope that this preliminaryexcursus will provoke scholarly debate which might even-tually stir to lucid life the sleeping giant of ChristianityCompared With Buddhism.

VAN-LUAN

Van-luau was born near Wu-t'ai Shan, the mountain sacredto Marrlju§ri, about A .D . 488 (5) .

He was apparently apeasant. At fourteen he entered the Buddhist novitiateand became a gramana at a nearby monastery . He began acommentary on the Mahasamnipata (6), but this considerableanthology of thirty volumes proved too much for theearnest young monk, and his health broke . Leaving themonastery to travel in search of a cure, he had a visionof the Gate of Heaven opening in the sky before him, andfound that he was healed . In an effort to get rid ofsickness once and for all, perhaps so as to be able tofinish his commentary on the Mahasamnipata, he continued


travelling, looking for a Taoist Master who might give himthe formula for immortality . Somewhere south of theYangtze, he obtained an interview with T'ao Hung-ching (c)(A.D . 456-536), one of the best-known Taoists of thetime (7), and was given 'ten volumes of Scriptures on theImmortals' (8) . He then began to move back towards Wu-t'ai Shan, but interrupted his journey at Lo-yang about530 A.D . in order to speak to Bodhiruci . The account oftheir conversation as recorded in the Further Biographiesof Eminent Monks (HsU Kao-sAng Chuan) (e) is short and un-equivocal :

T'an-luan opened the coversation by saying,'is there anything in the Teaching of theBuddha which is superior to the methods forobtaining immortality found in this country'sScriptures on the Immortals?'

Bodhiruci spat on the ground and said,'What are you saying? There is no comparison!Where on this earth can you find a method forimmortality? Suppose that you could obtainyouth in your old age, and never die : evenhaving done that, you would still be rollingaround in the triple-world (trailokad-hatavah) ! (9) '

So he gave him the Scriptures on Contem-plation (10) and said, 'These are the recipesof the Great immortal (11) : if you rely uponhis practices, you will be liberated(vimoksyasi) from saisara .' (12)

Van-luau respectfully received the sutras, burnt hisTaoist books (13), and travelled to Taiyuan (h), where theEmperor (probably of Eastern Wei) set him up in a monas-tery . The rest of his life was spent in religiousexercises directed towards obtaining re-birth inSukhavati, teaching, writing and general medical practice .There he wrote the Wang-shgng-1un Chu, and there he died,facing the Western Paradise and surrounded by three hun-dred disciples, at dawn sometime during 554 A .D .

MONOTHEISM

Rather than engaging in a Faustian wrestling with thedefinition of 'God', it will be slightly easier to attempta list of attributes generally regarded as characterisinga monotheistic God . From the available studies on Mono-theism, which are in fact surprisingly few (14), I havedistilled the following six characteristics as essentialand universal :


1 Uniqueness : By definition, God must be, as the Upanisadssay, ekam na dvitiyam, 'One with no Second', the specialkind of 'one' which is not 'one' of a series .2 Creator : God is alone responsible for the creation, pre-servation and destruction of all that is : he may be this ina rather bloodless way as ' . . . the Platonic . . . fons et origoof human life' (15), or his creativity may imply a

' . . . Fatherhood of God involving intimate personal relationsas of those existing between a parent and his offspring' (16) .3 Omnipotency : Consequent upon God's sole responsibilityfor the creation, he is totally dominant over it .4 Omniscience : Nothing escapes the all-seeing eye of God ;he is totally wise, with a primarily visual wisdom (17) thatmay be symbolised by the sun (18), and totally just : againsthis judgments there can be no appeal . His wisdom is espec-ially directed towards knowing human activity (19) .5 Transcendence : The distance and the difference betweenGod and creation is in every respect immense ; this may besymbolised by the sky (20) .6 Eternity : The Creator, who may be regarded as veryold (21), outlives his creation, which is time-bound, whilehe is not .

Eliade seems to be on the point of fitting all SupremeGods into the Sky God motif (22) . Pettazzoni modifies thisat two points : (a) the Sky God is typically otiose, but theSupreme God is interventionist C23) ; (b) 'Not all SupremeBeings are Celestial Beings'(24) .

in the above list,characteristics four, five and six may be applied to the SkyGod, whereas one, two and three are more general. Theomnipotency and omniscience of the Supreme God entail inter-ventionism. All six characteristics may be applied insome measure to Amitabha, as will appear .

A complete study of Amitabha and Monotheism wouldrequire an investigation of the devotee's response toAmitabha, as well as an examination of Amitabha's relationto his devotees . I attempt only the latter here, althoughthere are several passages in the Wang-shgng-Iun Chu wherethe devotees, having worshipped Amitabha in body, speechand thought, appear to approach a raptus of a (?mono-)theistic type, and in this raptus, move without movingback into the everyday world to carry out Amit3bha's sal-vific work . - I suppose one might call this, 'mysticism',that trackless fen wherein have sunk scholars more famousthan I, and I am afraid I shall ingloriously refuse toenter it.


AMITABHA AND THE MONOTHEISTIC MODEL

Uniqueness

Amitabha is not the sole Buddha in the universe : the sutraswhich speak of him are preached by Sakyamuni, and Sukhavatiis a sort of space-station from which one goes to visit allother Buddhas .

. . . all the great company of Bodhisattvas,Sravakas and divinised men (25) will rain downdivine music, divine flowers, divine robes anddivine incense in the great gathering places ofall the Buddhas throughout the ten directions,and worship and praise all the merits of theBuddhas with well-articulated phrases . (26)

However, Amitabha is the sole Buddha in Sukhavati :There, the King of Great Treasure UnboundedIs enthroned upon wonderful flowers. (27)

So says the gather, and the commentary describes the thronein such lavish terms (e .g ., its decorative streamers areeach eighty-four thousand kotis of Mount Sumerus in length)that the supremacy of Amitabha is not left open to question .

2 Creator

Amitabha does not create the world . As in the PaliCanon (28), T'an-luan ignores cosmogeny as of no impor-tance, and concentrates on the fact of suffering (duhkha)in the world as we find it, and to which the creation ofSukhavati is directly related . Sukhavati was createdas follows . Long ago, the Bodhisattva Dharmakaraobserved the suffering of the world, and resolved torelieve it by setting up a 'Happy Land' (sukhavati) afterhe should have become a Buddha . The Larger Sukhavati-vyizhadivides this Resolution (pranidhana) of Dharmakara intoforty-eight parts (29) .

T'an-luan, who knows of thisdivision, re-writes the Resolution according to a differentscheme, which gives the sense of all forty-eight partswithout directly following them . For each part, T'an-luan has Dharmakara state the reason for the Resolution,according to the formula :

Because Dharmakara saw the deficiency x insamsara, he resolved to create the suffic-iency Y in Sukhavati .

The deficiences listed are quite varied : illness, incle-ment weather, travel difficulties, inability to hear orcomprehend Buddhist doctrines, insulting behaviour towardsBuddhas, etc .

In every case, Sukhavati is to have the


appropriate antidote . This is pre-determined to come aboutby the following formula, copied by T'an-luan from theSutra :

If Sukhavati shall not have the sufficiency Y,then may 1, Dharmakara, not become a fullBuddha .

When one becomes a Buddha, according to general Mahayanadoctrine, one obtains a 'Buddha Kingdom' (buddha-ksetra)over which one rules . Since all things are produced bythoughts (cf . Dhammapada 1 :1-2), the Buddha Kingdom is pro-duced by the content of the Resolution made at what iscalled the Causal Stage of the Bodhisattva Career .Sakyamuni tells us, in the Sutra, that Dharmakara is nowthe Buddha Amitabha, ruling over Sukhavati . By the in-flexible law of karma, then, this must mean that Sukhavatinow has all the qualities ordained for it in the forty-eight part Resolution of Dharmakara . Acting like aSupreme God, Amitabha Buddha, as the Bodhisattva Dharma-kara, has willed into existence both his own sovereignstate and his own realm, without in any way tampering withthe already-given order of the universe (karma) . Thisoccurs because of the enormous Power (prabhava) ofAmitabha, which conditions and is conditioned by the Reso-lution of Dharmakara . Explaining the 'perfection of thePower and the Resolution', T'an-luan says :

The present lordly, divine Power (tzu-tsaishgn-1i (j)) of Amitabha Tathagata originatesfrom the Forty-eight Resolutions of Dharma-kara Bodhisattva .

His power (1i (k)) iscomplete (ch'Ang (1)) because of his Resolu-tion (yUan (m)) ; his Resolution was perfect(chiu (n)) because of his Power .

The Reso-lution was not vain, and the Power is notempty. His Power and his Resolution gotogether, in the final analysis they are notdifferent: therefore, they are called,'perfect' (ch'gng-chiu (o)) . (30)

We may find it vexing that the result is also the cause, andvice-versa .

This is probably because we play billiards .Western philosophers tend to examine causality in space-time(A hits B, then B moves) and to ignore non-contiguous caus-ality (the filiality of Shun causes his evil parents andhalf-brother to become virtuous : Shu Ching, 1 .3 :12) andatemporal causality (yin and yang cause each other : e .g .,Tao Ttk Ching 2) . Abraham H . Maslow has pointed out (31)that, in a living organism, every cause is also an effect :Chinese philosophers have investigated this in preferenceto the 'billiards model', which to them is ludicrously un-balanced. Comparative causation models have been little


studied (32) : suffice it to say here that a Chinese isthoroughly at home with a reciprocal causation model .Discussing the 'nature' (hsing (q)) of Sukhavati, T'an-luan refers us back to the 'nature' of Dharmakara'sResolution, and then equates the two, 'because we cansay that the cause is in the effect' (33) .

The phraseis introduced so off-handedly, it must be an axiom .

As the Creator of Sukhavati, Amitabha watches overits inhabitants with a motherly (androgynous?) devotionwhich may remind us of Christ's comparison of himselfto a hen (Matt . xxiii .37) :

IThe gatha says :] 'Amitabha . . . stands firmin Good .'

'Stands firm' : this is like theYellow Swan, who guards her chicks, keepingthem safe until they are a thousand yearsold, before quitting : or the mother fish,who remembers to guard her fry while travers-ing a wadi, so that they are not harmed . (34)

3 Omnipotency

The Power of Amitabha is absolute : it fulfills all thedesires of those in Sukhavati, and none meet him withoutbenefit .

'May it be, [resolved Dharmakara] in my Land,that everyone, calling for what he seeks, willfeel his want fulfilled . . . .

May it be(also], when I become a-Buddha, that all whovalue meeting me may quickly realise theSupreme, Great Treasure [of perfect enlight-enment] .' (35)

This Power is a kind of 'grace', functioning in a manneranalogous to the sacramental 'Synergy of the ThreeMysteries' (sammitsu-kaji (t)), the linking of the bodily,vocal and mental activities of humans and Buddhas, whichone finds most clearly in Shingon (36) :

Because ordinary people (prthag-jana) buildup transgressions through the three activi-ties of body, speech and mind, rollingaround in the triple-world without end, theBuddhas and Bodhisattvas employ the adornmentof their three activities of body, speech andmind, to cure the false activities of beings(sattva) . (37)


4 Omniscience

The Name 'Amitabha' ('Immeasurable Light') is itself asacrament of omniscience . For Van-luan, as frequentlyelsewhere, light symbolises knowledge . The light ofAmitabha extends throughout the phenomenal universe :

According to the Smaller Sukha^ativyuhapreached in the city-state of Sravasti, theBuddha ISakyamuni] explained Amita Tathagata'sName thus : 'Why is his Name AMITAI-ABHA]?That Buddha's light (abha) is measureless(amita), illuminating the lands in the tendirections without being hindered . . .' (38)

The light is both physical and mental :When that light suffuses objects, it pene-trates from the outside to the inside ; whenthat light suffuses the mind, it puts an endto ignorance . (39)

The Name 'Amitabha' is indissolubly linked to 'InfiniteWisdom' which is Amitabha's true 'essence', Chinese :i (u) :

As that Tathagata's light is the image(hsiang (v)) of his wisdom, so his Name is[the image] of his essence . . . .

The Buddha'slight is an image of his wisdom . . . . The un-impeded light (amitabha) of that Tathagata'sName (Amitabha) is able to disperse theignorance of all beings, and bring theirResolution to completion . (40)

This is a most important consideration, for on it dependsthe efficacy of the practice, which was to become centralwith Honen and Shinran, of Invoking Buddha (nien-fo ( w),Japanese : nembutsu) : the recitation of the Name 'is'(sacramentally) perfect enlightenment . (41)

5 Transcendence

The everyday Japanese word for 'heaven', gokurakukoku (x),is a translation of Sukhavati, and it is understood in anunsophisticated way as a post-mortem paradise similar tothe abodes of the gods (devaloka) . However, this is notat all how T'an-luan understands the term . For him,Sukhavati is transcendent in every way possible, quite out-side the scheme of heavens and hells : 'it surpasses theknowledge of the triple-world' (42) ; 'it is sprung fromtranscendent (lokottara) good roots' (43) .

Above all,it is 'pure' (ching (aa)), i .e ., it is not sullied by any-thing conditioned or by anything conceivable . T'an-luan


neatly says, 'Transcending existence, it yet exists' (44) .That is, it is extra-phenomenal (outside samsara), but itis not a phantasm . Symbolic of this, Sukhavati is placedin the sky, and very far away (45) ; the English reader isstrongly reminded, on reading about the glittering, dis-tant Sukhavati, of the Christian heaven as pictured by theMetaphysical Poets (46), and this is no doubt why gokuraku-koku is taken to mean 'heaven' by the Japanese layman .

6 Eternity

Another name for Amitabha is 'Amitayus', 'ImmeasurableLife' :

The life-span of that Buddha together withthat of the inhabitants lof Sukhavati] is ameasureless (amita) and boundless uncountableaeon (asamkhyaya-kalpa) . . . .

The life-spanAmitayus Tathagata is so long that itsmeasurements are inconceivable . (47)

The Sanskrit past passive participle amita, 'unmeasured',is represented in Chinese by the phrase wu-liang (ac),'without a liang', which I would claim means precisely,'without a standard of measurement', 'unquantifiable' (48) .The liang (ad) was a standard measure of capacity .

Itsinterior, base and handles held fixed amounts ; it weigheda fixed amount ; it gave out a certain musical note whenstruck (49) .

If the life-span of Amitayus (and the lightof Amitabha, and, according to T'an-luan, everything con-nected with Sukhavati) is said to be, 'without a liang',it must be in principle immeasurable, not just difficultto measure because in fact very big . Sukhavati is, 'wide,Without limits or bounds' (50) ; it is 'like the sky' (51),which means that standards of measurement are useless :'it is not at all analogous th the measuring of afield' (52) . Sky or space (akasa) is commonly listed inBuddhism as an unconditioned factor (asamskrta-dharma) anda symbol of nirvar}a, which is also unconditioned.

Inbrief, then, Amitabha, Sukhavati, and the inhabitants ofSukhavati, are unconditioned, and therefore, non-temporalor eternal (53) .

CONCLUSIONS

According to the Wang-shtkng-lun Chu of T'an-luan, we can saythen, that Amitabha functions like a Supreme God in thefollowing ways :

(i) He is unique in his own realm of Sukhavati .


(ii) He is the creator of his realm, the source of allgood in it, and the parent-like protector of its inhabitants .(iii) He is omniscient and all-seeing within and outside ofhis realm, and especially concerned with knowing humanactivity, so that he may remove ignorance .(iv) He is utterly transcendent, visualised as living in

the Western sky .(v) He is eternal .

On the other hand, he is different from a Supreme Godin that :

(i) He is only one of many Buddhas, each with his ownrealm .(ii) He does not create, sustain or destroy the universe

as a whole, nor is he a 'Ground of Being' for the universeas a whole .(iii) He does not judge or punish .

One might also wish to say that Amitabha is not aSupreme God because he is not 'Wholly Other' : this distinc-tion is commonly made by Japanese scholars (54) . However,can one not ask, 'Ts the Wholly Other a red herring?' Theterm seems to have been introduced by Christians as a pro-tection against what were considered 'pantheistic tendenciesin oriental mysticism.' Transcendency was opposed toimmanency ; the former applied to God, the latter to pan-theism . But the Qur'an, a book that cannot readily beaccused of pantheism, links the transcendency of God withHis immanence in the repeated invocation to Allah (WhollyOther) the Merciful (immanently involved), and even hasAllah say :

We indeed created man ; and We know what hissoul whispers within him, and We are nearerto him than the jugular vein. (55)

The idea of transcendence in Theravada, it has been claimed,is based on the break between permanence and imperma-nence (56) .

This is also true for T'an-luan, except thathe goes on to hypostasise permanence as a heavenly realmwhich, further, is actually unconditioned and so beyondhypostasisations and even beyond permanence and imperma-nence . The worshipper may begin with the idea that he is'going' to be 'born' in a 'realm', but that realm trans-cends all ideas, such that when he arrives there, conceptslike 'arriving', 'being born', 'being other than or thesame as the Buddha', disappear. One faithfully invokesthe Buddha's Name, and this,

. . . is like ice thrown onto a blazing fire .The fire is fierce, so the ice disappears :but as the ice disappears, the fire goes out .Although a man of the lowest class (57) doesnot know that Dharmata is unarisen, simply


by the power of invoking the Buddha's Name, hemakes the Re-Birth wish, and resolves to be bornin that Land. That Land is the Realm of NonArising (wu-shtng chieh (ae)/anutpada-dhatu),so, though he falsely views it as 'birth', the'fire' [of his false view] is automatically putout . (58)

This appears to be mysticism, and I must stop .

NOTES

1 See, for instance, the hilarious story at Digha-nikaya11 :67 of the bhikkhu who wondered what happened toearth, water, fire and wind when they disappeared . Heis passed up the heavenly bureaucracy by the ignorantgods until he reaches Brahma himself who, after a bitof bluffing, has to admit that only the Buddha knowsthe answer.

2 Kotatsu Fujita lists two hundred and ninety sutras inChinese and thirty-one in Sanskrit which have some men-tion of Amitaaba ha and Sukhavati .

(Genshi Jodo shiso noKenkyu, Tokyo : Iwanami Shoten, 1970, pp . 141-164)

Ofthese, three (the Larger and Smaller Sukhavativynha,and the so-called Amitaturdhyana Sutra) have becomeaccepted as 'the' Sukhavati sutras . See Sacred Booksof the East (hereafter SBE), vol . 49, pt . 2, pp . 1-103and 161-201.

3 Henri de Lubac, S .J ., Aspects du Bouddhisme, t . 2,'Amida' .

Paris : Editions du Seuil, 1955, p. 331.4 Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo (hereafter T .), no . 1819 : vol .

40, pp . 826-844 . For a translation and analysis, seemy Dissertation (Ph.D ., University of Wisconsin, 1973),T'an-luan's Commentary on the Pure Land Discourse (here-after TLC) ; abstract in Dissertation Abstracts Inter-national (hereafter DAI), 34 :9, p . 6093-A .

5 The traditional date is A.D . 476 . For a criticism ofthis date, see Hsiao Ching-fen, The Life and Teachingsof T'an-luan, Princeton Theological Seminary Th .D .Dissertation, 1967 (DAI, 68-258), pp . 29-31 .

For amore complete account of the life of T'an-luan than ispossible here, see ibid ., pp . 15-66 and TLC, pp . 5-11 .

6 Nanjio's catalogue, entry 61 .7 For an account of his ideals and methods, see William

C . Doub II, A Taoist Adept's Quest for Immortality : APreliminary Study of the Chou-shih Ming-t'ung Chi byT'ao Hung-ching (A.D . 456-536), University of Washing-ton Ph .D . Dissertation, 1971 (DAI, 71-24,030) .

8 This is the interpretation given to the phrase hsien


ching shih chUan (d) by M. Michel Strickman, a doctoralcandidate of the University of Paris studying T'aoHung-ching with whom I talked in Kyoto during thesummer of 1975 .

9 The phenomenal world, divided into the realms of desire(kama) , form (rupa) , and formlessness (arupa) .

10 I interpret kuan ching (f) not as the common abbrevia-tion for the Amitayurdhyana Sutra but, on internalevidence from T'an-luan's text, as the three 'Pure LandSutras' (note 2, supra) considered as a group .

SeeTLC, pp . 8-9, 90, and p . 92, note 10 .

11 Ta-hsien (g), i .e ., Amitabha, who is also calledAmitayus ('He of Immeasurable Life') .

See below, p . 9f .Ta-hsien might also mean 'The Greatest Immortal' .

12 T . 50 :470b25-cl .13 Apparently a hagiographical hyperbole, for he later

quotes from the alchemical and medicinal texts .14 The only complete phenomenological study (apart from the

etiological studies of, e .g., Fr . W . Schmidt and E .B .Tylor) appears to be Raffaele Pettazzoni, The All-KnowingGod, trans . H .J . Rose, London : Methuen, 1956 .

E.O .James, The Concept of Deity, London : Hutchinson, 1950,has many valuable insights which must, however, be combedout from a brilliant but unconvincing Anglican teleology .Pettazzoni also has a valuable little article, 'TheSupreme Being : Phenomenological Structure and HistoricalDevelopment' in The History of Religions : Essays inMethodology, e d . by Mircea Eliade and Joseph M . Kitagawa,Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1959, pp . 59-66 .Something can also be gained from G . Van der Leeuw,Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans . J .E .Turner, New York : Harper and Row, 1963, vol . 1, chapter21, and Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion,trans . Rosemary Sheed, New York : Meridian Books, 1963,chapter 2 . None of these studies is of direct assis-tance in understanding Amitabha : Pettazzoni (1956 :pp . 126-7) discusses him solely within the context ofhis form in the Tibetan mandala, without warning thereader of this very special limitation, and James mis-takes Amitabha for a Bodhisattva (p . 66) .

15 E .O . James, op . cit ., p . 157 .16 idem .17 Pettazzoni, 1956 : p . 5 .18 ibid., p . 819 ibid ., p . 14 .20 Eliade, op . cit ., p . 109 .21 idem .22 ibid ., pp . 11Of .23 Pettazzoni, 1959 : p . 63 .


24 ibid ., p . 64 .25 T'ien-j.n (1) does not mean 'gods and men' in T'an-luan .

See TLC, p . 184, note 22 .26 T . 40 :833b25-28 .

TLC, pp . 192f .27 T . 40:831b29 .28 At least fifteen passages in the Sutta Pitaka discuss

the avyakatta-vatthuni (undecided topics) of cosmologi-cal/cosmogenic speculation . The most famous passageis in the Cula-Malufikya Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 1 :429-430) wherein cosmological speculation is compared todiscussion about a poisoned arrow with which one hasbeen hit : it is useless, and will end in death .

29 According to the Chinese text followed by T'an-luan .The Sanskrit differs . See SBE, vol . 49, pt . 2, pp .12-22, 73-75 .

30 T . 40 :84Oal3-16 .31 A .H . Maslow, Motivation and Personality, New York :

Harper, 1954, pp . 27-31 and passim .32 A beginning workshop on this was held at the meeting of

the Association for Asian Studies in Boston, April, 1974 .33 kuo chung shuo in ku (r) ; T . 40 :828c4 .34 T . 40 :830a23, 27-29 .

There is a literary allusion tothe Lieh-i ChUan (s) of Emperor W9n of Wei (220-227) .The Yellow Swan is interpreted as the Crane .

35 T . 40 :83lb9-lO ; 832c25-26 .36 Yoshito S . Hakeda, Kukai : Major Works, New York and

London : Columbia University Press, 1972, p . 92 .37 T . 40 :839b25-27 .38 T . 40 :827b2-4 .

Cf. SBE, vol . 49, pt . 2, pp . 97f . (aslightly different text) .

39 T . 40 :837al9-2040 T . 40 :835bl3, 15-16, 19-20 .41 TLC, pp . 218-226 ; also pp. 171-176 .4243444546

striking in this regard .47 T . 40 :827b5-6 ; 826c4 .48 Internal evidence suggests to me that Tan-luau re-

ferred to a simple Sanskrit-Chinese word list, but wasotherwise unacquainted with Sanskrit .

49 William Raymond Gingell, The Ceremonial Usages of theChinese, London : Smith, Elder and Co ., 1852, p. 61 .

50 T . 40:828b2 .51 idem.52 T . 40:828b17-18 .53 Sukhavati had its beginning in time, but it was created

shAng-kuo san-chieh tao (y), T . 40 :827c29 .ch'u-shih shan-kin shtkng (z), T . 40 :828b20 .ch'u yu, &rh yu (ab), T . 40:830a20.SBE, vol . 49, pt . 2, p . 91 .The 'Ascension-Day Hymn' of Henry Vaughan is especially


when Dharmakara penetrated to timelessness (T . 40 :828b29-c4), so that its 'nature' does not partake oftime .

54 See, e .g., Ryojin Se9a, 'Dharmakara Bodhisattva',Eastern Buddhist, vol . 1, no . 1 (New Series), Sept .1965, pp. 64-78 (esp . p . 66) .

55 Qur'Bn 50 :15 . A .J . Arberry, The Koran Interpreted,London : Allen and Unwin, 1955, vol . 2, p. 234 .

56 Ninian Smart, 'Problems of the Application of WesternTerminology to Buddhism . . .', Religion, vol . 2, pt . 1(Spring 1972) , p . 39 .

57 Before their full acceptance into the qualitylessSukhavati, beings are grouped in nine classes of de-creasing virtue . Persons of the lowest class are eviland ignorant, but have not denied the Buddha or hisDharma: such denial permanently excludes one fromSukhavati .

See T. 40 :833c20-834al4 and TLC, pp . 198-204 .

58 T . 40 :839b3-7,

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monotheistic elements in early pure land buddhism

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