Part II, Chapter 4. Determining attachment and the concluding audit: craving salvation¶

Following the compressed format, the determination of attachment and the concluding audit are combined in one chapter. This is also the last chapter of this volume's critiques of individual traditions. The examination of the five traditions ends here; a comparative table of all five awaits the general critique in Essay Seven.

1. The object of craving and the fear beneath it

Each of the preceding four traditions craves something: Madhyamaka, intellectual understanding; Yogācāra, a foundation; tathāgatagarbha, permanence and assurance; esoteric Buddhism, the result. Pure Land craves being saved, being taken away by another and guaranteed by a written vow, rather than arriving by oneself. Its underlying fear is accordingly the deepest and most naked: despair of one's own power. Tathāgatagarbha fears annihilation and uncertainty; esoteric Buddhism fears a lengthy schedule; Pure Land fears that "I simply have no capacity." Shandao's deep faith concerning one's capacity makes this despair the starting point of faith: there are no conditions for escape.¹ Craving salvation is precisely the reverse side of despair of one's own power. Since I cannot manage however I try, I ask someone who can to take care of me altogether.

One more precise distinction from tathāgatagarbha is needed. Tathāgatagarbha takes one's own fruition in advance. Its basis is within oneself, originally a Buddha; its guarantee is signed by oneself. Pure Land moves the entire basis outside the system. What it takes in advance is another's vow-power; the guarantee is signed by another. Pure Land is therefore the limiting form of this line of advances. Even the collateral for the advance, one's own Buddha-nature, is no longer needed. One stakes everything directly on another's oath. For the first time, the object of craving stands wholly outside the self.

A possible route back should be closed off in passing. Within Pure Land there have been attempts to reclaim other power as self-power. The line of mind-only Pure Land and Amitābha as one's own nature holds that the Pure Land is simply the purity of one's own mind and Amitābha nothing beyond one's own nature. In effect, it tries to read a theology of salvation back into a theory of liberation, as Volume I has recounted. Yet this reading has always remained a subsidiary current and has never displaced other-power Pure Land as the main current of popular faith. The reason is not hard to see. Once Amitābha becomes one's own mind, there is no longer another being to whom one can entrust oneself, and the very act through which Pure Land takes effect, handing oneself over entirely, loses its object. The enduring marginality of mind-only Pure Land in turn proves Pure Land's nature. It wants a real savior who stands outside oneself, not a Buddha reflected from within one's own mind. Attempts to reclaim Pure Land for a theory of liberation fail precisely because, at its core, it is already a theology of salvation.

2. The word for the mechanism, entrusting

All five words for the mechanisms are now in place: recursion in Madhyamaka, iteration in Yogācāra, taking an advance in tathāgatagarbha, enactment in esoteric Buddhism, and entrusting in Pure Land. In the first four, the self is still acting: coiling around itself, drilling deeper, drawing on fruition in advance, or rehearsing it in the present. Entrusting is the only verb in which the self stops working. One obtains the result by handing the whole matter to another to do, rather than doing it oneself. For that very reason, it is the least laborious of the series and also goes furthest, beyond the bounds of a theory of liberation.

Read together, the five mechanisms bring two trends to their respective ends. The amount of self-power traces a descending line. Madhyamaka rests entirely on seeing, with the highest concentration of self-power; Yogācāra divides the task into two steps; tathāgatagarbha takes the endpoint in advance; esoteric Buddhism pushes the project of self-power to its limit but still requires one to perform the enactment oneself; Pure Land reduces it to zero. The strength of the guarantee traces an ascending line. Madhyamaka offers almost no guarantee, staking everything on a single seeing. The guarantee grows heavier along the way and reaches its ceiling in Pure Land: another guarantees everything, and once faith is settled, failure becomes impossible. Pure Land is the common endpoint of these two lines, the lowest self-power and the highest guarantee. In a single move it illuminates the direction of the entire Mahāyāna trajectory. The less one can bear the unguaranteed route of self-power, the further one moves toward the side with a guarantee. Pure Land is the final station of this "inability to bear it."

3. Concluding audit, verdicts on the five questions

Following the established format, the level of claims and the level of function are brought together below. The arguments appear in the chapters indicated.

Truth of suffering. At the level of claims, the framework of suffering and rebirth is retained, and the difficulties of Sahā and human weakness are faced, which deserves credit. At the level of function, suffering is located in geography, a defiled land. Its removal becomes a move elsewhere and does not constitute cessation (Part II, Chapter 1).

Truth of origin. At the level of claims, the diagnosis is honest and makes no empty promise that everyone can attain. At the level of function, the diagnosis changes from craving to incapacity. Responsibility for abandoning afflictions is handed over entirely to the Buddha, and the truth of the path is emptied of its content as self-transformation (Part II, Chapter 1).

Truth of cessation. At the level of claims, the vocabulary of nirvāṇa and Buddhahood is retained. At the level of function, birth immediately brings nonretrogression, a guarantee signed by another. Taking an advance passes beyond oneself and stakes everything on the Primal Vow outside the system (Part II, Chapter 2).

Truth of the path. At the level of claims, recollection of the Buddha is simple and easy, available to everyone. At the level of function, the mechanism is entrusting and the principle of self-power is explicitly abolished. Liberation is thereby replaced by being saved (Part II, Chapter 2).

Verification. At the level of claims, birth is explained through the welcome at death and accomplishment of its cause during one's lifetime. At the level of function, the object of verification moves beyond death, with no one returning alive; it becomes a check whose result cannot be brought back. The line of accomplishment during one's lifetime retreats still further to a point that cannot be verified from without and cannot be examined within (Part II, Chapter 3).

Attachment. Craving salvation, with entrusting as its mechanism. Its underlying fear is despair of one's own power (this chapter).

"Pure Land Part" in the title refers to Essay 6 of this volume. The five rows retain the distinction between what the traditions claim and the author's analysis of their function. "Birth" means rebirth in the Pure Land, and nonretrogression is the doctrinal assurance of eventual buddhahood, not a claim that rebirth and buddhahood are identical.

The verification row distinguishes welcome at death from settled entrusting during life. The criticism of internal checking concerns the chapter's analysis of Shin assurance, not a prohibition on every form of reflection by every believer. The fear described below is despair about one's own power to escape suffering. The chapter keeps its acknowledgements of the critique of spiritual pride, compassion toward ordinary people's limitations, and peace through recitation alongside its structural judgment. The psychological studies are not presented as direct proof of Pure Land's efficacy or mechanism.

4. The trajectory of the five traditions read together

Read together, the five systems bring two trends to their endpoints: self-power is reduced all the way to zero, and assurance is increased all the way to its maximum. Verification, meanwhile, recedes all the way beyond death. Pure Land sits at the endpoint of this trajectory and thus most clearly exposes its character. It is a process of progressively surrendering "the unguaranteed route of self-power," not five parallel proposals for liberation. In Pure Land, the surrender is most complete, and the theory of liberation completes its transformation into a theology of salvation. The table comparing the five traditions item by item is left to the general critique in Essay Seven. That is the place for a view of the whole.

5. A fair assessment, and the handoff

Three things must be said in Pure Land's favor, and each carries considerable weight. First, its diagnosis of self-powered conceit is one of the deepest religious insights among the five traditions. It sees through the most concealed clinging to self that self-powered practice can breed and offers a solution that cuts away its support: surrendering everything. This insight echoes accounts of grace in other traditions² and the baseline's vigilance against craving practice.

Second, it is honest, with a humane depth to that honesty. Unlike esoteric Buddhism's promise of "Buddhahood in this very body for everyone," it faces most people's incapacity through their own power and leaves a route for those with nowhere to turn. This humanity comes from troubled times and suffering, not deductions made in a study. Almost without exception, Pure Land masters turned to Pure Land after separation and bereavement, serious illness and anxiety, war and famine. Tanluan fell gravely ill while writing. Afraid of life's impermanence, he traveled far to seek Tao Hongjing and obtained ten fascicles of scriptures on immortality to prolong his life. On the return journey he met Bodhiruci, who told him that Buddhism offered a longevity far surpassing that of the immortals. Tanluan then burned the immortality scriptures and turned to Pure Land. He bowed his head only after confronting his own mortality. Daochuo lived through the turmoil at the end of the Northern Dynasties and Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou's suppression of Buddhism. His sense of the final age was not theory but something witnessed. Hōnen and Shinran lived in a time when the Genpei War, the Yōwa famine, and a great earthquake followed one another. Bodies filled the roads within and around the capital, whose horrors Kamo no Chōmei records in the Hōjōki. Shinran lost his father in childhood and entered Mount Hiei at nine. In middle age he was exiled to Echigo in the Jōgen persecution and called himself "Gutoku," the foolish shaveling, neither monk nor layman.

In their own extremity and that of sentient beings, these people sought a way to live for others equally without recourse. Historically, Pure Land consequently gave peace to the greatest number of ordinary believers: the masses who read little, labored all their lives, and could not count on surviving from one day to the next, rather than the small elite able to enter retreat for ten years. Pure Land doctrine has indeed traveled far from the original intent, the cessation of suffering personally realized in this life. Yet it bears the simplest compassion of the five traditions, an inability to bear leaving the weakest and most powerless with no way to live at all.³ Volume I, Essay Ten repeatedly touched on this in recounting its history; here the credit is recorded in full.

Third, this book acknowledges the peace that buddha-recitation can bring in this life, recorded in a separate ledger. Its comparison of entrusting oneself with Alcoholics Anonymous and the Abrahamic religions (the previous chapter, Section Four) concerns a proposed similarity of structure. The studies discussed there do not directly establish the effect of Pure Land practice or identify its mechanism. These three acknowledgments stand alongside the verdict. Measured against the baseline, Pure Land offers the least of the five traditions on "whether the cessation of suffering verifiably occurs," because it is no longer answering that question. It answers another, how to be saved. The verdict concerns the change of question, not right or wrong.

The handoff follows. The examination of the five traditions against the baseline is now complete. Madhyamaka abandons afflictions through intellectual insight; Yogācāra drills toward the foundation; tathāgatagarbha takes original awakening in advance; esoteric Buddhism enacts fruition; Pure Land entrusts itself to other power. All five coordinates of a complete trajectory from "seeing through for oneself" to "asking another for salvation" have been marked. What common tendencies do they share? Is there a unified pathology behind them? After all this, what kind of theory of liberation remains credible? These general questions pass to the comprehensive critique in Essay Seven.

References¶