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8. The Suppressions of the Three Levels Movement The bulk of this work has been concerned with describing Sanchieh doctrines and attempting to place them within the broader context of Indian and Chinese Buddhist thought and practice. From this it should be clear that, whatever else may be said about their religious ethos, their doctrine and its institutionalization was far from unusual and can be described as well within the norms of Chinese and even Indian Buddhist doctrine. Given that new religious movements typically expend a great deal of energy explaining their relationship to the norm, this is not surprising. Nonetheless, the San-chieh drew imperial ire and sanctions no less than ³ve times over a period of approximately one hundred and ³fty years, leading to the eventual loss of their texts until the beginning of this century. This chapter, then, examines the possible causes for those suppressions in the context of the implementation of their economy of salvation, the Inexhaustible Storehouse of the Hua-tu Temple. The Hua-tu Ssu and the Founding of the Inexhaustible Storehouse The San-chieh practice of the Inexhaustible Storehouse described in chapter 7 was largely tied to a particular temple, the Hua-tu ssu 5E± (Temple of Conversion and Salvation) in the cosmopolitan capital of the newly united empire, Ch’ang-an. A review of the history of that temple suggests that many aspects of the movement need to be reevaluated, especially regarding the source of their support and the causes of their suppressions. In terms of the former, in spite of the fact that the San-chieh is generally characterized as a movement oriented towards the masses, a review of the institutional record of the Inexhaustible Storehouse makes it clear that the movement also received considerable support from the highest levels of Chinese society from its founding in the Sui throughout the T’ang dynasty. Once this becomes clear, new interpretations of their suppressions also are suggested. Because of their emphasis on the doctrine of decline the persecutions have 189 consistently been seen in light of doctrinal issues and their implications, that is, as the rulers’ response to the implications of the doctrine of decline or the rulers’ bowing to pressure from other schools and movements offended by the exclusivism of the San-chieh universalism. The belief in the lowered capacity of sentient beings is seen as reμecting poorly on the emperor’s reign and his or her ability to institute just rule or to proclaim the truth and appoint the guardians of that truth. Or again the decline doctrine is seen to be linked to millennial and apocalyptic movements of mass unrest and therefore a threat to the social fabric. Thus it is assumed that the rulers’ political and social concerns were somehow threatened or undermined by the implications of the decline doctrine. While this seems to be a reasonable assumption, I hope to indicate some of the shortcomings of this view and suggest that, in reducing historically complex situations to a single explanation , it invests those situations with a homogeneity not actually evident. Further, although in one sense this approach seeks to point out the ideological side of religious doctrine, because of its reductive nature it does so at the expense of the political nature of politics. Although I cannot offer a neat and easy alternative to this explanation, I suggest that ³delity to the complex and often obscure nature of the historical record leaves us no choice and is, if not the happiest of conclusions, the methodologically preferable approach. Previous Explanations Although the San-chieh enjoyed periods of great popularity, their teachings or practices were proscribed ³ve times over a span of roughly two hundred years: in 600 by Sui Wen Ti, in 694 and 699 by Empress Wu, and in 721 and 725 by Emperor Hsüan-tsung. Because of this their texts were also often (but not always) excluded from the of³cial canon of Buddhist scriptures . Most accounts of these suppressions follow Yabuki Keiki, the pioneering scholar of the San-chieh, and attribute them to the belief in the decline of the dharma and the attendant pessimistic evaluation of living beings’ capacity to receive, practice, and realize the Buddha-dharma. From this is drawn the conclusion that in periods when a strong patron of Buddhism is in power the implications of the doctrine of decline cast aspersions on the ruler’s ability to exercise divine rule, manifest the virtues of benevolent leadership, bring peace and...

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