The trend of final dharma in China started in the South-north dynasty.Dàochuò was in its peak time and went through hardship. He was stroked spiritually in the tribulation when emperor Zhōuwŭ of North dynasty carried out on a large-scale wipeout of Buddhism. Later, he studied Nirvāna Sūtra and had the sense of crisis of falling Buddhism. He finally turned toward Pure Land belief. Dàochuò in his Paradise Collection cited the saying of “five hundred years in the five periods” in Candragarbha-sūtra, a section of the Mahāsamnipata-sūtra, emphazing the connotation of the religious liberation for all sentient beings from suffering of this time and situation. This concept made him the forerunner of Pure Land thinker to final dharma. He claimed that in the final dharma, for the purpose of obtaining rebirth in the Pure Land, one has to do the verbal chanting of the name of Amitābha Buddha. He started from the viewpoint of whether to discard or to sustain one’s various capacities and combined the teaching of “the most inferior class of the inferior” in the Amitāyur-dhyāna-sūtra to develop the relationship between final dharma and Pure Land teaching. This caused Pure Land an independent school and confirmed its method of practice.
