Chapter 97. The Dharma Comes East: Chinese Buddhism, Chan and Pure Land

Buddhism was the first great foreign religion to take root in China. Within a few centuries it had become, in John Clark Archer’s words, the religion of a land that stayed “without doubt Confucian” in its general culture [Archer, Faiths Men Live By, #55131, ch. 3]. This chapter follows that process. It covers the first monks, the adaptation of Indian doctrine to Chinese categories, and the schools of Tiantai, Pure Land and Chan. It also covers the cycle of imperial patronage and persecution. Throughout, the tradition’s own stories are set against Sam van Schaik’s text-critical reading of the Dunhuang manuscripts.

Arrival and Sinicisation

Red Pine gives the earliest date: “As early as A.D. 65, a community of Buddhist monks was reported living under royal patronage in the northern part of Kiangsu Province, not far from the birthplace of Confucius, and the first monks had probably arrived a hundred years earlier” [Red Pine (tr.), The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #51474, Introduction]. He explains how the Chinese first understood the newcomers: “When Buddhism came to China, Tao was used to translate Dharma and Bodhi. This was partly because Buddhism was viewed as a foreign version of Taoism” [#51474, note 1]. The Encyclopedia of World History says missionaries travelled the Silk Road “until cut off by Muslim forces in the eighth century.” It calls Buddhism “the single most influential foreign ideology that affected the Chinese civilization until modern times” [Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, Silk Road essay].

The sources explain Buddhism’s success through adaptation. Siroj Sorajjakool argues that early monastic Buddhism grew slowly because it “did not go well with the traditional concept of ancestor worship that promoted marriage and family.” Mahayana did better, he says, because its “concept of heavenly beings… could accommodate ancestor worship” [Sorajjakool, World Religions for Healthcare Professionals, #35015, ch. 5 “Chinese Religions”]. The Pure Land master Chin Kung describes the adaptation from inside the tradition: “The temples had a Chinese appearance, the monks and nuns clothing was in the Chinese style. If the temples had followed Indian design, the Chinese would not have wanted to enter such a foreign looking place” [Chin Kung, General Buddhism: The Art of Living, #54441, p. 31].

The sangha grew very large. Red Pine cites a northern census of 477 that counted 6,500 temples and nearly 80,000 clergy. Less than fifty years later another census counted 30,000 temples and 2,000,000 clergy, “about 5 percent of the population.” He adds that this “undoubtedly included many people who were trying to avoid taxes and conscription” [#51474, Introduction]. That remark anticipates the later fiscal case against the monasteries. Hui-lin’s essay of 435 had already called Confucianism and Buddhism “equally true” [#51474, note 25].

The Schools: Tiantai and Pure Land

Tiantai “was founded on Mount Tiantai in southeastern China by the monk Chiyi (Chih-I, 538–597 C.E.), during the Sui dynasty. It focused on the Lotus Sutra… as its central text.” It taught that existence was “real but impermanent and insubstantial” and that one should follow the middle path [Encyclopedia of World History, #5204, “TIANTAI (T’IEN T’AI)”]. Van Schaik contrasts Zhiyi’s “voluminous writings,” an “ambitious attempt to synthesize” all meditation methods under calm (śamatha) and insight (vipaśyanā), with Bodhidharma’s “modest” text [van Schaik, The Spirit of Zen, #51289, ch. 3].

Pure Land was the popular counterpart. According to Popular Deities of Chinese Buddhism, “the worship of Amitabha Buddha originated in India but took firm roots in China.” It appealed “especially to those who are not attracted by scriptural studies… but possessing great faith,” and “soon spread from China to its neighbouring countries like Vietnam, Korea and Japan.” The text names the Sukhavativyuha and Amitayus sutras as its sources and calls Dharmakara’s Eighteenth Vow “the basis of the Pure Land” [Popular Deities of Chinese Buddhism, #54425, “Amitabha”]. The shorter sutra itself places Sukhāvatī “past 100,000 myriad buddha realms toward the western direction.” There, “sentient beings experience neither physical pain nor mental suffering,” among “seven rows of palm trees” and ponds “covered by jeweled lotuses” and “lined with golden sand.” Buddhas “as numerous as the sands of the river Ganges” praise it [The Display of the Pure Land of Sukhāvatī (84000, Toh 115), #54211, 1.2–1.3]. The 84000 translators note that Chinese versions made in 240–400 CE “spread through China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam” and that these versions “appear to embellish the description” [#54211, Introduction].

Bodhidharma: Legend and History

According to Red Pine, the tradition makes Bodhidharma the “patriarch of millions of Zen Buddhists and students of kung-fu.” Legend credits him with bringing tea: he cut off his eyelids to stay awake, and “where they fell, tea bushes grew.” Red Pine concedes that “it’s become impossible to separate fact from fiction,” and that “at least one Buddhist scholar… doubts that Bodhidharma ever existed.” His own sketch has Bodhidharma born c. 440 as a Pallava prince and arriving by sea c. 475. In this sketch he dies in 528 “poisoned by a jealous monk,” a detail Red Pine notes comes from the Transmission of the Lamp of 1002 and not from the earliest biography [#51474, Introduction].

Van Schaik is more sceptical. The only contemporary witness, a record of the Luoyang monasteries, calls Bodhidharma “a foreigner from Persia” who claimed to be 150 years old and “chanted the name of the Buddha for several days.” Van Schaik treats the south Indian royal birth as a conventional honorific and cites Jeffrey Broughton’s view that an Iranian master on the Silk Road is “more likely.” The audience with Emperor Wu (“None at all… Emptiness, nothing sacred”) first appears “some two centuries after the event” [van Schaik, #51289, ch. 3, ch. 9].

Both authors accept the Two Entrances and Four Practices as Bodhidharma’s most reliable teaching. Entrance by principle demands “a profound faith that sentient beings… are the same in their true nature”: “sit steadily and gaze at a wall” [#51289, ch. 9]. Entrance by practice comprises “suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing the Dharma” [Red Pine, #51474, Outline of Practice]. The other sermons are disputed. Yanagida attributes the Bloodstream Sermon to the Oxhead school and the Breakthrough Sermon to Shen-hsiu [#51474, Introduction]. The Bloodstream Sermon says “the path is zen” and “Seeing your nature is zen”; the Breakthrough Sermon reinterprets Pure Land recitation: “If it’s not present in your mind, your mouth chants an empty name” [#51474, note 1; Breakthrough Sermon].

Shaolin. Red Pine writes that Shaolin was built in 496 “for another meditation master from India, not for Bodhidharma.” Bodhidharma “is honored as the founder” of Shaolin kung-fu, but “no early records mention him teaching any exercise or martial art” [#51474, Introduction]. Health literature presents the related exercise arts as temple inheritances. Penelope Ody calls t’ai-chi “one of the many styles of Qigong,” and says “the original temple-style t’ai-chi” was “preserved by generations of the Yang family” [Ody, Practical Chinese Medicine, #69064, “Inner Balance from T’ai-chi”]. In this literature the Bodhidharma–martial arts link is a founding tradition, not a documented fact.

The Masters of the Lanka and the Making of a Lineage

Van Schaik’s central thesis is that the textbook patriarchal line is “a retrospective creation, a ‘string of pearls’ with only one representative for each generation” [#51289, ch. 3]. The Dunhuang Masters of the Lanka preserves teachings rather than legends. Daoxin, who settled on Shuangfeng Mountain in 624, was “the first Zen teacher who left clear and specific instructions on how to practise sitting meditation.” His first technique was “mindfulness of the Buddha, that is, visualization of a buddha and recitation of his name” [#51289, ch. 12]. Van Schaik generalises the point: Pure Land niànfó practices “were especially popular at the time of the early teachers of Zen, and became part of Zen practice at an early stage” [#51289, ch. 3].

In van Schaik’s account, politics shaped the lineage. Shenxiu “gained the patronage of the empress Wu Zetian,” and “the inevitable political struggles over who was the true inheritor” followed. The Platform Sutra‘s verse contest sets Shenxiu’s “Strive to polish it at all times” against Huineng’s “Original bodhi has no tree.” Van Schaik judges it “almost certainly a fabrication,” “a political device to claim authenticity for a particular Zen tradition in eighth-century China.” He adds that Hongren “had no interest in nominating a single successor.” He also records the practitioners’ answer. Shibayama Zenkei held that transmission “transcends historical concern,” and John McRae wrote of the legends: “Those images are not true, and therefore they are more important” [#51289, ch. 3; see also Wikipedia: Lineage (Buddhism)].

Patronage, Persecution and the Three Teachings

Court favour could be lavish. Empress Dowager Ling’s Yung-ning pagoda of 516 “nearly exhausted the imperial treasury” [Red Pine, #51474, Introduction]. Under the Song, “Zen monks became abbots of most of the public monasteries in China” [van Schaik, #51289, ch. 3]. Suppression came in four waves:

[Wikipedia: Four Buddhist Persecutions in China]

The edict of 845 states the Confucian case directly: “if one man does not plow, others feel hunger; if one woman does not tend the silkworms, others go cold.” It reports more than 4,600 monasteries destroyed and 260,500 monks and nuns returned to lay life, and it calls Buddhism “a foreign religion.” The same purge struck Nestorian and Zoroastrian clergy and “most likely led to the disappearance of Zoroastrianism in China.” Confucians such as Han Yu charged that monasticism “eroded the loyalty of son to father, and subject to ruler” [Wikipedia: Huichang persecution of Buddhism].

Synthesis followed. Yongming Yanshou (904–976) worked under the protection of the Wuyue kings. He fused Chan, Tiantai, Huayan and Pure Land and held Chan “fully compatible” with nianfo [Wikipedia: Yongming Yanshou]. Archer describes the settlement: Buddhism “took its place as one of the ‘three teachings'”; it “fused with Taoism, but did not supplant it”; “Confucianism held its place in morals.” He also quotes the saying that “to understand China, one must see China in the light of Buddhism” [Archer, #55131, ch. 3].

Guanyin and the Popular Pantheon

Popular Deities of Chinese Buddhism calls Kuan Yin “easily the most popular of all the Deities of the entire pantheon.” It notes that “in most of the Buddhist lands, the male form is predominant but in China, Kuan Shih Yin manifests in various female forms,” such as the White-robed and Child-giving forms. The text connects this with the earlier worship of “female Taoist Deities, in the forms of ‘Niang-Niang'” [#54425, “Kuan Yin”]. This lay devotion to Amitabha and Guanyin was the setting from which the White Lotus tradition (Chapter 102) later grew.

Key points

• Red Pine dates a Buddhist community under royal patronage in Kiangsu to 65 CE. Buddhism was read as foreign Taoism, and “Tao” translated Dharma and Bodhi (#51474).
• Sinicisation meant accommodating ancestor worship (#35015) and Chinese forms of temple, dress and teaching (#54441).
• Tiantai (Zhiyi, 538–597) centred on the Lotus Sutra. Pure Land promised rebirth in Sukhāvatī and spread to Vietnam, Korea and Japan (#5204, #54425, #54211).
• The only contemporary witness calls Bodhidharma a Persian who recited the Buddha’s name. The Emperor Wu story is two centuries later, and no early record links him to martial arts (#51289, #51474).
• Van Schaik calls the Huineng–Shenxiu contest a probable fabrication serving lineage politics (#51289).
• Pure Land recitation was part of Chan from the start (#51289).
• Four persecutions (446–955) combined fiscal, Taoist and Confucian motives. According to the reference shelf, the 845 purge also “most likely” ended Zoroastrianism in China.
• Yanshou’s synthesis, the “Three Teachings” settlement and a feminised Guanyin bound Buddhism into Chinese society (#55131, #54425).