Tag: Chinese Buddhism

The Five Mountains System in Medieval Japan

In a recent post I talked about how Zen imported from Song-Dynasty China found patronage with the elite samurai families of the city of Kamakura. Sometimes this was due to the cultural prestige of Zen among “country bumpkin samurai”, but also the new Zen monastic community drew sincere students as well, helping it take root. Zen still had a very small presence, compared to other Buddhist institutions in medieval Japan, but it was definitely the “up and coming” sect.

By the 14th century, and with the destruction of the Hojo Family (ending the Kamakura Period of history), the seat of government shifted back to Kyoto under the new Ashikaga Shogunate (a.k.a. the Muromachi Period of Japanese history). The Ashikaga Shoguns, many of whom were avid Sinophiles, further cultivated the Rinzai Zen institutions from China, and created a new hierarchy of temples called the Five Mountains System. The same system existed in China, where “mountain” was synonymous with “Buddhist monasteries”, but the Chinese version was a looser organization and not strictly related to Zen Buddhism.

The Japanese version organized Rinzai Zen temples (and some Soto Zen temples) across the country into one of three administrative “ranks” with the “five mountains” (gozan, 五山) at the very top. These temples, as we’ll see later, functioned less as Buddhist temples and increasingly as bureaucratic hubs for the rest of the temples in Japan. They enjoyed much patronage and prestige, but the monastic life greatly suffered.

The three ranks were:

  • Gozan (五山) temples, the top-tier
  • Middle-tier jissatsu (十刹) temples, and
  • Shozan (諸山) temples at the bottom.

Confusingly, many Rinzai Zen temples existed outside this temple structure, either by choice, or just lacked prestige, and were derisively called rinka (林下, “the forest below”) to distinguish from more prestigious temples “up on the mountain”. I briefly mentioned rinka temples in this old post.

Anyhow, let’s look more closely at each.

The Gozan Temples

The list of gozan temples varied over time, usually whichever temples the current Shogun patronized. Further, there were actually two sets of gozan temples, one for Kyoto and one for the former capitol of Kamakura. Which one was more important depending on who was in power.

For example, in 1341, under guidance from Tadayoshi, the ranks were as follows (homepages linked where possible):

RankKamakura TemplesKyoto Temples
1KenchōjiNanzenji
2EngakujiTenryuji
3Jufukuji—
4—Kenninji
5—Tōfukuji
“associate”
temple		Jōchiji—

For each rank, the Kamakura temples were elevated slightly higher than their Kyoto counterparts. By 1380 under the 3rd Shogun, Yoshimitsu:

RankKamakura TemplesKyoto Temples
1KenchōjiNanzenji
2EngakujiTenryuji
3JufukujiKenninji
4JōchijiTōfukuji
5JōmyōjiManjuji

And by 1386, also under Yoshimitsu, the rankings switch in favor of the Kyoto temples, but also Nanzenji gets elevated to a “superior gozan temple”. Plus, a new temple built on Yoshimitsu’s orders, Shōkokuji, was slotted into the Gozan temple ranks.

RankKyoto TemplesKamakura Temples
“superior”Nanzenji
1TenryujiKenchōji
2ShōkokujiEngakuji
3KenninjiJufukuji
4TōfukujiJōchiji
5ManjujiJōmyōji

The Gozan temples were the top of a large administrative bureaucracy that managed the many other Rinzai Zen temples, and as such enjoyed much patronage and influence. However, as we’ll see later, this came at a heavy cost.

Middle Rank Temples: Jissatsu

The ten temples of the middle rank, the jissatsu (十刹), were major temples in the provinces that served as middle-management. They managed other temples in the provinces and were subordinate to the gozan temples, but also held much influence too. Eventually, the jissatsu temples were also split up into 10 temples under the Kyoto gozan temples, and 10 more under the Kamakura gozan temples.

The list of temples moves around a lot, and sometimes temples were promoted to gozan temples, or downgraded.

Lower Rank Temples: Shozan

The shozan temples are the lowest-ranking, but also the largest group by far. At any time, up to 250 temples were ranked as shozan temples. As with the jissatsu temples, the shozan temples were usually provincial temples that simply didn’t have the prestige or political influence that the jissatsu had. However, they were still important in extending Shogunal control over the provinces, and thus still had ranking.

What Happened to the Gozan System?

As we saw in an old post, whenever the Buddhist establishment developed close ties with the ruling regime, this worked as long as the regime was powerful, but began to collapse easily when the regime was weak.

In the case of the Gozan system, the Zen temples never maintained huge standing armies that other, older temples such as Enryakuji (Tendai) or Kofukuji (Hossō sect) did, and so they relied on the Ashikaga shoguns for protection. As the Ashikaga shogunate started to weaken, local warlords in the provinces and the rival temple armies began to assert their power, and the Gozan temples suffered.

In fact, the disastrous Ōnin War in the 15th century practically destroyed many of these monasteries along with most of Kyoto city. Some of these temples never to rebuilt, or became greatly diminished. By this point, the Ashikaga “shoguns” had no real power outside of the Kyoto area, and thus couldn’t protect or influence other temples anyway.

However, probably the biggest reason for their decline was that spiritual practices at these temples declined and atrophied as they became more and more important politically. In the book Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan by Professor Martin Collcutt, Collcutt shows how records and journals at these temples showed that they had a very active social scene: banquets, religious functions, public rituals, and so on, but very little actual Zen practice as we know it. Monastic discipline greatly declined, and while they flourished culturally, the religious practices suffered. The famous Zen monk, Ikkyu, at the time lamented the decline in monastic discipline. Then again, he was a bit of an eccentric curmudgeon anyway.

Ironically, Rinzai Zen temples that existed outside the Gozan system, gained lasting prominence instead. The modern lineages in Rinzai derive from two temples that were not in the Gozan system: Daitokuji and Myōshinji. Both had reputations for maintaining austere Zen practices, and enjoyed patronage from wealthy merchants, and the increasingly powerful provincial warlords. Under Hakuin (mentioned here), the two temples became the basis for Rinzai Zen today.

Admittedly, both Daitokuji and Myoshinji suffered from corruption as well, as they gained social prominence, but Hakuin’s reforms later fixed this.

So, repeat after me: religion and politics should not mix.

P.S. happy Spring Ohigan! 🌸

Enma: King of the Dead

My son is at the age where is he is obsessed with Dragon Ball,1 so we watch some of the episodes together on Crunchyroll.

Source: https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/King_Yemma?file=KingYemmaNV01

Dragon Ball is a fun series because it blends a lot of Japanese-Chinese mythology, especially the early series, into a futuristic storyline. Goku is obviously based off of the famous legend of the Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Son Goku in Japanese). Another great example is the character Enma.

In Dragon Ball, Enma (sometimes spelled “Yemma” in English) presides the realm of spirits and behaves like a modern bureaucrat. In spite of the suit and tie, this Enma is definitely based on the original figure in Japanese mythology, named Enma Daiō (閻魔大王, “Great King Enma”).

The original Enma is a fascinating example of a “fusion” mythology, not a native Japanese one. Enma is originally based on the Hindu god Yama, lord of the dead.2 However, in China he was transformed into a Confucian-style bureaucrat and shoe-horned into Buddhist cosmology as a judge of the dead. Enma, along with other judges, determine the dead’s next destined rebirth within Buddhist cosmology. During certain Chinese funerary practices and festivals, you can see his visage on “ghost money” used to help the dearly departed coast through the trial process and ensure a smooth, lenient transition to their next life.

This Enma, a bureaucrat / judge of the dead, was how it was imported to Japanese culture in antiquity. He is even featured in classics such as the Tales of the Heike. When the warlord Taira no Kiyomori is dying from a terrible fever, he has a vision of Enma and his demonic attendants awaiting him. I’ve also heard of an old tradition where parents in Japan would scold their kids saying Enma would pull their tongue out if they told a lie. I have never heard this first-hand though, so I wonder if anyone ever says it anymore.

Anyhow, Dragon Ball’s spin on Enma, Goku and others is a fun look at Chinese-Japanese mythology, for a modern era.

RIP Toriyama Akira 🙏🏼

P.S. this post was also inspired after watching the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Barge of the Dead”. It’s a fun look at the Klingon afterlife.

1 growing up in the 1980’s my obsession at the time was Akira, which I still enjoy from time to time. 😄

2 if you ever pick up the book Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny, a wonderful blend of Hindu mythology and ultra-futuristic science-fiction with a lot of sass thrown in, the Yama depicted in that novel is quite an interesting character.

The Great Compassion Dharani

Another dharani I was reading about lately is the Great Compassion Dharani, also known as the Nīlakaṇṭha Dhāraṇī, or in Japanese Buddhism the daihishin darani (大悲心陀羅尼), also known more simply as the daihishu (大悲咒), among other names.

According to Wikipedia, this is one of widely recited dharani across the Buddhist tradition, and has undergone various changes over time, with a couple extant (though corrupted) versions. The featured photo above is an example found in the Dunhuang caves of China, showing the original text in Siddham script, with Chinese transliteration:

Fragment of the Nilaṇṭhanāmahṛdaya dhāraṇī both written in Siddhaṃ script and transliterated in Chinese characters. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

You can see another example here, using both Siddham script, and the ancient Sogdian script:

Whereas the Dharani for the Prevention of Disaster (discussed in a previous post) is focused on practical matters, the Great Compassion Dharani is meant to be chanted in order to awaken goodwill towards others, using Kannon Bodhisattva as the archetype. It is taken from a longer Buddhist text, the Sutra on the Thousand-armed, Thousand-eyed Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara’s Sutra of Dharanis on the Vast, Perfect, and Unobstructed Mind of Great Compassion (千手千眼観世音菩薩広大円満無礙大悲心陀羅尼経).

This dharani is most closely associated the Zen traditions, but because it is pretty long, it’s probably not always practical for lay followers to recite in daily services. I have not seen it listed in service books for lay followers in either Soto Zen or Rinzai Zen. In any case, I am posting it here as a reference.

You can see an example of the Great Compassion Dharani being chanted in a formal Soto Zen service here:

There is a nice Chinese-language version here (starts at 1:07):

I have posted the dharani here in multiple languages, so that people can choose which version they prefer to recite. The main source was Wikipedia, but for the Chinese Pinyin, I had to check multiple websites as the pinyin varied slightly in some places, while for the Japanese version, I checked line by line in the video above.

Sanskrit
(Amoghavajra version)		Original Chinese Chinese Pinyin1Japanese Romaji
(Soto Zen)
namaḥ ratnatrayāya南無喝囉怛那哆囉夜耶Nā mo hē là dá nà duō là yè yéNa mu ka ra tan no to ra ya ya
nama āryā南無阿唎耶Ná mó ā lì yēNa mu o ri ya
valokite śvarāya婆盧羯帝爍缽囉耶Pó lú jié dì shuò bō là yēBo ryo ki chi shi fu ra ya
bodhi satvaya菩提薩埵婆耶Pú tí sà duǒ pó yēFu ji sa to bo ya
mahā satvaya摩訶薩埵婆耶Mó hē sà duǒ pó yēMo ko sa to bo ya
mahā kāruṇikāya摩訶迦盧尼迦耶Mó hē jiā lú ní jiā yēMo ko kya ru ni kya ya
oṃ sarvarbhaye sutnatasya唵薩皤囉罰曳數怛那怛寫Ǎn sà pó là fá yì shù dá nā dá xiàEn sa ha ra ha ei shu tan no ton sha
namo skṛtva imaṃ āryā南無悉吉慄埵伊蒙阿唎耶Ná mó xī jí lì duǒ yī méng ā lì yēNa mu shi ki ri to i mo o ri ya
valokite śvara raṃdhava婆盧吉帝室佛囉愣馱婆　　　　Pó lú jí dì shì fó là léng tuó póBo ryo ki chi shi fu ra ri to bo
namo narakiṇḍi南無那囉謹墀Ná mó nā là jǐn chíNa mu no ra kin ji
hriḥ maha vadhasame醯利摩訶皤哆沙咩Xī lì mó hē pó duō shā miēKi ri mo ko ho do sha mi
sarva athadu yobhuṃ薩婆阿他豆輸朋Sà pó ā tuō·dòu shū péngSa bo o to jo shu ben
ajiyaṃ阿逝孕Ā shì yùnO shu in
sarvasatā nama vastya namabhāga薩婆薩哆那摩婆薩哆那摩婆伽Sà pó sà duō ná mó pó sà duō ná mó pó qiéSa bo sa to2 no mo bo gya
mārvdātuḥ摩罰特豆Mó fá tè dòuMo ha te cho
tadyathā 怛姪他Dá zhí tuōTo ji to
oṃ avalohe 唵阿婆盧醯Ān ā pó lú xīEn o bo ryo ki
lokāte盧迦帝Lú jiā dìRyo gya chi
karate ihriḥ迦羅帝夷醯唎Jiā luó dì yí xī lìKya rya chi i ki ri
mahā bodhisatva 摩訶菩提薩埵Mó hē pú tí sà duǒ Mo ko fu ji sa to
sarva sarva薩婆薩婆Sà pó sà póSa bo sa bo
mālā mala摩囉摩囉Mó là mó làMo ra mo ra
mahemahe ṛdayaṃ摩醯摩醯唎馱孕Mó xī mó xī lì tuó yùnMo ki mo ki ri to in
kuru kuru karmaṃ俱盧俱盧羯蒙Jù lú jù lú jié méngKu ryo ku ryo ke mo
dhuru dhuru vjayate度盧度盧罰闍耶帝Dù lú dù lú fá shé yē dìTo ryo to ryo ho ja ya chi
mahā vjayate摩訶罰闍耶帝Mó hē fá shé yē dìMo ko ho ja ya chi
dhara dhara陀囉陀囉Tuó là tuó làTo ra to ra
dhiriṇi地唎尼Dì lì níChi ri ni
śvarāya室佛囉耶Shì fó là yēShi fu ra ya
cala cala遮囉遮囉Zhē là zhē làSha ro sha ro
mama vmāra摩麼罰摩囉Mó mó fá mó làMo mo ha mo ra
muktele穆帝隸Mù dì lìHo chi ri
ihe īhe伊醯伊醯Yī xī yī xīYu ki yu ki
śina śina室那室那Shì nā shì nāShi no shi no
araṣaṃ phraśali阿囉參佛囉舍利Ā là shēn fó là shě lì. O ra san fu ra sha ri
vsa vsaṃ罰沙罰參Fá suō fá shēnHa za ha za
phraśaya佛囉舍耶Fó là shě yēFu ra sha ya
huru huru mara呼嚧呼嚧摩囉Hū lú hū lú mó làKu ryo ku ryo mo ra
hulu hulu hrīḥ呼嚧呼嚧醯利Hū lú hū lú xī lìKu ryo ku ryo ki ri
sara sara娑囉娑囉Suō là suō làSha ro sha ro
siri siri悉唎悉唎Xī lì xī lìShi ri shi ri
suru suru蘇嚧蘇嚧Sū lú sū lúSu ryo su ryo
bodhiya bodhiya菩提夜菩提夜Pú tí yè pú tí yèFu ji ya fu ji ya
bodhaya bodhaya菩馱夜菩馱夜Pú tuó yè pú tuó yè Fu do ya fu do ya
maiteriyā彌帝唎夜Mí dì lì yèMi chi ri ya
narakinḍi那囉謹墀Nā là jǐn chíNo ra kin ji
dhiriṣṇina地利瑟尼那Dì lì sè ní nāChi ri shu ni no
payāmāna波夜摩那Pō yè mó nā Ho ya mo no
svāhā siddhāyā 娑婆訶悉陀夜Suō pó hē xī tuó yèSo mo ko shi do ya so mo ko
svāhā mahā siddhāyā 娑婆訶摩訶悉陀夜Suō pó hē mó hē xī tuó yè So mo ko mo ko shi do ya
svāhā siddha yoge śvarāya 娑婆訶悉陀喻藝室皤囉耶Suō pó hē sī tuó yù yì shì pó là yē So mo ko shi do yu ki shi fu ra ya
svāhā narakiṇḍi娑婆訶那囉謹墀Suō pó hē nā là jǐn chí So mo ko no ra kin ji
svāhā māranara娑婆訶摩囉那囉Suō pó hē mó là nā là So mo ko mo ra no ra
svāhā sira siṃ amukhāya娑婆訶悉囉僧阿穆佉耶Suō pó hē xī là sēng ā mù qié yē So mo ko shi ra su o mo gya ya
svāhā sava maha asiddhāyā 娑婆訶娑婆摩訶阿悉陀夜Suō pó hē suō pó mó hē ā xī tuó yè suō pó hēSo mo ko so bo mo ko o shi do ya
svāhā cakra asiddhāyā娑婆訶者吉囉阿悉陀夜Suō pó hē zhě jí là ā xī tuó yè So mo ko sha ki ra o shi do ya
svāhā padma kastāyā娑婆訶波陀摩羯悉陀夜Suō pó hē bō tuó mó jié xī tuó yè So mo ko ho do mo gya shi do ya
svāhā narakiṇḍi vagaraya娑婆訶那囉謹墀皤伽囉耶Suō pó hē nā là jǐn chí pó qié là yē So mo ko no ra kin ji ha gya ra ya so mo ko
svāhā mavali śaṅkrayā娑婆訶摩婆利勝羯囉夜Suō pó hē mó pó lì shèng jié là yè So mo ko mo ho ri shin gya ra ya
svāhā namaḥ ratnatrayāya娑婆訶南無喝囉怛那哆囉夜耶Suō pó hē ná mó hé là dá nā duō là yè yēSo mo ko na mu ka ra tan no to ra ya ya
namo āryā南無阿唎耶Ná mó ā lì yēNa mu o ri ya
valokte 婆嚧吉帝Pó lú jí dìBo ryo ki chi
śva rāya svāhā爍皤囉夜娑婆訶Shuò pó là yè suō pó hēShi fu ra ya so mo ko
Oṃ sidhyantu mantra 唵悉殿都漫多囉Ān xī diàn dū màn duō làShi3 te do mo do ra
padāya svāhā跋陀耶娑婆訶Bá tuó yě suō pó hēHo do ya so mo ko

Side note, there is a different version in the Japanese Shingon-Buddhist tradition, but I am too lazy to post here, since the dharani is so long. You can find it here on the Japanese Wikipedia article under “真言宗の読み方”.

June 2025: Major rewrite of this page to make the text side-by-side, but also fixed several typos.

1 Sources used to validate the pinyin: here and here, plus Wikipedia article. Each one slightly disagreed with one another, and my Chinese language skills are very limited, so I had to make a best guess in a few cases where things seemingly contradicted. It’s also possible that certain Chinese characters just have multiple pronunciations.

2 For some reason, the Soto Zen version doesn’t have the words 那摩婆薩哆 (nama vastya / ná mó pó sà duō).

3 Similarly, the Soto Zen version doesn’t have the final “om” (唵, ān) in it.

The Three Pure Land Sutras

While writing a recent blog post, I realized that I had mentioned, but never explained, what the Three Pure Land Sutras are in the Buddhist tradition, and their significance to Mahayana Buddhism as a whole.

Think of this as a handy reference post. I haven’t done one of these in a while. 😊

The Buddhist Canon

When you think of most world religions, they are usually based on one or two books. Christianity has the Bible (including both Old and New Testaments), Islam has the Qur’an plus Hadiths, and so on. Things get fuzzier with religions like Hinduism and Buddhism where they are not based on one or two books, but instead layers of texts written at different periods of time. Such religions have a kind of “accumulated” religious tradition.

As an organized religion, Buddhism begins and ends with the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. His birth name is Siddhartha Gautama, but in the Buddhist tradition he is called “Shakyamuni”, or “Sage of the Shakya clan”.

Long story short, all Buddhist texts, called “sutras”, are considered sermons of Shakyamuni Buddha, passed down through the generations, first by word, and later written down. Modern historians question the historicity of this, since the very earliest sutras were recorded around 100 BC, 400 years after the Buddha lived. Also some sutras, especially those in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, were definitely later compositions since they have a more narrative flow quite different from earlier ones.

Why did the early Mahayana Buddhist compose a new set of sutras? My personal guess is that these authors took fragments of early teachings and repackaged them in a more “hip” (relative to the times) and smoother format for easier distribution.

In any case, Buddhism doesn’t have a strict dependency on the sutras the way other religions might. The Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, is more like the Laws of Physics: something all around us whether we believe it or not. Shakyamuni Buddha’s contribution was to both uncover the Dharma and articulate it. So, the sutras, as purported sermons of the Buddha, are our best guide to understanding the Dharma, but they have their limits.

Sutra Format

Buddhist sutras can be volumes long, or extremely short, very specific to a topic, or kind of general in their teachings. Many were composed in India to address specific audiences, while others were composed in China, but made to look like they were from India for authenticity. As the featured photo above shows, many sutras are preserved in Classical Chinese (not modern Chinese) instead of Sanskrit, despite originating from India. The sutra book above is from a Japanese temple, so each Chinese character includes pronunciation guides (furigana) for Japanese audiences.

Finally, because there are so many sutras, many Buddhist traditions tend to gravitate toward one sutra or set of sutras for their theological foundation. This is especially true in Mahayana Buddhism.

Mahayana Buddhism teaches the notion of “expedient means” (lit. Upaya in Sanskrit): this means that any and all of these sutras are suitable to someone somewhere for progressing along the Buddhist path. “Different strokes for different folks”.1 Mahayana Buddhism is (speaking frankly) broad and messy, but it also strives to be as accessible as possible to a variety of people since one of its founding tenets is that all beings are capable of enlightenment. They just each start from different circumstances.

Sutras of the Pure Land Tradition

The Pure Land Buddhist tradition is probably one of the largest, if not the largest in East Asian Buddhism, but it’s not a single sect or school. It is a loose network of traditions across several countries, from Tibet to Japan, all centered around three key sutras and devotion to Amitabha Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light. Professor Charles B Jones compared it to the tradition in Catholicism venerating the Virgin Mary within the larger Christian tradition: some Christians do, some do not. In the same way, some Buddhists are devoted to the Buddha of Infinite Light, and some are not.

In any case, across all Pure Land traditions, the primary textual sources are called the Three Pure Land Sutras. In short, they are:

English TitleSanskrit TitleChinese with
pinyin		Likely Country of Origin
Immeasurable Life SutraSukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, longer version佛說無量壽經
(Fó shuō wú liàng shòu jīng)		India, before 2nd century
Amitabha SutraSukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, shorter version佛說阿彌陀經
(Fó shuō Ā mí tuó jīng)		India, before 4th century
Contemplation SutraAmitāyurdhyāna Sūtra佛說觀無量壽佛經
(Fó shuō guān wú liàng shòu fó jīng)		China, possibly 4th century

Note that many other sutras mention or focus on Amitabha Buddha too, but the three above are the primary sources.

Let’s look at each one individually…

The Immeasurable Life Sutra

This sutra, known more formally as The Sutra of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life, is the oldest and longest of the three. In English, it would probably take about 2 hours to read, so it’s not short, but not a tome like the Lotus Sutra either.

The general format is (in order):

  • A long preamble about the progress of a Bodhisattva to full Buddhahood (patterned from Shakyamuni’s life)
  • The origin of Amitabha Buddha, and his 48 vows to help all beings
  • The virtues of Amitabha Buddha, and benefits of those who encounter his light
  • Why someone would want to be reborn in his Pure Land, and the three grades of people reborn there
  • Contrasting this world with the Pure Land (spoiler: our world sucks)
  • General Buddhist exposition about the hassles of this life (again, trying to emphasize the Pure Land)
  • Admonition by Shakyamuni Buddha to be reborn there

What’s interesting about the Immeasurable Life Sutra is that it’s a fairly good primer, covering many general Buddhist subjects, from a Mahayana-Buddhist perspective, while also explaining in detail who Amitabha Buddha is, and why the Pure Land is a worthwhile goal.

Sometimes I still find little hidden gems in there when I read it.

Note, for ritual and chanting, the sutra is much too long to chant, so people often chant key sections, for example the Shiseige in Japanese-Buddhist traditions. The featured photo above is part of the Immeasurable Life Sutra.

The Amitabha Sutra

The Amitabha Sutra, known by the more clunky name Shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, is by far the shortest and simplest of the three Pure Land sutras. It is not quite as short as the Heart Sutra (it takes about 10 minutes to recite/chant compared to the Heart Sutra which takes 1-2 minutes), but it is often chanted as a whole.

The Amitabha Sutra condenses many things about the Immeasurable Life Sutra into a much simpler and shorter narrative, mostly describing the wonder of the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. and why one would want to be reborn there:

  • The land is very beautiful and safe, with nothing to fear. It reflects Amitabha Buddha’s goodwill toward all beings.
  • The land is very conducive to Buddhist practice since everything there relates to Buddhism somehow, even the birds singing, or the wind blowing.
  • You will be in the presence of a great many teachers, Bodhisattvas, and even the Buddha Amitabha himself.

From there, the sutra lists many, many Buddhas who attest to the Pure Land, and reiterate that it’s worth being reborn there.

Finally the sutra states that one can be reborn there by simply being mindful of the Buddha.

The Contemplation Sutra

The Contemplation Sutra, also known as the The Sutra on the Contemplation of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life, is the newest sutra, and believed to have been composed in China, not India. It is the most “visual” of the three sutras since it describes a long, complex meditation exercise one can do to be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. The sutra starts with a story about the Buddha (Shakyamuni) helping Queen Vaidehi who is in prison due to her son’s treachery. She wants to escape this world of misery, and so the Buddha teaches her the following visualization exercises, which are meant to be done in order:

  1. The setting sun in the west
  2. Placid water that becomes clear ice, then beryl.
  3. The ground as made of precious jewels, like sand
  4. Trees that are jeweled, countless in number
  5. Pools of water with precious jewels as sediment
  6. Jewelled pavilions, countless in number
  7. A great dais made of a lotus flower
  8. The Buddha, golden in color, seated upon that dais, then flanked by his two bodhisattvas on each side, also on their lotus seats.
  9. Details of the Buddha, Amitabha
  10. Details of the Bodhisattva, Avalokitesvara
  11. Details of the Bodhisattva, Mahastamaprapta
  12. Oneself being reborn in the Pure Land in a lotus bud
  13. Visualizing the Buddha Amitabha in a specific way, leading beings to the Pure Land
  14. Rebirth in the Pure Land for those of superior grade
  15. Rebirth in the Pure Land for those of middle grade
  16. Rebirth in the Pure Land for those of lower grade

Because the visualization exercises listed in the sutra are so detailed, they have often been depicted in Buddhist artwork such as the Taima Mandala.

Significance

Of course the Three Pure Land Sutras are important to the Pure Land tradition, but they are also influential in other Buddhist traditions, and also in Buddhist art and culture in the medieval period. Even today in various communities, people relive the origin story of Amitabha Buddha in chanting and liturgy, and art related to the Pure Land still persist in such things as video games and other media. It has greatly influenced East Asian Buddhism and continues to influence Buddhism at large.

I like the Immeasurable Life Sutra in particular, and every once in a while like to read through it again. I suppose it’s my “go to” sutra.

Namu Amida Butsu

1 This is does not mean an “anything goes” approach to Buddhism, of course. Stories of “crazy wisdom” and other such things are exaggerated and rarely practiced in Buddhism. Instead, teachings such as the The Four Dharma Seals provide a theological “anchor”, as well as the Buddhist tradition. Not everyone may like the idea of following a religion tradition, but as with any long tradition, it has the benefit of collective experience across generations, so long as we are not overly bound to it.

Zen, the Pure Land, and Buddhism Lite

Warning: long, (mostly) unedited, stream of thought. Sometimes it’s just funner this way. 😄

Since my trip to Japan and back, I’ve been kind of debating something in the back of my head.

Much of my background in Buddhism since as far back as 2005 has been in the Pure Land tradition, especially Japanese “Jodo Shu” and to a lesser-extent “Jodo Shinshu” sects. The sure openness and simplicity are very appealing, especially when I am having a hard time in my life. At other times, I see my conduct as backsliding or lazy, or that I am not grounding myself enough in the here-and-now, and so I tend to shift toward Zen. At such times, the passivity of the Pure Land path seems out of place with what I feel Shakyamuni Buddha would have wanted to us as disciples to do.

Buddhism, as a world religion, is a religion of doing not believing.

But the reason why the Pure Land tradition is so popular across many Asian cultures, and increasingly in the West is that it realistically assesses the situation of lay followers and provides an accessible path for them to follow.

The monastic/lay-disciple relationship within Buddhism has always been a challenge throughout its history since it tends to relegate the lay disciples as passive followers. The doing of Buddhism tends to favor those who are willing to commit the time and energy into it (i.e. mendicants, renunciants, etc), leaving the laity to support them, or at least participate as time allows.

The Buddha was not insensitive to this, and sternly reminded his followers that without the lay community, they could not be a Sangha. Further, many of the original precepts in the monastic code were to avoid monks and nuns abusing their authority over the laity, including the Rains Retreat. Further, when the lay community and monastic community have a healthy relationship, everyone benefits.

The catch is that even with good intentions, the laity are often put in a more passive role. Many of the traditional sutras in the Buddhist canon are intended for fellow monks, not laity. Many of the practices require time and effort that laity simply can’t do.

While Pure Land Buddhism does help to address this, I realized that it can also lead to complacency. When dealing with my puppy, who while adorable is still behaving like a puppy, or dealing with constant pressures at work, such things tend to bring out the worst in me, and simply reciting the nembutsu over and over doesn’t seem like a particularly effective strategy.1 Further, I don’t want to forget about my experience last year, and some of the insights I gleaned from that.

On the other hand, I’ve never really liked the Zen tradition, especially in the West. Western Zen tends to feel weirdly divorced from the tradition it inherits from, sometimes flippantly so, and tends to feel sterile and lacking any sense of community. People seem come to Zen centers and practices because they need something, not because they are happy to be there.2 The Zen community in the West is comprised of he same sort of people who argue online about why such-and-such Star Wars series is good/bad, or try to out-do one another in their knowledge of Zen esoterica. In other words, it’s saturated with smarmy nerds.

In much of the current Asian-Buddhist tradition, both the Pure Land and Zen tradition stand at opposite poles between utter passivity (“it’s OK, I have faith in Amida Buddha”) or utter DIY (“I’m gonna meditate my way to Enlightenment!”). There are many efforts over the centuries, to somehow wed the two traditions, and these efforts usually gravitate toward one pole or the other. The famous Chinese monk, Yunqi Zhuhong,3 was a particularly effective example of this, but Yunqi isn’t well known in the West. Ven. Thich Nhat’s Hanh’s interpretation of Pure land through the lens of Zen, Finding Our True Home, was a pretty good modern attempt as well.

Still, these are somewhat intellectual exercises, and not always useful to lay people who may not always understand either tradition. So, going back to my main concern: how do you make Buddhism accessible (and easily understood) to a wide, non-Buddhist audience while still keeping faithful to the Buddha’s teachings on discipline, wisdom and cultivation. Further, how do you keep the “heart” of Buddhism so it doesn’t become a nerdy, sterile exercise?

I think this is where the Lotus Sutra really comes in handy. The Lotus Sutra by itself is hard to discern, and pretty tough to read, but if you’re already familiar with Buddhism, I think it helps provide the “heart” of Buddhism and helps address the question: what’s the point of it all? The parables in the Lotus Sutra are also a really great way to get around intellectual discussions and convey Buddhist teachings in a way people can adopt and carry with them, hence their popularity throughout antiquity.

However, as with Zen or the Pure Land, it’s important not to get a one-sided, literalist view of the Lotus Sutra either, or a person will go off the rails. It’s a historical text, written with a specific audience in mind, and has to be taken into context. Yup, I said it.

Anyhow, to that end, I have been thinking about this and I feel there are certain universal practices in buddhism that, regardless of sect you follow, are really beneficial to observe. By beneficial, I mean, you are aligning with teh intention of what the Buddha would have wanted us to follow either as a lay-person or as a monastic disciple. In previous blogs, I called this “Buddhism Lite”, since it distills the tradition to as simple and generic an approach as I can. You can re-name it something else.

Buddhism Lite

  • Uphold five precepts – In my opinion, this is the most fundamental practice for lay Buddhists, and really dove-tails nicely with the other practices below. If you have to prioritize the precepts versus meditation and such, prioritize the precepts. They are also the easiest to integrate in everyday life.
  • Recite “nembutsu” – in this context I am using nembutsu as simply recollecting the Buddha, and venerating him. The Buddha is our beacon in this world, and so it behooves us to give due gratitude. To me, the simplest way to venerate the historical Buddha is to recite the phrase Namo Shakamuni Buddha. If you prefer another Buddha or Bodhisattva, that’s totally fine. In the end, there is only one Dharma,4 and each figure simply embodies it. The Dharma is what maters most, not the particular Buddha.
  • Mindfulness meditation – as much as I tend to avoid mindfulness meditation, there’s no denying that it’s central to Buddhism. It is the practice the Buddha prescribed most to followers, and has a tangible value both in the near term and in the long term. I won’t prescribe how much a person meditate; just work it into your life in a way that’s sustainable (like physical exercise).
  • Optional: Uposatha – I haven’t really talked about this much, but Uposatha is traditionally when the Buddha would set aside time for devout laity and the monastic community to practice together. Think of the Uposatha as like the Sabbath, or Sunday services, etc. Uposatha is traditionally held on six days of the calendar month: the 8th, 14th, 15th, 23rd, 29th and 30th days.5 The example below is a Uposatha service you can observe at home on Uposatha days, based on existing traditions. As with meditation, make it sustainable for your life.
    • Praise to the 3 treasures:
      • “I go to the Buddha for refuge”
      • “I go to the Dharma for refuge”
      • “I go to the Sangha for refuge”
    • Confession of transgressions: All of the misdeeds I have committed in the past are the result of my greed, anger and delusion. I repent these misdeeds.
      • The key here is not to “flog yourself”, it’s about observing scientifically when your own conduct fell short and acknowledging this, wiping the slate clean, and resolving not to do them again.
    • Recite a sutra, or part of a sutra: your choice.
    • Recite the “Nembutsu” three times – see above.
    • Dedication of merit – you are not just practicing for yourself, but also for the benefit of others.

I think the key here is balancing devotion to the Buddha as a teacher, with putting things into practice in real life, and avoiding complacency.

Anyhow, this has been a somewhat rambling stream, but it was easier to just write it all out in one shot than try to explain in something more polished and shorter. If you made it this far and find it useful, thanks!

1 This is something I recall from a Jodo Shu called the ippyaku-shijūgo-kajō-mondō (百四十五箇条問答) or “One Hundred and Forty Five Questions and Answers” addressed to Honen:

Q: Is it better to recite Nembutsu abstaining from doing evil and doing only good, or to recite Nembutsu believing only in the true wish of Amida Buddha?

A [from Honen]: Abstaining from the evil while doing good things is the total admonition of Buddha. But for us, living in the real world, we disobey the admonition, so by believing from the bottom of our hearts in the real wish of Amida Buddha to save all kinds of people, we are able to say “Namu Amida Butsu”. Amida Buddha will lead all people into the Pure Land without any discrimination between people with or without wisdom, or between those who can or cannot keep the precepts. Please keep this in mind.” (Clause 145)

http://www.jodo.org/teachings/teachings01.html

2 From Brad Warner’s blog:

Plus those adoring audiences of sincere truth seekers that I imagined would hang on my trippy words of wisdom were nowhere to be found in his case. Instead, he was surrounded mainly by curiosity-seekers who never stayed around long, or by needy hangers-on who often became angry and belligerent when they weren’t satisfied with what he taught — which was always. He did have a handful of sincere students, but we were not much help when it came to supporting him.

http://hardcorezen.info/so-you-want-to-be-a-dharma-teacher/7843

Although I don’t really follow Mr Warner, this has been my limited experience as well.

3 I wrote much of this Wikipedia article, so I may be biased. 😏

4 Chapter two of the Lotus Sutra, by the way:

But stop, Shariputra, I will say no more. Why? Because what the Buddha has achieved is the rarest and most difficult-to-understand Law. The true entity of all phenomena can only be understood and shared between Buddhas. This reality consists of the appearance, nature, entity, power, influence, inherent cause, relation, latent effect, manifest effect, and their consistency from beginning to end.”

source: https://nichiren.info/buddhism/lotussutra/text/chap02.html

In other words, the Buddhas all awaken to the same Dharma, and have the same qualities and awareness. The Dharma is what matters. Also, the Vakkali Sutta in the Pali Canon.

5 How would Uposatha look in February? I would probably just bump the 29th and 30th to March 1st and 2nd respectively.

Pure Land Buddhism at Large

Recently, I took some personal time to delve deep into Pure Land Buddhist teachings, re-reading some old books, but also some new ones. In particular, I was very impressed by Charles B Jones’s latest book, an excellent survey of the entire Pure Land tradition in Mahayana Buddhism.

If you’re not familiar with Pure Land Buddhism, this is a broad, broad tradition in East Asia, focused on a single Buddha named Amitabha, not the historical Buddha (Shakyamuni). There are way more devotees of the Pure Land path in many Buddhist countries versus, say, Zen practitioners. It is said that Amitabha, according to the Buddhist canon (a.k.a. the sutras), made a great series of vows to provide a refuge for all beings if they with to be reborn there. In this refuge, one will unfailingly become an enlightened being, by virtue of being so close to a living Buddha.

This might seem weird at first glance, since Shakyamuni Buddha started the whole religion in the first place, right? It’s a long story of how we got to something like Four Noble Truths to something like an ethereal paradise where people can go simply by reciting his name.

Charles B Jones’s book actually does walk through how this tradition evolved from an advanced meditative practice in India to the forms we see today, so that alone is worth reading the book. However, there’s another side to this issue that Jones’s book also covers: sectarian bias.

Way back in 2005, shortly after I married my Japanese girlfriend (now wife), we made our first trip to Japan to visit her extended family. The culture shock hit hard: I hardly knew the language, the customs and food weren’t what I expected, and the Buddhist religion that I was so interested in made no sense to me. I remember seeing Amitabha Buddha at Chion-in temple in Kyoto, and while it was very beautiful, it felt like weird superstition to me. This wasn’t mentioned in any of my books about Buddhism! Someone in Japan even asked me what I thought about it all, and I made some stupid, arrogant comment about superstition, etc.

But it was still nagging me when I got home later, and that’s when I discovered the Jodo Shu homepage in English. I slowly started to unravel things, and eventually became a devoted follower (still am in many ways), but at the time, this was very niche Buddhist teachings outside of some Western organizations like the Buddhist Churches of America (also a wonderful org, highly recommend).

Since then, there have been a lot of books published in the last 20 years about Pure Land Buddhism, but they are almost always sectarian, and obfuscate the variety of practices in favor of one single approach. I learned Pure Land Buddhism through Jodo Shu/Jodo Shinshu sectarian sources, including one overtly nationalist book by D T Suzuki (don’t get me started on that guy…), and it colored my understanding for a long time.

For all the increased information on Pure Land Buddhism in the West, it’s still based on very biased, sectarian sources, namely Japanese sects such as Jodo Shu and Jodo Shinshu. This isn’t necessarily wrong, and as a long-time follower of these traditions, they really helped me a lot when I was first getting on my feet.

However, long time readers may note that I’ve danced around other aspects of Pure Land Buddhism, but until recently I had no idea how broad the tradition was, and the many ways people have tackled the theological questions behind it.

Through Jones’s book, I realized that the tradition is huge, and varied in its approach. It’s not just a “Japanese Buddhism versus Chinese Buddhism” comparison either. Many thinkers over the centuries in many countries and eras have grappled with these questions:

  • What is the nature of Amitabha Buddha and the Pure Land? Is it mind-only? Does it literally exist X yojanas to the West? Or is it right here?
  • Similarly, is Amitabha Buddha the embodiment of the Dharma or a literal Buddha who excels at reaching out to people?
  • What is the point of striving for rebirth into the Pure Land? Is it to awaken one’s mind here and now, or is it to reach a refuge in which one can progress along the Buddhist path more easily?
  • How does one do it? Do they rely on Amitabha Buddha’s compassion (e.g. other power) or does one strive to be reborn there? Is it a “meet in the middle” situation?
  • What is the nianfo/nembutsu (念佛/念仏), and is the nianfo/nembutsu sufficient on its own to accomplish rebirth in the Pure Land, or are other practices required?

Charles B Jones covers all the ways people have interpreted these questions, in India, in China and in Japan and the variety of responses and interpretations is surprising.

For example, if we only consider the questions of whether the Pure Land and Amitabha arises from one’s own mind, a Zen-style interpretation, or a more literal savior to that exists elsewhere reaching out to others, we get a spectrum of interpretations. However even if you have two different teachers both advocate for a literal interpretation of Amitabha Buddha, they will differ on whether reciting the nianfo/nembutsu alone is enough, or what practices one should do to strive there.

Even when two teachers agree on a set of practices leading to rebirth in the Pure Land, they might differ on how much of it is due to one’s own efforts versus Amitabha’s compassion and power of his vows.

Thus, what you get is a really complicated, three-dimensional matrix of views.

For example, the Chinese Buddhist teacher, Yunqi Zhuhong (雲棲袾, 1535–1615),1 advocated a very sophisticated approach that tried to reconcile both the mind-only or “principle” interpretation of Amitabha Buddha with the more literal or “phenomenal” one often used by lay people. In his mind, both were essentially correct, and it was perfectly fine to approach from either mentality, so long as one kept up the essential practices: reciting the nianfo (nembutsu in Japanese), reciting sutras, devotional acts, etc. It confirms what I suspected for a long time: that there is more to Pure Land Buddhism than just the nembutsu.

I never even knew about Yunqi Zhuhong until a few weeks ago (I pretty much rewrote the entire Wikipedia article linked above using more sources), and this shows how sectarian views, even when benign, obscure aspects of the tradition and make it hard to understand Pure Land Buddhism at large. One can easily apply this to other Buddhist traditions such as Zen, or Theravada, etc.

Another challenge in Buddhism has always been accessibility, and Charles B Jones shows how the Jodo Shu and especially Jodo Shinshu sects in Japan really excelled at outreach to common people instead of the aristocratic Buddhist followers who focused on esoteric Buddhist practices.2 However, in order to make Buddhism very accessible to large segments of the population, it’s clear they also took some liberties in how they interpret some of the issue above, and these are issues that they have to continuously defend, theologically, to this day.

Anyhow, there’s no clear answer here on who’s right or not. Jones’s book does a great job showing all the different approaches, arguments, and the virtues and challenges of each one, and thus the reader is welcome to decide for themselves. It’s so rare to find such a balanced and thorough overview of the entire tradition. For my part, I haven’t fully decided for myself what the right approach is (hence all the book reading lately), but it really helped give me a broader picture, and plenty of food for thought.

Namu Amida Butsu

1 Pronounced as “yoon-chee joo-hong”

2 Another interesting contrast that Jones’s book shows between Chinese Buddhist history versus Japanese: Japanese Buddhist history starts with the Imperial Court patronage and over generations gradually filtered down to the general population, thus it required patronage, sects, etc. Chinese Buddhism by contrast “percolated” up from small communities, often influenced by foreign merchant communities, and thus never had to organize sects, schools and such; Buddhist communities just sprang up organically.

Polishing the Mind

In Chinese-Buddhist literature, the influential treatise Cheng Wei Shi Lun (成唯識論) contains the following quote, translated in the book Living Yogacara:1

Polishing their minds, the courageous do not waver.

trans. Professor A. Charles Muller

This treatise was written by the famous Chinese monk, Xuanzang (玄奘), whom I talked about recently. From his journeys in India, Xuanzang brought back considerable information and texts to help the Yogacara Buddhism tradition flourish in China, along with many other important Buddhist texts and observations. Upon his return he wrote extensively and translated many works with Imperial support.

The Cheng Wei Shi Lun, is one of the foundational texts for East Asian Yogacara thought including the descendant Hossō school in Japan, and the treatise is quoted multiple times in Living Yogacara.

When I read this passage, I feel it is an encouragement for people who walk the Buddhist path. Life really can bring you down, and when you’re tired and exhausted, it is so easy to want to backslide and wallow in self-pity or take the low-road which is so much easier up front.

However, every action and thought committed “perfumes the mind” in Yogacara-speak, and its important to bear this in mind. There’s no such thing as a free lunch,2 so every deed or intention has its price, and the only way to break free from the constant up and down cycle, the constant upkeep, is to purify the mind once and for all, bit by bit. As the Yogacara school of thought teaches that Enlightenment takes 3 massive eons to complete (literally “three asaṃkhya kalpa”), it’s a gradual process. However, in Buddhism there is a lovely passage from the Immeasurable Life Sutra that I was also contemplating lately:

“At that time the Buddha Lokeshvararaja recognized the Bhiksu Dharmakara’s noble and high aspirations, and taught him as follows: ‘If, for example, one keeps on bailing water out of a great ocean with a pint-measure, one will be able to reach the bottom after many kalpas and then obtain rare treasures. Likewise, if one sincerely, diligently and unceasingly seeks the Way, one will be able to reach one’s destination. What vow is there which cannot be fulfilled?’

Nothing worthwhile in life comes easily, and hence Xuan-Zang’s statement that the courageous do not waver. They have everything to gain in the process.

Namu Amida Butsu

1 Compare to the ancient Dhammapada, verse 183:

The non-doing of any evil, the performance of what’s skillful, the cleansing of one’s own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened.

2 See Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. 🙂

The Big Buddhist Headache: Language and Sacred Texts

Recently, I made a lengthy rant on Twitter about my frustrations with learning Sanskrit in order to read Buddhist texts. The issue is a surprisingly complicated one, and something I wanted to explore here a bit more.

When you look at religions of the world, Buddhism is somewhat unusual in that it is not rooted in a single, sacred text. No Bible, No Quran, etc. Buddhism has many sacred texts, or sutras, all purportedly the words of the Buddha. These teachings where then passed down by his disciples, yet nothing was actually written down until centuries later. This is not as bad as it sounds. By the Buddha’s time, India already had developed a sophisticated tradition around memorizing sacred texts and teaching them disciples. Non-Buddhist examples include the Vedas (the forerunners to the Hindu religion). People believed at the time that writing sacred teachings down would put them on the same level as mundane receipts and political documents, and was thus considered profane.

Attitudes changed by 1st century CE, but by now those sermons of the Buddha that had been carefully passed down were scattered in various collections, and different Buddhist schools had slightly different collections from one another. Worse, the languages used to transmit the teachings had diverged.

Which Language?

The Buddha, in his time, warned against using the priestly Sanskrit language to transmit his teachings, preferring instead local dialects, but even at that time, India had many, many dialects. Pāli was a very popular one, and remains so for some Buddhist traditions, but as Buddhism grew, keeping track of Buddhist sermons via local dialects probably became less and less practical.

Thus, in the end, Buddhist texts began to be recorded in Sanskrit. Every educated person in India probably knew at least some Sanskrit, just like educated medieval Europeans knew at least some Latin or Greek.

This conversion to Sanskrit wasn’t an overnight swap, however. Research into “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit” shows that the transformation was a gradual one: Buddhists would first write things down in a way that looked “Sanskrit-ey” (but not actual Sanskrit), then later generations would write something down that actually used Sanskrit, but still peppered with local colloquialisms. Eventually, even later texts were composed in “true Sanskrit”, at least something that Pāṇini would hopefully approve of.

So, what we see is a kind of gradual spectrum from early texts being composed in local dialects (primarily Pāli) and then gradually transforming into Sanskrit.

The difference, by the way, between Pāli and Sanskrit isn’t as dramatic as it sounds by the way. Pāli, like many Prakrits, was a local languages that derived from Sanskrit, and still had much in common with it. Just like Italian, Spanish, French, etc., all derived from Latin in some way.

To illustrate this, let’s look at a basic word like “king”. In Sanskrit, it is rājaḥ, and conjugates like so (not a complete chart):

CaseSingularDualPlural (more than 2)
Nominativerājaḥ (rājo)rājaurājāḥ
Accusativerājamrājaurājān
Instrumental
(e.g. “with” or
“by means of”)		rājenarājābhyāmrājaiḥ
Dative
(e.g. “to” or “for”)		rājāyarājābhyāmrājebhyaḥ
Note: due to Sandhi rules, rājaḥ frequently becomes rājo to smooth things out. Sanskrit also has Genitive, Ablative, Locative and Vocative cases too., but I’ve omitted them for brevity.

…and so on. Pali is a bit more streamlined by comparison being a more colloquial language by nature, so one word for king is rāja (i.e. without the visarga ḥ sound at the end):

CaseSingularPlural
Nominativerāja (rājo)rājā
Accusativerājaṃrāje
Instrumental
(e.g. “with” or
“by means of”)		rājenarājebhi or rājehi
Dative
(e.g. “to” or “for”)		rājāya or rājassa1rājānaṃ
This form appears to be more commonly used according to this Pali textbook written by Ven. Nerada Thera

At first glance, Pali kind of reads like the kinder, gentler version of Sanskrit. The dual form is almost entirely non-existent,2 and the sounds are softer, and lacking the ḥ (visarga) at the end. However, you can see they share similar grammatical structures, pronunciation, etc.

So, the first challenge with Buddhist text is this gradual transition from local dialects to literary Sanskrit, spanning hundreds of years. If you picked a particular Buddhist sutra, it might be somewhere in the middle of this transition: is it Pali? is it Sanskrit? Sanskrit with Pali terms, or Pali with a Sanskrit “polish” to it?

How Is It Written?

The second issue is the written script.

Some languages are closely tied with their script: Greek language is written in the Greek alphabet (obviously), while Korean is written in Hangeul. Other writing systems are not: the Roman alphabet is used in many languages: English, French, Vietnamese, etc. In medieval times, Chinese characters were used by a wide variety of disparate languages: Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Khitan, etc.

So, languages are not always tied to a particular writing system. Also. some writing systems are not tied to a particular language.

Sanskrit (and Pali) have been written down using a wide variety of scripts across the ages. Early writings were done using Brahmi script, and Brahmi itself evolved into newer and better writings systems over time leading to the most common example today: Devanagari.3 Many, many modern languages in India and beyond are written in some script derived from Brahmi.

This includes Buddhist texts, too!

Inscriptions by Emperor Ashoka might be written in old Brahmi script:

An inscription from the Pillar of Ashoka at Sarnath, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

…while texts written in palm leaf might also be written in Sanskrit, but using a derivative script:

The Lotus Sutra written in Sanskrit in an early form of South Turkestan Brahmi script, courtesy of Wikipedia.

You can see that while both are Buddhist (or Buddhist-historical) subjects, they are not necessarily written in the same script. Further examples include later Siddham script, often used in mantras and other esoteric practices by some schools:

The Heart Sutra as written in Siddham script, courtesy of Wikipedia

Then there’s other one-off, but important scripts like Karoshthi and so on.

This is not that unusual by the way when dealing with widely-used languages from antiquity, by the way. Although Greek was always written in the Greek alphabet, the style of writing could be vastly different depending on regional variations, such as those found on Egyptian papyrus vs. modern textbooks. Latin wasn’t always written in big block letters; it had its own cursive form that was more frequently used, and is pretty obtuse to modern Westerners without some training first.

Does Any Of This Matter?

For the average day-to-day practice of Buddhism? Nope.

Buddhism has always been at heart a religion of practice, not dogma. The Buddhist tripod of wisdom, conduct and practice (i.e. chanting, meditation, etc) has two “legs” which involve day to day action. Wisdom is important too but differs from dogma in that it’s not something you believe, but something you learn.

So, you could follow the Buddhist path perfectly fine if you focus on these things, and never bother with ancient languages, relying on acceptable translations instead. Studying the sutras is a helpful practice in Buddhism, but there are already plenty of good translations.

However, if you get into a more professional position either as a teacher, scholar, monk, nun, or priest, etc., knowing some command of Pali, Sanskrit, Classical Chinese, or Tibetan is really helpful. It won’t necessarily make you a better Buddhist, but may help you be a better teacher to others.

Back in 2019, I tried my hand at learning Sanskrit, with the intention of reading Buddhist texts natively, partly for fun, partly for curiosity, partly because I was frustrated by shoddy, overly sectarian translations. What I found is that modern Sanskrit courses and texts overwhelmingly focus on Hindu content, and insist on teaching Devanagari script, which makes sense, but neither of which is appropriate for the study of Buddhism.

Thus, my efforts to learn Sanskrit have languished for a long time.

These days, I would like to try again, but I believe that to effectively learn Sanskrit for the purposes of studying Buddhist texts, the following caveats might be helpful:

  1. Learning Devanagari is not required. Buddhist texts are written in a wide variety of scripts but usually not Devanagari. There are some excellent resources for Buddhists texts preserved in Sanskrit, but using the Roman alphabet. This may sound weird, but as we discussed above, Sanskrit has never been tied to one writing system. One script is as good as another. Seriously.
  2. Much of Buddhism’s corpus of sutras and sacred texts aren’t even “pure” Sanskrit anyway. Just as one might learn ancient Greek starting with Homeric Greek before moving onto Koine, the study of Buddhist texts may benefit by starting with Pāli and then migrating to Sanskrit as needed. Even learning a bit of Pāli might be a nice way to get back in touch with early Buddhism and as close to the Buddha’s words as we might ever get.
  3. Alternatively, rather than trying to use a “one size fits all solution”, find a Buddhist text you are interested in, and determine how it was written, what language, etc, and start from there. Again, there are parallels to ancient Greek. The New Testament isn’t written the same way as Euripides, nor Hesiod. You have to accept that Buddhist texts are similarly written at different times by different people.
  4. One thing I haven’t really talked about so far is Classical Chinese. Much of the Buddhist canon, now lost in India, is preserved in Chinese and epitomized in the Taisho Tripitaka formalized in Japan in the 1920’s. If you want to study ancient Buddhist texts, studying them in Classical Chinese might just be as useful, if not more useful, in some cases. The Heart Sutra, for example, was first written in Chinese and then back-ported into Sanskrit later when Xuan-zang journeyed to India.

Anyhow, this is one amateur’s look at the situation, something I’ve learned the hard way. Your mileage may vary, but if you wish to study ancient Buddhist texts, I hope this helps.

2 According to this textbook, only two words in Pāli have a dual form: dve or duve (two), and ubho (both).

3 Southern Indian languages also use scripts adapted from Brahmi, but through different evolutionary course, hence they look quite different than northern Indian languages.