Author Affiliations: Associate Professor, School of Theology and Religious Studies, Catholic University, U.S.A. 美國天主教大學神學與宗教研究學院副教授
關鍵詞
Sheng Yen=聖嚴; Taixu=太虛; Pure Land=淨土宗; Pure Land in the Human Realm=人間淨土; Humanistic Buddhism=人間佛教
摘要
In the history of the Chinese Pure Land Buddhist tradition, many thinkers have given much consideration to the two interrelated questions of the nature of the Pure Land and the meaning of rebirth within it. In the premodern period, two ideas predominated and frequently clashed. The first was the position of “western-direction” or “other-direction pure land” (xīfang / tāfāng jìngtǔ 西方 / 他方淨土 ), in which the practitioner sought rebirth in an existent Pure Land to the west of the present world. The second was “mind-only pure land” (wéixīn jìngtǔ 唯心淨土 ), in which the Pure Land was coextensive with this world and manifested when the practitioner’s mind was purified enough to see it. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, another way of thinking about the Pure Land emerged as part of the movement commonly referred to as “Humanistic Buddhism” (rénjiān fójiào 人間佛教 ). Known as “The Pure Land in the Human Realm” (rénjiān jìngtǔ 人間淨土 ), it sought to engage practitioners in environmental and social welfare work in order to alleviate suffering and improve lives in the present world. While these developments are most often credited to the monk-reformer Taixu (Tàixū 太虛 , 1890-1947), an examination of his works reveals him as an ambiguous modernizer, mixing the traditional and the modern in an unsystematic manner. Ven.Dr. Sheng Yen (Shèngyán 聖 嚴 , 1930-2009), often seen as a carrier of the tradition of Humanistic Buddhism, took a more synthetic and modern approach to Pure Land. In his mature view, the previous positions of “western-direction” and “mind- only” Pure Land are neither incompatible with each other nor with the modern concept of “Pure Land in the Human Realm.” Indeed, they may be seen as stages in a path. As he puts it, the Pure Land path can start from a relatively simple practice such as oral invocation of the name of Amitābha and lead to a realization of one’s own mind in the practice of “Buddha- invocation Chan” (niànfó chán 念佛禪 ), with the ultimate goal of realizing both the wisdom and compassion of a bodhisattva through the twin practices of realizing the Pure Land as one’s own mind while simultaneously establishing the Pure Land in the Human Realm. In this presentation I hope to contextualize Ven. Dr. Sheng Yen’s Pure Land teachings in the overall history of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism and enable readers to see his innovative way of reconciling seemingly incompatible approaches.
