Buddhist Schools of Thought

Although, theoretically, there are no gods in Buddhism, deities abound in that religion because of people's need for them.  First, Buddhas abound: those who have achieved complete enlightenment but not yet reached nirvana: the complete spiritual realm which they will arrive at when they die.  Those set on the path of Buddhahood but will not achieve supreme enlightenment hence nirvana until all are saved are called Bodhisattva.  Statues of Buddhas abound in China and are worshipped in the same fashion the Chinese worship their ancestors, except that their ancestors do not have statues but only a stone tablet bearing their names.  As Buddhism takes root in China, indigenous Buddhist denominations began to develop, and Chinese modifications of Buddhism started.  These included denominations such as Pure Land and Meditation (Chan) Buddhism, and the transformation of the Bodhisattva into a fixed female deity, Guanying.

1. Pure Land Buddhism:

Buddhist denomination developed during the Northern and Southern Dynasties Period (420-589), when China was again divided into several kingdoms, with the northern ones (the North Dynasty) controlled in the hands of invaders (the China north of the Yangtze River was often invaded in history by nomadic tribes outside of China), and the southern ones underwent a rapid succession of (Chinese) rulers.   Fearing the teachings of Siddartha Guatama, or Sakyamuni (meaning the sage of the Sakyas, since he was born the son of a king of the Sakya clan of the Kshatriya, or warrior, caste) might not last, and considering the confusing and degenerating states of Buddhist doctrines and monasteries, many thought hope for salvation lay with faith in the saving powers of the Buddhas, especially one called Amita, who was known for the efficacy for his vows (de Bary, 482).  Any one who called out his name: ami-tuo-fo, in good faith would be reborn in his Buddha-world of Pure Land.   Amita (meaning: Immeasurable Radiance) resides in the "Happy Land" or "Pure Land" to the Chinese, in the Paradise of the West.  (de Bary, 420)  This may sound very confusing to people who believe in a Buddhism that does not have deities, nor heaven in the Christian sense.  But we have to remember that Buddhism grew out of Hinduism that has many deities.  The influence of Hinduism is strong enough so that Siddartha Guatama himself is sometimes interpreted as part of a trinity: the Body of Essence, the Body of Bliss, and the Body of Transformation.  It was in the form of the last that Guatama lived on earth, an emanation of the Body of Bliss that dwelled in the heavens as a sort of supreme god; the Body of Bliss is an emanation of the Body of Essence that pervades and underlies the whole universe. (de Bary, 420)   This "trinity" of Siddartha Guatama's identity came from a trinity of the primeval gods in Hinduism, where, some historian argue, lay the basis of the "holy trinity" in Christianity.  But this interpretation obviously made Guatama a deity.  Together with Amita and some other Buddhas, they made Buddhism a polytheistic religion to some extent.    According to Tanluan (476-542), a patriarch of the Pure Land School, this pure land was created because of the merit accumulated by Amita in his lifetime (before he became a god).   This land is pure because according to Buddhism, the impermanence of this world is because nothing in this world is pure--all is made up of composites, therefore subject to decay and disintegration.  (de Bary, 416)  Thus only pure things would achieve permanence.  This pure land is achievable through single-minded prayers (c.f. the Christian emphasis on faith), which, along with the merit of Amita Buddha, is sufficient in guaranteeing entry into it  through rebirth.  (de Bary, 483-484)  On the other hand, because to attain one's entry into the Pure Land is selfish, one needs to distribute one's own merit among all to help others to enter it as well.  And after cultivation within the Pure Land, one should prepare to come back to this world to help more people attain it.  (de Bary, 484) Thus, in Pure Land Buddhism, the focus is single-minded prayers to achieve salvation.  There is no mention of the reading of Buddhist sutras.

2. Meditation (Chan) Buddhism.

Meditation, or Chan, Buddhism is perhaps the most Sinicized (rendered Chinese) of all Buddhist denominations.  Because of the initial difficulty and obscurity of Buddhist sutras to the Chinese audience, many of whom were Daoists, the Chinese emphasized an intuitive understanding with or without the reading of the sutras, which is the original meaning of Chan, or meditation.  The development of Chan Buddhism reached its height in the Tang Dynasty (618-906), which was, after the Han Dynasty, the greatest Chinese dynasty in history and the most prosperous, when Chinese cultural exchanges with the outside world reached its height.  Chinese monks went to seek Buddhist sutras in India, and Indian monks such as Bodhidharma came to preach in China (520- ) in the Sui Dynasty, a short lived dynasty before the Tang Dynasty.  The Silk Road linking China to India and to central Asia allowed many cultural exchanges between China and western/southern Asia, and the many Korean and Japanese students studying in China spread Buddhism to Korea and Japan. The Chan school of Buddhism emphasized long meditation followed by "sudden" awakening to the Truth.  Of all the Buddhist denominations in China, Chan and Pure Land give the least emphasis on doctrine, but they also differ.  While Pure Land emphasizes prayers to Amita, Chan calls for meditation, and the transmission of the message from master to disciple without words and phrases.  Thus in a Chan meditation session, master and disciples may be doing nothing but meditating in total silence for hours.  This emphasis on silent transmission is also reflected in Zen Buddhism in Japan.  When you see art influenced by Zen, such as bonsai (small manicured plants or trees in a pot), or a Zen style garden, you may notice the emphasis on peace and tranquility, which are conducive to meditation. Because their emphasis is on intuitive understanding, Chan Buddhism is not big on explaining things, but often uses parables to illustrate things, such as the parables given by the Buddhist teacher Yunmen, in the form of the highly esoteric statements "the old buddhas commune with the pillars," "Clouds on the southern mountains...(even a knife cannot cut through)," If clouds gather on the southern mountains, rain falls on the northern mountains," and "Rain on the northern mountains (not a single drop of rain can fall...)."  (de Bary, 515-516)  All three impossible situations.  The  reason why Yunmen gives these examples is to suggest that the very reason why we think these are impossible scenarios is because we have used  our intellectual abilities and consciousness: we have reasoned that old monks could not possibly have had sexual intercourse, and it is not possible to have rain but not a single drop of it falling, and so on.  Also, our separation of things in this world (e.g. into the northern and southern mountains, into rain and air, into soft clouds and hard objects ) makes it impossible for us to understand why clouds on the southern mountains leads to rain in the northern mountains, and why there is rain but it is not falling, and why there is cloud but it cannot be cut  through.  All this has violated the Chan teachings on cutting off consciousness, conceptual thinking, and phenomenal existence. Yet, Yunmen is not asking his disciples to completely demolish consciousness.  According to Buddhism, human reasoning is ultimately controlled by our deepest consciousness, the alaya consciousness (besides the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and mind), which is the seed or, to use our modern day language, the "mastermind" and "memory chip" of all other senses because it contains the seeds and traces of past actions.  The alaya consciousness, in its original and pure form, was good, but because it could not work alone, and had to be projected through the six senses, which were "contaminated," so to speak, its reflection of the true world became successively degenerated over the generations.  In order to restore the alaya's power to reflect the truth, one needs to completely rid of all existent reasoning, conceptions, and separation of the world into many things, in other words, problems associated with the other six senses.  True knowledge is achieved through intuiting that the world is an integral whole, hence, the 28 Indian Patriarchs and the Six Chinese Patriarchs [who were considered founders of the Chan School] see each other and see the same truth. (516) Hence although humans err in their views of the world and suffer,  there is the potential to change this and achieve happiness.  The relationship between suffering and happiness is the difference between what is manifest and what is potential.  The world is full of  things that are happening and that are potentially to happen, such as the Koreans going to the Buddhist temples (who are more to the east, hence morning comes earlier to them than to the Chinese), and the Chinese just about to do so.  But if one does not use one's intuition and just goes about the motions, one will not get the  truth.  (de Bary, 516)

3. How to restore alaya's potential to convey truth?

The manual on Chan meditations by Changlu Zongze in 1103 gives one an idea of how the true perception of truth could be achieved; the posture one should assume and the mental state to hold. (de Bary, 522-524)

 4. Another example of the indigenization of Buddhism in China: the Transformation of  the Bodhisattvah and reinterpretation of filiality

Besides the examples of the Pure Land and Chan Buddhist denominations that were very much Chinese creations, by 1600, the Chinese transformed the Bodhisattvah, meaning any one who has set on the path of Buddhahood but has not yet become a Buddha in order to remain in this world and save others, into a goddess called Guanyin, who protected the devout, the innocent, the filial, and children. (de Bary, 531-535)

Chinese Buddhists also attempted to reinterpret filiality in order to make Buddhism more acceptable in China.  They emphasized the importance of spiritual filiality instead of doing material things for one's parents: that the chief act of filial piety by children is to spiritually benefit the soul of the parents to facilitate their early achievement of Buddhahood. (529-531)