Buddhism in China and Japan: Pure Land and Zen

Overview

Recall questions on Pure Land belief and the nembutsu, self-power and other-power, Honen and Shinran, the key Chan and Zen figures and Dogen, indigenous influences and modernity, and Mochizuki and de Bary.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What do Pure Land Buddhists believe?

   Model answer

   That Amitabha, having vowed as the monk Dharmakara to establish a land where beings could reach awakening, now receives into that pure land anyone who calls on him in sincere trust. Rebirth there is not the goal itself but a setting in which awakening becomes assured, and the practice is reliance rather than self-powered effort.

2. 2

   What is the nembutsu, and why is it practised?

   Model answer

   The recitation of Amitabha's name. Pure Land teachers present it as the practice suited to ordinary people in a degenerate age, when the demanding disciplines of the past are held to be beyond most; it is understood as an expression of entrusting rather than as a technique that earns anything.

3. 3

   Explain the difference between self-power and other-power.

   Model answer

   Self-power is progress made by one's own meditative and moral effort. Other-power is reliance on Amitabha's vow. Shinran pressed the distinction hardest, arguing that even the impulse to recite is given rather than achieved, and that trying to earn salvation is the very self-assertion that blocks it, a position some other Buddhists regard as close to abandoning the path.

4. 4

   Who were Honen and Shinran?

   Model answer

   Honen, in twelfth-century Japan, broke with the Tendai establishment to teach that recitation of Amitabha's name was sufficient, founding the Pure Land school. Shinran, his disciple, went further: he married and lived as neither monk nor layman, taught that a single moment of entrusting is decisive, and founded what became the True Pure Land school, now among the largest bodies of Japanese Buddhists.

5. 5

   Which texts and ideas underpin Pure Land?

   Model answer

   The Sukhavati sutras, which describe Amitabha's vows and his land, and the Contemplation Sutra. The doctrine of mappo, a final age in which the teaching has decayed and human capacity with it, supplies the argument that an easier path is not laxity but realism.

6. 6

   What is distinctive about Zen?

   Model answer

   Its claim to a direct transmission of awakening outside the scriptures, from mind to mind, so that seated practice and the teacher-student encounter matter more than doctrinal study. Zen presents awakening as the recognition of what is already the case rather than as something built up in stages.

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