Luminous Bliss: A Religious History of Pure Land Literature in Tibet

Introduction

xxv Introduction This book is written as a record of the religious literature as inspired by an impressive solar deity, which emerged from a Mahayana polytheistic universe and attained over the centuries trans-local eminence and unequivocal soteriological authority. Its transformation into a pan-Asian religious phenomenon, known as Pure Land Buddhism, is closely linked with the astral legends of buddha fields (Skt. buddha-kṣetra), or pure lands. Despite the salient role of pure lands for the expression of Mahayana Buddhism in India and its growth beyond, for the most part their cultic legacy has had little impact on Western academic studies of Buddhism, which, if they dealt with the subject at all, have been preoccupied with the advent of Buddha Amitābha and his Pure Land in China and Japan. There are several explanations for this neglect and lack of emphasis. To start with, there are regrettably few accurate and readable translations of indigenous Pure Land scriptures currently available in Chinese, Japanese , and Tibetan—a reality of the scholarly world that reflects a lack of academic curiosity in a tradition that superficially resembles monotheism.1 Moreover, the obscure origins of buddha fields and their insignificant presence in Śrāvakayāna Buddhism have led a number of scholars and proponents of a European construction of a “pure and original Buddhism” to adopt a condescending or dismissive attitude toward the soteriology of pure lands, which is often disparaged as the wishful thinking of simpletons grasping for a better life in heavenly realms after death.2 A serious charge raised by purists against the doctrine of future birth in a pure land is that it appears antithetical to the strict codes of self-reliance promulgated in Śrāvakayāna Buddhism. Furthermore, failing to appreciate the various degrees of nuance concerning pure lands may seem to challenge the Mahayana ideal of bodhisattvas, whose foremost intention is to endure countless incarnations and personal trials in order to bring liberation to others in this world. To this list of reservations we may add the denigration of Pure Land traditions for being merely “devotional,” as if devotional religion is a category different from and subordinate to Buddhism. In response, Galen Amstutz rightly contends, “All Buddhism is devotional, [for] it deals with experiential transformations which in all cases pose ideals empirically ‘external’ to the starting status of the devotee” (1998, 72–73). This is as much a truism in Mahayana as it is in so-called Theravāda Buddhism.3 Peter Bishop expands upon these concerns: The one-sided technocratic fantasy about Tibetan Buddhism can also be seen in the comparative failure of Pure Land Buddhism to stimulate the Western imagination. Despite the overwhelming popularity of Pure Land beliefs in Tibet (and in all other Mahayana countries), it has received very little emphasis in Western commentary. This may be because such Buddhism is not readily reduced to a technique, nor is it conducive to scientific status, and in addition it relies almost totally upon faith. Hence Pure Land beliefs do not easily fit the dominant scientific image that the West seems to want of Buddhism. (1993, 87) Bishop, however, may be guilty of the very stereotypes he critiques if he is suggesting that Pure Land soteriology has not been subjected to a discerning and prodigious interweaving of Mahayana doctrines and contemplative prescriptions by many Tibetan and East Asian scholars of Buddhism.4 Moreover, Western commentators have not been blind to the importance of Pure Land literature in Tibetan Buddhist contexts, as signaled in the works of Matthew Kapstein (2003), Tadeusz Skorupski (1995), and Peter Schwieger (1978). It is my aspiration that this work, a religious history of Pure Land literature in Tibet, will illuminate and problematize some salient aspects of this neglected tradition and clarify many of the misconceptions concerning the soteriological orientation of pure lands in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. This work has had a long gestation; an earlier version was submitted as a doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, in 2006.5 Its present incarnation incorporates substantial revisions and new material, which may be attractive to a wider readership interested in the Indian origins and Tibetan developments of the genre of Pure Land literature known as bDe-smon (pron. de-mön). Broadly defined, the bDe-smon encompasses a wide range of scriptures, such as Pure Land aspirational prayers, commentarial literature on Pure Land theology, and Vajrayana forms of devotion to the deity, which articulate a shared typology of liberation...