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Part Four. The Economy of Salvation
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part four The Economy of Salvation 150 ⁄ part four [3.87.209.162] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 08:55 GMT) 7. Form is Emptiness, and Emptiness Sucks Parts one, two, and three of this study have considered Hsinhsing ’s teachings in terms of the eschatological mood so dominant in Northern Chinese Buddhism and the universalism that became a prominent feature of Sui-T’ang Buddhism. Although both of these aspects ³rmly root his teachings in the concerns of the times, nothing more clearly indicates how representative they are than the doctrinal and institutional history of the Inexhaustible Storehouse and the chronicle of its home, the Hua-tu Temple in the capital city of Ch’ang-an. The Inexhaustible Storehouse, founded during the short-lived Sui dynasty, functioned as a charitible lending institution for people in need and a site of San-chieh cultus and institution ; it was also the focus of several of the imperial suppressions that they experienced ³ve times before the year 725. Historical records tell us that people μocked from all over the empire and vied for the chance to donate goods to the Storehouse. These goods were then lent to the needy at no interest and with no receipt, to be returned when the recipient was able. How did the Inexhaustible Storehouse ³t into the doctrinal structure outlined above? At the doctrinal level, the Inexhaustible Storehouse was an ingenious answer to the soteriological dilemma of sentient beings of the third level through a concrete practice of the universalism of the Hua-yen Sutra notion of the Bodhisattva’s inexhaustible storehouse of compassion and the nonduality of the Vimalak‡rti’s skillful activities on the behalf of suffering beings. Of course, no religious doctrine or practice exists outside of social context, and so, on a more institutional level, the Inexhaustible Storehouse utilized certain monastic regulations contained in the Vinaya to realize a charitable foundation in the general Chinese tradition of social welfare yet articulated within the framework of ultimate Buddhist concerns, a blending that proved extremely popular. On a cultic level, the Inexhaustible Storehouse of the Hua-tu ssu provided a focus for the practice of the Hsin-hsing’s followers, a cultic center apparently not amenable to a different physical or charismatic location as even Empress Wu’s attempts to duplicate its success ended in failure. At a yet broader level, the Inexhaustible Storehouse can be seen as a response to certain developments in the organization of Buddhist temples and patrons that reμect the tensions born of structural changes in the newly 151 urban, currency-based economy of the North in the ³fth and sixth centuries. Particularly within this latter aspect we are able see many of the techniques of organization, both legal and cultic, that Hsin-hsing employed but that were not unique to his teachings. These issues are the subject of chapter 7. Finally, chapter 8 gives a history of the institutional base of the Inexhaustible Storehouse in the capital city temple of the Hua-tu ssu, the one-time home of the Sui ³nance minister, and later in the “family ancestral temple” of Empress Wu in Loyang, both sites bespeaking another level of a movement more typically thought to be aligned with the Pure Land movements as a movement “of the people.” Here, too, I attempt an answer to (or evasion of) the question of why they were labeled “heretical” and proscribed by imperial edict. 152 ⁄ part four ...