Huaigan 懐感 has long been considered a disciple of Shandao 善導, the master largely responsible for the formulation of Chinese Pure Land teachings. Murachi Tetsumyō 村地哲明, however, has questioned this traditional understanding and suggested they had no such relationship. In this paper, I examine Murachi’s theory to reevaluate the relationship between Shandao and Huaigan.
Murachi’s study focuses on differences in the doctrinal understandings of Pure Land thought between Shandao and Huaigan. He maintains that Huaigan could not have been a disciple of Shandao based on these differences. But since they clearly shared the idea that the attainment of birth in the True-Reward land by ordinary beings (凡夫入報) is the primary doctrinal concern of the Pure Land teaching, I argue that differences regarding other points are not a serious obstacle to consider that Huaigan was a disciple of Shandao.
As Murachi points out, it is an undeniable fact that there are many differences between Shandao’s and Huaigan’s doctrinal understandings. However, the existence of differences on some points does not provide sufficient proof to completely reject the possibility of their master-disciple relationship, particularly when they agree on other major points of doctrine.
