Early history

Diffusion of Buddhism

Southeast Asia

Tibet

China

Japan

Influence of the West

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buddhism is a Western term for the immensely diverse system of beliefs and practices centered on the teachings and person of the historical Buddha, who enunciated his message of salvation in India over two millennia ago. The general concept easily lends itself to a false sense of empirical unity remote from the complex history of the tradition and the varied faiths of the individual believers. In the centuries following the promulgation of the original teaching and the formation of the earliest community, Indian Buddhism underwent a massive process of missionary diffusion throughout the Asian world, assimilating new values and undergoing major changes in doctrinal and institutional principles. Today, under the impact of conflicting ideologies and of science and technology, Buddhism, like all the great religions, finds itself, amid the acids of modernity, undergoing vast internal changes which further prohibit simplistic stereotypes and definitions.

The traditional distinction between the major historical forms of Buddhism has centered on a threefold typology, based on doctrinal and institutional differences which seem to fall within relatively homogeneous geographical areas. They are (1) The Theravada (teaching of the elders), located in the lands of southeast Asiamost importantly in Ceylon, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia; (2) the Mahyna (great vehicle), in Nepal, Sikkim, China, Korea, and Japan; and (3) the Tan tray na (esoteric vehicle), formerly prevalent in Tibet, Mongolia, and parts of Siberia. However, this classification is crosscut with atypical variations. The Theravda, as it exists today, represents the sole survivor of the numerous ancient Indian schools. It has a fixed body of canonical literature, a relatively unified orthodox teaching, a clearly structured institutional distinction between the monastic order and laity, and a long history as the established church of the various southeast Asian states.

The Mahyna, on the other hand, is a diffuse and vastly complex combination of many schools and sects, based on a heterogeneous literature of massive proportions from which no uniform doctrinal or institutional orthodoxy can ever be derived. There are certain key scriptures which are sometimes regarded as typifying the more universal thrust of Mahyna principles over against Theravda teaching, and Theravda has traditionally been stigmatized as Hnayna (small vehicle) by Mahynists; but Mahyna itself is also to be found on the southeast Asian mainland, in syncretistic fusion with Theravda. In China and Japan its literature ranges from the most abstruse philosophy to popular devotional theism and magic, and it includes the Hnayana sources as well. Institutionally it has appeared both in monastic and in radically laicized forms, and it has occasionally served in well-defined church-state configurations.

Tantrie Buddhism, dominantly identified with Tibetan Lamaism and its theocracy, is equally ambiguous. The esoteric Tantrie teachings, which originated in India, persisted in several so-called Mahyna schools in China and Japan. In its Tibetan form Tantric Buddhism was richly fused with a native primitivism, and it underwent important and very divergent sectarian developments. The Tibetan monasteries contain (or did contain) superb collections of Mahyna and Hinayna sources in addition to the Tantric literature.

The statistics of Buddhist membership are even more deceptive. The total given has frequently ranged from 150,000,000 to 300,000,000with the variation based principally on the fact that in Mahyna lands orthodox commitment to one religious faith was never a significant cultural characteristic. The populations of China and Japan could not be categorized as Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, or Shintoist in the same way that Western religious history seems to lend itself to relatively clear confessional divisions between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. In Japan, for example, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto have frequently formed a single interlocking system for the specialized satisfaction of a wide range of personal and social needs. The same family that takes an infant to a Shinto shrine for a baptismal ceremony will, without any sense of conflict, have funeral rites conducted by Buddhist monks and maintain family ancestral worship and ethical standards largely dominated by Confucian values.

In southeast Asia approximately 90 per cent of the total population is Buddhist, monastic and lay. In China, just prior to 1949 less than one-fifth of the popular cults were recognizably oriented to Buddhism in some form, and only a small fraction of the total population (under 1 per cent) were specifically affiliated with the monastic orders. Since 1949 this percentage has been further reduced, as it also has, most recently and drastically, in Tibet, where over one-fifth of the total population once lived in the monasteries. In Japan more than three-quarters of the population have Buddhist affiliations, while in India and Pakistan after an absence of many centuriesBuddhism has only recently, during the past few decades, begun to return in strength; however, it still numbers less than 1 per cent. Since the eighteenth century, with the first Asian emigrations to the West, Buddhism has found its way into Europe, Great Britain, South America, and the United States. The number of conversions among the populations of these countries is small in total number but is of considerable cultural significance, since conversions frequently reflect dissatis-faction with Western values and goals.

Amid this diversity there are a few central elements, which may be taken as generally characteristic of Buddhism throughout the larger part of its history. First, for all Buddhists the common point of unity has been in the symbol of the Buddhawhether revered chiefly as a human teacher, as in Theravda, or worshiped as a supreme deity, as in certain forms of theistic Mahyna. In all cases the element of personal commitment in faith is present in some form. Second, Buddhism is one of the three major religions of the world which defines the human situation with sufficient universality for all mankind to fall within the scope of its message of salvation without prior criteria of social, ethnic, or geographic origin. The voluntary act of personal conversion in response to the teaching was from the very beginning and still remains one of the most decisive symbols of its missionary scope. Third, from the very beginning Buddhism was dominated by a religious elite for whom the monastic ideal and pursuit of a mystical, otherworldly goal were overriding concerns, frequently to the exclusion of consistent focus on mundane socioeconomic and political problems. However, even here there are many exceptions which must be noted and which require that Buddhism be defined with careful regard for its discrete historical forms.

The systematic study of Buddhism in full critical perspective began with the Enlightenment and the advent of Western colonialism in Asia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The arduous translation of Buddhist scriptures and basic historical and institutional reconstructions were sufficiently well advanced by the end of the nineteenth century to provide raw material for bolder attempts at comparative evaluation.

In general it may be said that today the major obligations of study include, first, the basic Buddhist literature, doctrines, and institutions considered internallythat is, within the community itself and among individual believers, as they understand it; second, the external relationship and exchange between Buddhism and the larger cultural environments of which it has been a part including its relation to the goals of the state and its confrontation with other religions and ideologies; and third, what can be very broadly called the therapeutic contributions of Buddhist teaching to the human situationboth personal and social.

Historically, ancient Indian culture during the sixth century b.c. was to much of Asia what Hellenistic culture was to the West, and Buddhism was the missionary bearer of many of its values. The conditions underlying the emergence of Buddhism in ancient India were those generally characteristic of the wider process of sociocultural transition which took place during the first millenium b.c. across the face of the civilized world, from Greece to China. In the principal centers of the high cultures, archaic social and religious institutions were breaking down under the pressure of more complex forms of economic and political activity, associated with the urban revolution and the territorial expansion of new imperial states. In all cases, apparent economic and political advances were mixed with serious social disorders, hardship, and the loss of traditional religious moorings.

In this process of transformation, new philosophical and religious solutions were sought and attained by the formative thinkers whose teachings still lie behind the institutions and ways of life characteristic of the major civilizations of the world today. Socrates, the prophets of Israel, Confucius, and the Buddha were among the great innovators who, in distinctive ways, offered systematic critiques of the older values and redefined the meaning of existence and the nature of man and society within a more universal, transcendent framework, which became the basis for new cultural reconstruction.

In India during the seventh and sixth centuries b.c. there were significant developments in agricultural productivity, urban commerce based on a money economy, a new and increasingly affluent middle class, and the beginnings of rational bureaucracy. But these advances were offset by protracted power struggles between warring states for territory and economic resources. They resulted in the uprooting and extirpation of political minorities and the corrosion of the traditional forms of communal solidarity and religious legitimation a situation that provoked a deep spiritual malaise and intensified earlier innovating speculations about the meaning of the self and the world. The value of all worldly activities and of life itself was questioned with unparalleled sharpness.

The new religious and philosophical teachers in Indiamost significantly those whose doctrines are embodied in the Upanisads, in Buddhism, and in Jainismbegan their reconstructive enterprise quite paradoxically with a radical devaluation of the phenomenal world and the simultaneous affirmation of an otherworldly realm of absolute transcendence which alone is worthy to be the goal of all human striving. The normative religious problem emerged as one of personal salvation from bondage to phenomenal existence. The process of salvation was defined by a transmigrational metaphysic which forms an almost airtight theodicy: the soul (tman) undergoes an endless cycle of rebirth (samsra), in which the individual assumes a new physical form and status in the next life depending on the ethical quality of deeds (karma) in this life. The individual may attain salvation from this process by practicing the Yogaan autonomous, ascetic discipline of the inner self, of body, mind, and motivations, designed to eliminate the karmic source of the transmigratory process.

Although this basic metaphysic was presupposed by many of the major schools, there were sharp sectarian disputes on the theoretical particulars. This conflict was heightened by disagreements over the prevalent theory of social stratification, the caste system. From the brhman perspective all means of salvation were contained in the Vedas, and the law of karma was tied rigidly to the caste system: one is born in a particular caste as a result of deeds in the former life, and conformity to caste rules is the precondition of salvation or at least improvement in caste status in the next life. The non-brhmaic schools, like Buddhism and Jainism, denied the ultimacy of the Vedas and the ritual significance of caste. Their messages of salvation were preached openly. Admission was based on personal conversion, usually without ascriptive limitations of caste, class, or sex. Their teachings found rich soil among upwardly mobile urban commercial groups, who held that both soterio-logical and social status should be based on achievement criteria rather than on hereditary right.

Efforts to reconstruct the life and teachings of the Buddha and the institutions of the earliest Buddhist community run aground on many refractory critical problems. But the Buddhas life story, overlaid in its many versions with legend and myth, is nevertheless persuasive in basic outline. The historical Buddha (enlightened one), named Siddhrtha Gautama, was born a prince of an indigenous Indian clan in northern India about 550 b.c. In his early youth he displayed unusual sensitivity to the pressing enigmas of human existence. His family endeavored unsuccessfully to distract him from these concerns and to insulate him from the signs of human finitudesuffering, contingency, and death. But at the age of 29, still preoccupied with the ultimate questions, he left to search for a means of salvation. For some years he tested and rejected radical physical asceticism and abstract philosophy. Finally, in a single night of intensive meditation he achieved enlightenment and evolved his own unique diagnosis and teaching (Dharma). He then embarked on a missionary career, preaching his message of salvation openly to all without a closed fist. He formed an ever-widening community (Sangha) of mendicant disciples from all castes, including women and lay devotees, and after a long ministry he died at the age of 80.

The major forms of the tradition represent the Buddha as teaching an exoteric, practical Yoga which followed the so-called middle patha mean between the extremes of bodily indulgence, self-mortification, and speculative philosophy. This is a qualitative, not merely an expedient, mean. It is based on the conviction that neither ritual manipulation of external physical formsincluding radical asceticism (e.g., Jainism)nor abstract intellectualism can touch the real core of the human problemthe habitual errors of the mind and the inward perversion of the will and motivational processes. The Buddhas unique diagnosis and soteriology are embodied classically in the four noble truths. (1) All creaturely existence is marked by duhkha (pain, anguish), an agonized bondage to the meaningless cycle of rebirths amid a transitory flux which is impermanent (anitya) and without essential being (antman). (2) The cause of this agony is ignorance (avidy) of the illusory nature of phenomenal existence and particularly the pernicious notion of the eternality of the soul, which ironically perpetuates the desire (t) for life. As individual consciousness is dissolving in death, this residual ignorance and desire once againin an inexorable causal sequenceform the empirical self from heterogenous phenomenal elements and chain it to the process of rebirth. (3) The removal of ignorance about and desire for phenomenal life will break the causal sequence and so precipitate final salvation. (4) For this purpose the proper Yoga is the eightfold path, an integral combination of ethics (la) and meditation (samdhi), which jointly purify the motivations and mind. This leads to the attainment of wisdom (praj), to enlightenment (bodhi), and to the ineffable Nirva (blowing out), the final release from the incarnational cycle and a mystical transcendence beyond all conceptualization.

The Yoga is radically autosoteriologicalan autonomous performance by the self-reliant individual. It demands total commitment, adequately expressed only in the role of the mendicant monk who has abandoned the aspirations of the everyday world and has undertaken a life devoted to full-time pursuit of the religious goal. Although the lay householder might practice the Yoga and originally was not excluded from the ultimate goal (the Buddha said only that it was harder for the householder to attain Nirva), it was inevitable that full spiritual perfection should be dominantly reserved for those whose deeper concern for salvation was institutionally defined by complete monastic commitment.

The rudiments of the teaching outlined here give only the barest suggestion of its innovatory and therapeutic potential. Always foremost is the paradigmatic grandeur of spiritual transcendence and renewal represented by the Buddha himself. His withdrawal from the givenness of the everyday world and his negation of it was the first step in gaining a new critical leverage over it. The principal symbols of world rejection and negation are not pessimism or nihilism. They negate and displace the archaic religious practices and forms of social organization in the name of a transcendent goal that places all men in a universal context of religious meaning through which the whole human situation can be comprehended and managed. Correlatively, it is possible to inculcate universal standards of conduct which establish expectations of interpersonal and intergroup relationships without particularistic, ascriptive limits of space or time.

The initial act of conversion, expressed in commitment to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, not only allows for the dramatization of personal dissatisfaction with ones present life situation but projects a longrange program of spiritual recovery and maturation, including the cathectic transformation of the whole personality and the internalization of new values, which can be publicly acted out. Enlightenment is not only the result of incessant meditation on the truths and on the transitoriness of life, which will ultimately eradicate desire for it; it requires motivational purification through the practice of universal virtues, in addition to monastic poverty and continence, love (maitr), and compassion (karu) toward all living creatures, the elimination of a host of specific vices, and the obligation to promote friendship and concord. Within the community the ritual divisions of caste and all ascriptive divisions are obliterated before the universal force of love and the knowledge of the common condition of all men.

The solidarity of the earliest mendicant community was centered on the charisma and teaching of the Buddha himself, but the growing number of converts, the addition of lay devotees, and the settlement of a number of cenobitic communities around major cities in the Ganges valley forced the routinization of discipline and teaching. By the end of the Buddhas long ministry the Sangha was differentiated along several characteristic lines; most important was the class distinction between the monastic elite and the lay devotees. The tradition relates that after the Buddhas death a council was convened at Rjagrha to regularize the teachings and monastic rule. The actual accomplishments of the council are uncertain, but it is apparent that a substantial body of the scriptures found in the present Theravdin canon and the residuals of other early schools already existed in oral form including the nuclear disciplinary code (Prtimoka) of the later full monastic rule (Vinaya) and much of the soteriological teaching embodied in the Buddhas discourses (Stra). The major ceremonials of communal life were in practice, most importantly the bimonthly uposathaa congregational assembly and confessional recital of the Prtimoksa. As a result of the increasing generosity of the laity, the various monastic centers soon possessed extensive properties and dwelling places, with a highly differentiated system of specialized roles for administration and teaching.

By the third century b.c. the Sangha was in the process of sectarian proliferation, ultimately forming a number of schools, each of which emphasized different philosophical and doctrinal features of the received tradition. Their distinctive doctrinal positions were embodied in commentaries on the early teachings, finally formingto take the Theravdin casethe Abhidhammathe third part of the threefold Pli canon (Tipitaka). According to uncertain tradition, a second council was convened at Vail one hundred years after the Buddhas death. There a series of sharp disagreements about the inner meaning of the teaching, the status of the laity, and the rigors of the monastic rule brought on the great schism, a split chiefly between the conservative forerunners of the Theravda and the more liberal Mhasaghika, whose doctrines were significantly related to the rise of Mahyna Buddhism in the following centuries.

The apparent failure of the first councils to unite the Sangha has to be gauged against the basic values of the teaching itself, the nature of monastic constitution, and the conception of internal authority. The early Sagha was never a church under one centralized control or subscriptionist orthodoxy. At Rjagha, after the Buddhas death (and supposedly at his own request), the idea of routine patriarchal succession was deliberately rejected. In keeping with autosoteriology, the primary function of the monastic rule was to protect the spiritual independence of each monk. It contains typically stringent rules and penalties dealing with sexual offenses, abuse of material possessions, and interpersonal disturbances and outlines legalrational procedures for dealing with internal disagreements. But the over-riding aim was to provide optimum conditions for pursuit of the ultimate religious goal, not to enforce ecclesiastical unity. Issues were discussed openly and decided by majority vote, with all ordained monks having equal franchise. The constitution of a monastery allowed free dissent in good faith, and if controversies could not be resolved, the rules governing schism allowed the dissenters to depart and form their own monastic center. Formal routinization finally included a status system based upon degree of spiritual perfection, knowledge and capacity to instruct, and seniority reckoned in a sequence of three decades from the date of ordination. There was a preceptor system for the guidance of novice monks, but the authority of the senior monks was in principle strictly advisory. The novice joined the Sangha by confessing his inward spiritual intention, but not within the framework of a system of bureaucratic office-charisma, as in the Roman and Byzantine churches, or of monastic obedience, such as we find in the Benedictine rule.

For the laity and for all secular spheres of social reality, the leadership of the Sangha developed a highly differentiated secondary soteriology, based on a merit-making ethic rationally oriented to the economic and political needs of the urban mercantile and artisan classes. In joining the Sangha, the lay devotees promised to conform to the five precepts (no killing, stealing, lying, adultery, or drinking of alcoholic beverages). By support of the monastic order and by their personal morality they could accumulate karmic merit and so be assured of better rebirth opportunities. By contrast with the archaic sacrificial rites which still persisted, Buddhism provided less-expensive religious media. The Buddhist laity were expected to make donations to the Sagha, but the soteriology stressed the autonomy of the self as the sacrificial agent.

In the Theravdin Siglovda Sutta, sometimes called the householders Vinaya, the layman is exhorted to pursue a lifetime of ethical self-discipline, for the sake of a well-being in this world and the next, including the maximization of economic efficiency. He must eliminate self-indulgent and wasteful vices which impair effective economic action: sensuality, hate, fear, and slothfulness. Undesirable business associates include those who lack self-discipline and waste human and physical resources. Slave trading and other dehumanizing practices are prohibited. The householder must train his children in socially useful occupations and carefully observe contractually defined ethical relationships with his family, servants, and business associates.

The lay theory of social stratification undercut caste criteria because it denied the religious ultimacy of the brhmas, the Vedas, and the ritual significance of caste divisions. The Buddha is represented as arguing that caste has no inherent sanctity because it arose historically as the result of occupational differentiationquite naturally, and not otherwise. The social status of women was much improved, and in theory women and men were equals within the Sagha. Political theory, though basically patrimonial, asserts that the power of the state is based on a historically evolved contractual relationship between the king and the people which requires that the king earn his keep by his executive skill and moral example.

By the end of the third century b.c., popular lay piety had begun to find its center of gravity in a semitheistic cult entailing the merit-making worship (pj) of saintly relics and of the Buddha himselfnow exalted to a supramundane plane and surrounded with symbols of his previous incarnations. The places of cultic worship (stpas and caityas) signify the pressure of the laity for religious means increasingly remote from the monastic autosoteriology. These cultic developments were accompanied by civilizing rationalizations of many indigenous archaic resources which facilitated missionary activitymyths, cosmologies, gods, demons, heavens, hells, and magicall subjected to the overarching power of the Buddha and the monastic order and tied to higher educational and socializing aims.

From the viewpoint of the expanding state in ancient India, Buddhism was from the very beginning a potentially valuable asset. The organized clergysworn to povertywas a powerful and relatively inexpensive medium for building social solidarity where traditional collectivities had been disrupted by force, and they could assist in more subtle forms of pacifist teaching where force was impractical. This was also particularly meaningful in an expanding economy dependent on a stable and pacified environment for efficient production and exchange. The Sangha could provide the legitimation for political leaders and bureaucrats who either did not have suitable ascriptive status or desired to increase their innovatory power against some traditional elite.

The supportive relationship between Buddhism and the developing state reached a climax in the third century b.c., with an event which determinatively affected the subsequent history of Buddhism. The expansion of the state of Magadha, which had begun in the sixth century b.c., culminated in the founding of the Mauryan empire, a patrimonially governed centralized bureaucracy which dominated the subcontinent. The third ruler of this empire, King Aoka, who acceded to the throne about 270 b.c., converted to Buddhism after completing the military consolidation of his territorial holdings. He then issued a pacifistic ideology grounded on the universal achievement-based principles common to the Buddhist lay ethic and most of the other Indian religions. This ecumenical ideology, along with an autobiography of his own spiritual transformation from military coercer to pious layman, was inscribed on stones and pillars and promulgated by emissaries throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Its goal was clearly not only to legitimize the innovatory authority of the royal house but also to provide a wider cultural base for a more viable social system. It exhorts all men in the empire to cooperative pursuit of socially and economically efficient virtues. It discourages the practice of archaic sacrificial and magical ceremonials, thus undercutting traditional religious customs that reinforced politically troublesome local solidarities and supported an entrenched class of archaic religious practitioners. The ideology makes no specific mention of brhma caste criteria for social integration, urging only that brhmas be shown the same respect as other religious leaders.

Although Aoka did not institute Buddhism as the state religion, he promoted Buddhist missionary movements, which spilled over the borders into other landsmost importantly into southeast Asia. Several of his edicts indicate that he tried to unify the Sangha and stem schismatic tendencies which threatened its effective support of the goals of the state. He may have instituted a doctrinal reform by convening a third council at the capital city of Ptaliputra, which then became the basis for the Theravdin orthodoxy that was carried to Ceylon and the southeast Asian mainland. But sectarian schisms in India persisted, for the doctrinal and institutional reasons noted above.

Within fifty years after Aokas death the Mauryan empire collapsed under a multitude of pressuresbarbarian invasions, economic decline, internal political conflict, and a resurgence of brhma power. Subsequently, the ascriptive principles of the caste system were further rationalized. The kings responsibility was increasingly tied to the maintenance of the social order in accordance with caste criteria, thus forming the permanent social base for the emergence of normative Hinduism. The specifics of Buddhist nonascriptive social theory remained only peripherally influentialallowing for occasional nontraditional legitimation of invading monarchs and their courts most notably among the Greeks, the Skas and Pahlavas, and the Kuas.

Mahyna Buddhism did not emerge identifiably as a self-conscious movement with its own distinctive literature and institutions until the first century a.d. Its earliest strasheld to contain the true and restored teachings of the Buddhacannot be dated with certainty before the beginning of the Christian era, and there is some indication of Western and Iranian influence on their doctrine and symbolism. However, many prominent Mahyna principles have their roots in the issues raised at the second council of Vai, which culminated in the schism of the Mahsarighika school. Its doctrines and those developed by other forerunners of the Mahyna represented liberalizing solutions to cumulative tensions which had been present within the Sangha almost from the very beginning. Particularly controversial were the hardened dichotomy between the laity and the monastic elite and disagreements regarding the right of lay access to the full religious goal.

The issues at stake centered on the traditional conservative conception of monastic perfection, ideally embodied in the Arhant, the fully perfected monk who attains complete enlightenment only at the end of the long and arduous pursuit of self-perfection demanded by the Yoga. This ideal was held by liberals to be a selfish distortion of the original teaching, violating the Buddhas compassion for all men. In its place they introduced a new conception of spiritual perfectionthe ideal of the Bodhisattva (being of enlightenment). The term, which was originally used chiefly to denote previous incarnations of the historical Buddha, was universalized. In its new configuration it means one who, although worthy of Nirvana, sacrifices this ultimate satisfaction in order to help all sentient creatures with acts of love and compassion. All men are inherently capable of filling this role. It is not necessarily a monastic category, and the Arhant is lower on the scale of perfection.

This innovation significantly undercut the rigidities of the class distinction between monk and layman. Although monasticism continued as a central institution, the Bodhisattva ideal opened the soteriology to new symbolic forms, beliefs, and practices. It facilitated popular diffusion and provided the basis for new theistic and philosophical developments, reflected in the principal Mahyna stras and schools. Equally important was the doctrinal affirmation of the divinity of the Buddha. He is not only the historical teacher; he is an omnipresent deity, an eternal spiritual being and force. This allowed for further rationalizations of the popular theistic movements.

The Perfection of Wisdom stras are among the most important theoretical formulations of Mahyna soteriology. The Bodhisattvas distinctive marks are loving compassion and wisdom. This wisdom and its perfection are related not only to self-sacrificing love but also to a more accurate understanding of the real nature of Nirva. It is not an otherworldly goal, in polarity with the phenomenal world. This is a Hinayna distortion, which ironically reduces Nirvna to an empirical spatiotemporal object and reinforces the desire inimical to salvation. Nirvna is beyond all phenomenal and conceptual polaritiesvoid and empty (ya). As one approaches inward realization of this truth and experiences enlightened insight, all distinctions between Nirvna and the world are obliterated. One lives with pure, egoless compassion.

The emptiness motif in the Wisdom stras was developed by the philosopher Ngrjuna, founder of the Mdhyamika school. He evolved a negational logic designed to break the inveterate tendency of the finite human mind to impose spatiotemporal categories on the supreme spiritual ideal. The other major philosophical schoolthe Vijnnavda (or Yogcra)based its teachings on stras developed around idealistic conceptions: all objective perceptions are illusory projections of the mind. Salvation is achieved by exhausting the source of dualistic consciousness and sensory perception through a Yoga which leads to union with the purity of being.

The philosophical schools reached extraordinary heights of exaltation and subtlety. They liberated the mystical ideal and soteriology from their scholastic bondage, attracted many intellectuals, and provided new principles for theoretical development of Mahyna universalism. But the bulk of Mahyna practice found its popular social base through theistic means. The heavens were filled with saving Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who transferred their own merit to the believer in response to prayer, provided richly differentiated objects for cultic worship, and satisfied a wide range of personal affective needs. Theistic piety inspired important artistic achievements, beginning perhaps as early as the second century b.c., in the friezes of the Bhrhut and Snch topes, and culminating in the Buddha statuary produced by the Mathur and Gandhra schoolsthe latter clearly influenced by GrecoRoman art forms.

Among many efforts to systematize this theistic profusion one of the most important was the formulation of the Trikya (three bodies) Buddhology. Here the Buddha exists in his eternal essence as a supreme heavenly deity and in worldly manifestations. He is both the absolute ground of being and the actional agent of salvation. He interpenetrates all discrete phenomena, assuring the universal presence of the Buddha-nature among all creatures, without distinction. This theory provided an integral basis for formal and functional differentiation of symbolic resources, and it was at the same time a dynamic metaphysic which could be adjusted to new social and cultural pressures.

Within the immensely rich theistic literature of Mahyna there are several important stras which became the basis of the most popular cults and schools in China and Japan. The Lotus of the Good Law purports to reveal the ultimate teaching of the Buddha kyamuni, the transcendent father of all worlds, whose love bridges all finite limitations. The devotee is saved by faith in this stra itself. There is a suggestion of sectarian exclusiveness in the dogma that this stra alone embodies the ekayna (one vehicle)the only efficacious means of salvation, which thus exhausts all other doctrines.

More radical are the Land of Bliss stras. Here Amitbha Buddha presides over a heavenly paradisethe pure landavailable to the faithful through the power of his grace. Eschatological and sectarian motifs appear, stressing the utter uselessness of all techniques of self-salvation in a world of utter degeneracy and emphasizing the need to rely absolutely on Amitbha.

Though Mahyna produced little in the way of systematic economic or political theory, there are some exceptions which deserve mention because of their demonstrable influence in China and Japan. The Exposition of Vimalakrti glorifies the virtues of a paradigmatic layman who not only pursues a life of rational economic gain and sophisticated worldly well-being but simultaneously achieves a spiritual perfection excelling that of the most distinguished monks. In the area of political theory the Stra of the Excellent Golden Light, written some time prior to the expansion of the Gupta empire (319540), outlines a modified doctrine of divine kingship. The king is called devaputra (son of the gods), a designation current in the Hindu theory of kingship, but he has no insulated cultic status. He stands under the Buddhas law and is obliged to promote universal peace and social order or by judgment of the gods forgo his right to ruleobviously a sanction for revolt. The patrimonial theory of kingship remained dominantly contractual. Only rarely did the incarnational Bodhisattva principle lend itself to caesaropapist or theocratic pretensions in India. Problems of social stratification receive only passing attention. Caste is presupposed as an institutional reality, and one looks in vain for a systematic critique comparable to that found in the scriptures of the early schools.

The missionary diffusion of Mahyna was greatly facilitated by a remarkable principle of rationalization which allowed for almost unlimited adaptability to given conditions. This was the idea of the Buddhas upyakaualya (skill-in-means) the ability to adjust teachings and institutions to the needs of all sorts and conditions of men through any means available. It was identified with the Buddhas universal love, and, combined with the conviction that all phenomenal forms are illusory and void, it allowed for expedient use of new techniques to further the message of salvation. It cut through traditional boundaries, textual literalism, orthodox formulations, and monastic regulations with remarkable innovatory power and carried the teaching forward, however adumbrated and transformed.

The assimilative diversity of popular Mahyna did not mark the end of the development of Buddhism in India but rather led almost imperceptibly to a metamorphosis. Beginning recognizably in the sixth and seventh centuries a.d. there took place an upsurge of a vast new repertoire of magical, ritualistic, and erotic symbolism, which formed the basis for what is commonly called Tantric Buddhism. Its distinguishing institutional characteristic was the communication through an intimate masterdisciple relationship of doctrines and practices contained in the Buddhist Tantras (esoteric texts) and held to be the Buddhas most potent teachings, reserved for the initiate alone.

In content, Tantric Buddhism is fused in many areas almost indistinguishably with Mahyna doctrines and archaic and magical Hinduism. Cryptic obscurities were deliberately imposed on the texts to make them inscrutable except to the gnostic elite. But it took a number of identifiable forms, the most dramatic of which was Vajrayna (thunderbolt vehicle). Vajrayna had its metaphysical roots in the supposition that the dynamic spiritual and natural powers of the universe are driven by interaction between male and female elements, of which man himself is a microcosm. Its mythological and symbolic base was in a pantheon of paired deities, male and female, whose sacred potency, already latent in the human body, was magically evoked through an actional Yoga of ritualistic meditations, formulas (mantra), and gestures (mudr) and frequently through sexual intercourse, which occasionally included radical antinomian behavior. The inward vitality of the sacred life force is realized most powerfully in sexual union, because there nonduality is experienced in full psychophysical perfection.

The philosophical justification for these developments was derived from adaptations of Yogcra and Mdhyamika theory: since the objective phenomenal world is fundamentally identical with the spiritual universe of emptiness or is at most an illusory projection of the mind, the conclusion was drawn that all forms are not only devoid of real moral distinctions but, also, may serve as expedient means to an undifferentiated spiritual end: the overcoming of the illusory sense of duality between the phenomenal and spiritual world. For the adept it is not only necessary to say that there is no good or evil; it must be proved in an active way. The traditional morality is violated as behavior formerly regarded as reprehensible is found to speed the realization of nonduality.

Many Tantric sects practiced these rites only symbolically and in certain casesmost notably in the Sahajayna (innate vehicle) school produced works of great ethical exaltation. The Mantrayna (true-word vehicle) school, which became influential in China and Japan, remained a rational paragon of restrained magico-religious esotericism. The social origins and class stratification of Tantric Buddhism are almost impossible to determine. Tantric Hinduism, also, was in vogue during this period, and its popularity suggests that a wide-ranging democracy of magical esotericism had broken through stereotyped pressures resulting from the development of state-controlled orthodox institutions during the Gupta era. In the sixth and seventh centuries there were sporadic persecutions of Buddhism, which may have promoted esoteric withdrawal.

After the tenth century a.d. Buddhism began a perceptible decline, for reasons which are still far from clear. The Mahyna philosophical schools became increasingly preoccupied with abstruse theoretical issues and hairsplitting polemics. In time theistic Mahyna and Tantric Buddhism became hardly distinguishable from the increasingly luxuriant garden of Hinduism. The great medieval Hindu philosopher akara successfully incorporated the strong points of Buddhist philosophy in a decisive synthesis. Buddhist monasteries, schools, and cults began to lose their popular foundation, and we can see the slow but sure absorption of its symbolism, intellectual leadership, and laity into the richness of what tienne Lamotte has called Ihindouisme ambiant. The Buddha was represented as one among many incarnations of the Hindu god Visnu. The final blow came with the TurkoMuslim invasions in the twelfth century. Offended by monasticism in principle, shocked by polytheistic Mahyna and Tantrism, and coveting the wealth of the monasteries, the invaders systematically extirpated Buddhism by force. It was not to return as a significant institutional reality for eight hundred years.

Despite their stark contrast in doctrine and practice, the divergent missionary movements of Theravda Buddhism into the lands of southeast Asia and of Tantric Buddhism into Tibet hide similarities which reveal the deeper potency of Buddhist universalism. In both cases Buddhism became the official state church and provided the religious base not only for evolutionary advances but also for long-lasting and relatively stable societies. In both cases Buddhism was introduced under favorable ecological, cultural, and political circumstances by rulers who controlled relatively small, homogeneous land areas and polities grounded on primitive and archaic religions. They saw in Buddhism an opportunity to innovate and to provide a broader religious base for legitimation and social integration.

With respect to the churchstate relationship however, in Tibet this evolutionary movement finally took the form of a theocracy based on a unique rationalization of Mahyna and Tantric incarnational theology; while in southeast Asia the Theravdawith its class division between celibate monk and layman and its highly routinized, orthodox version of the classical traditionwas able to maintain a structural distinction between church and state which had important consequences for later institutional developments.

In coordination with Aokas political and ideological universalism, Theravda missions had penetrated southeast Asia by the end of the third century b.c., most importantly in Ceylon, where Theravda was instituted as the official religion of the state. Ceylon became the chief citadel for Theravdin orthodoxy and its continued diffusion throughout the mainland. In all cases the introduction of Theravda facilitated the development of more highly differentiated polities by freeing societal resources from their embeddedness in limited traditional and ascriptive ties. Moreover, the two-class system had certain advantages. The king was a lay defender of the faith, working cooperatively with the superior charismatic and educative power of the monastic order, which provided state chaplains, missionaries, and teachers who crossed traditional boundary lines and created a new cultural milieu. The specialized performance of these tasks by the Sangha and the structural distinction between church and state also allowed for the formation of secular bureaucracies.

This rational rapprochement between the secular authorities of the state and the monastic leadership of Theravda in southeast Asia did not take place without significant changes in the values and institutions of the ancient Indian Sagha, particularly in those factors which had precipitated its earlier sectarian instability. The radical soteriological independence of the individual monk was placed under routine controls by the introduction of a hierarchy of scholastic distinctions that marked out a chronological path through which the monk progressed toward the ultimate goal. This included grades of perfection based on seniority and routine acquisition of appropriate knowledge. Many of these modifications already appear in later portions of the Vinaya and in the Theravdin Abhidhamma and commentaries. This provided more real space and time for the individual monk to perform worldly tasks without being stigmatized as a spiritual weakling. In addition, in Ceylon the structure of monastic authority was redefined in a way which sets it off strikingly from the early mandate interdicting all forms of centralized ecclesiastical control. We find new rationalizations of the legitimacy of patriarchal authority. A uniform line of charismatic successors to the Buddhas authority was used to justify hierarchical control of the monastic orders, approaching that of a unified church backed up by the power of the state. Finally, a doctrinal orthodoxy was established. The key text is the Kathvatthu, reputedly promulgated under King Aokas supervision and contained in the Abhidhamma. It simply declares 252 non-Theravdin teachings heretical, with minimal discussion of the issues at stake. These relatively new dogmas and lines of authority now allowed for the definition of other essential forms. The councils at Rjagha, Vaill, and Paaliputra were approved as officially binding. At the fourth Theravdin council, in 25 b.c., the threefold canon of scriptures was established as the basis for a uniform ecclesiastical law.

In this newly stabilized form Theravda was located on solid institutional and doctrinal ground, from which it could more effectively serve the goals of the state. The four noble truths, the precepts, and the other rational socioeconomic and political teachings set generalized standards for interpersonal and intergroup relations at all levels of society.

In Ceylon the Sangha was partially fused with existing feudal institutions, forming a monastic landlordism pre-empting more than one-third of the land. But it also taught necessary technical skills and norms and provided a wider sphere for social consensus and the religious legitimation of the polity.

On the mainlandto take Thai as an example the monarchs of some of the early Thai kingdoms which emerged in the mid-thirteenth century supported the Theravdin Sagha not only for internal integration but also for the acculturation of conquered non-Thai groups. The structurally differentiated status of the Sangha later facilitated the formation of a civil bureaucracy, which became the basis for Thai administration up to modern times. Specialized departments were set up under the titular rule of royal princes, with the actual administration performed by civilian officials. The Sangha was headed by a state-appointed patriarch, who coordinated the activities of the Sangha with the needs of the state, maintaining an important sphere for the management of tensions and the mediation of conflicting pressures from both sides. Although hereditary ascription, including discriminatory laws and penalties, remained an important integrative principle, the system was considerably opened to individual achievement because access to the civilian bureaucracy and the religious hierarchy was based on free education, provided by village monks. In addition, all young males were expected (as they still are) to spend at least several months living as novices in training with the monastic community. In general the Theravdin system represented a qualitative advance over the primitive and archaic systems which preceded it.

In Tibet, Buddhism provided equally important evolutionary guidance and ecclesiastical support, chiefly through the medium of Mahyna and Tantric values and under cultural conditions which resulted in a unique synthesis. The economy was agricultural and pastoral, with little in the way of commercial exchange and mobility. The native religion was a primitive magical animism (Bnism), marked by a labyrinthian demonolatry and controlled by Bnist shamans, who specialized in manipulatory magic, necromancy, divination, and exorcism. In the early seventh century a.d. Yogcra teaching was introduced to the royal court by the monarch of a newly formed patrimonial state, but it was not until the eighth century, when Tantric missionaries arrived from Bengal, that the real cultural breakthrough occurred. Tantric success was due in part to the inherent grass-roots appeal of its theistic cosmologies and magical practices to those already steeped in the native religion. But compared with Bnism it provided a more highly differentiated and psychologically liberating system of beliefs and practices. The literate Buddhist clergy were armed with a charisma which overwhelmed local chiefs, sorcerers, and demons alike. The native deities were subordinated to the superior power of the Buddhist pantheon, and in time ethical standards were at least partially reformed and universalized through the karmic theodicy. Typically, many primitive indigenous practices were assimilated and placed under a suitable socializing hierarchy. Religious resources soon included a wide range of additional Indian Mahyna and Hnayna materials, and the monasteries became centers for the systematic translation and study of texts.

Authority was maintained by patriarchal succession, and the noncelibate Vajrayna tradition, with its sexual-sacramental rationale, encouraged the monks to take spouses. This resulted in the institution of a hereditary monastic elite, which undermined and finally destroyed the secular monarchy itself. By the thirteenth century Tibet was controlled by lamas (elders), who ruled from their fortified lamaseries and dominated all political, economic, and religious activities. Theocratic power was hardened by an alliance with the emerging Mongol empire.

However, with the collapse of the Mongol empire in the fourteenth century, the inner resources of Buddhism found new creative outlets and produced a remarkable reforming movement. The monk Tsoh-Kha-pa, who initiated this reform, emerges as a genuine prophetic figure. He was a specialist in Mdhyamika negational philosophy and in the rules of the Vinaya, and he aimed at the elimination of Vajrayna abuses and the restoration of monastic celibacy, discipline, and rational ethics. He organized the Ge-lug-pa (virtuous sect), the yellow church. The color yellow signified his purifying reforms against the Vajrayna practices of the traditional red church, which soon lost its position of political power.

The reassertion of monastic celibacy in combination with the theocratic principle of political organization precipitated another series of innovations in the fifteenth century. Since patriarchal authority could no longer be defined by hereditary succession, charismatic legitimacy was maintained through a unique rationalization of incarnational theory: each of the chief lamas in the clerical hierarchy was held to be a worldly incarnation of a divine Bodhisattva, reborn as an infant in a lay household shortly after the preceding lama died. His spirit transmigrated into the newborn child, whose legitimacy was determined through elaborate rites of divination. The child was then trained in the monastery, under rigorous supervision. Theocratic authority was distributed between the Dalai Lama, who served as temporal ruler, and the Panchen Lama, who was authoritative in all doctrinal matters.

The metaphysical base of this system was further routinized by an emanational theology in which an original creator Buddha (dibuddha) produced and controlled all subdeities and discrete empirical forms. This was not only a soteriological hierarchy but a paradigm for the organization of the state, representing the order of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and the organic participation of various subsects and all the people in the spiritual power of the chief lamas.

The decisive factor affecting the history of Buddhism in China was its confrontation with the religious values and institutions of a high civilization that differed markedly from the ascetic, otherworldly orientation of Indian Buddhism. The Buddhist world view made its own unique contributions to Chinese culture, while at the same time undergoing acculturationa process that produced a new if not always stable synthesis of Indian and Chinese values.

In China during the first century a.d., Buddhism was confined mainly to foreign communities in the northern commercial cities. The Buddha was worshiped popularly as one among many deities considered worthy of petition and propitiation, and it was not until the end of the second century, with the arrival of Mahyna missionaries and texts, that systematic propagation was undertaken. Buddhisms deeper values and institutions began to assume relatively clear definition and to find a social base among members of the gentry.

The penetration of Buddhism was enhanced by the severe political and economic disorders which occurred at the end of the Later Han dynasty (a.d. 25220). In this situation of general social breakdown, Buddhism provided therapeutic answers to pressing questions about the meaning of the times and of life itself, unanswerable within the indigenous religious framework. Han Confucianism formed the basis for a highly rational political system, and its ethic had immense integrative strength. However, its cosmological metaphysic was designed to reinforce worldly institutions, obligations, and goals. Awareness of the meaning of the self and the world and of the ambiguities of life was sometimes profound, as with Mencius and Chuang-tzu, but self-reflection and inward cultivation were aimed at better performance of the li (proper social action), rather than at personal salvation.

Taoism, with its naturalistic mysticism, provided an important outlet for the socially induced tensions and the pressures of conventional civilization. Equally significant was the hsen-hseh (mysterious learning), an esoteric gnosis with a comparatively sophisticated metaphysic. But hsen-hseh appears as a metaphysical capstone to Confucianism; and cultic Taoism was dominantly shamanisticproviding magical techniques and recipes for immortality in this world, not the next. Buddhism was something very different. With its devaluation of phenomenal life and rich repertoire of otherworldly symbolism and soteriologies, it placed infinite worth on the legitimacy of personal striving for salvation at the cost of all worldly concerns. By comparison the indigenous religions and philosophies were eminently life-affirming and naturalistic.

The Buddhist monastery, however worldly in fact, served as the institutional setting for fulltime pursuit of an otherworldly goal. Despite important similarities between them, the Buddhist monk and the Taoist recluse, the retired gentleman, could not be mistaken for each other. Even more striking was the stark contrast between the monk and the ideal Confucian gentleman, the chn-tzu. The decisive and ultimately victorious opponents of Buddhism in China were the Confucian literati. Their categorical affirmation of the inherent value of the phenomenal world and of the need for clearly structured human obligations and rational social order was deeply violated by the ideal of the celibate, ascetic monk who abandons the world, his family, and the principle of filial piety for the sake of an unknown, incomprehensible reward. The monastic ideal was regarded by many Confucians as an immense threat to the family, to the state, and to every sacred value.

The social disturbances at the end of the Han dynasty extended into the period of the Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties (220589). In the early part of the fourth century there were a series of barbarian invasions and settlements in the north which provoked a mass migration of Han gentry to the south. This long-lasting cultural split was important for the subsequent development of Buddhism in China. In the north, amid the chaos of the times, Buddhism was a relatively calm oasis of religious and social stability. The Hunnic warlords found in Buddhism the means of religious legitimation and of establishing their own political identity on a wide cultural base which broke through traditional social fissures. The meritmaking ethic and magical therapy were valuable for expiating past sins, gaining practical ends, and sanctioning desired social standards, which still remained profoundly Confucian in depth despite the decimation of the literati.

Under state sponsorship a systematic and remarkably disciplined translation of Buddhist texts was undertaken, introducing many new stras and commentaries, around which schools and cults began to form. Among the first were the Tien-tai, based on the Lotus Stra, and the San-lun, which centered on the Perfection of Wisdom stras and Mdhyamika materials. Popular theistic cults included the worship of many Bodhisattvas. However, by the fifth century the entrenched status of the monastic ordersfree from taxation and corvehad resulted in internal abuses which, from the viewpoint of the state, destroyed their rational cultural and integrative functions. Many of the monasteries had accumulated vast wealth and properties. They were regarded as sanctuaries for those who wanted to avoid secular obligations including the transfer of land titles to avoid taxationand as hotbeds of immorality and political subversion. As a result, efforts were made to break the power of the Sangha and to place it more directly under state control. A caesaropapist fusion of church and state was contemplated by the emperor of the Northern Wei. It was suggested that he declare himself an incarnate Buddha and thus pre-empt the charismatic authority and power of the order. The Sangha was able to resist this effort because the northern dynasties were inherently too unstable for a theocratic synthesis.

More successful was the effort to control the Sangha by systematic reorganization and occasional persecution. A clerical bureaucracy in the Confucian pattern was superimposed on the monastic orders to guarantee rational internal regulation; and persecutions initiated in a.d. 446 and 574 deprived the monasteries of much of their property, wealth, and personnel. However, these acts of coercion had important consequences for the development of the Pure Land cultintensifying the emphasis on eschatological symbolism and the need for salvation through faith in Amitbhas grace alone and deepening its social grounding and universalism.

In the south the dynasties remained Chinese, and political and economic conditions were more stable. The primary cultural and ideological leader-ship remained dominantly in the hands of the Confucian literati, although Neo-Taoism was strongly represented at court. The leading Buddhist monks were for the most part learned, Confucian-trained intellectuals prepared to deal with Taoist and Confucian teachings in depth. They deliberately sought to maintain the political independence of the Sangha, while at the same time synthesizing and enrichening its soteriology in an endeavor to meet the spiritual and social needs of the laity. This independence of mind and synthetic flexibility are best typified by Hui-yan (334416). His monastery was a richly Sinified center of BuddhistConfucian teaching. He was both an expert in the Confucian liespecially the mourning ritesand the traditional founder of the Pure Land school. In order to stabilize the lay ethic, he stressed the moral efficacy of the karmic metaphysic and insisted that the laity observe the five relationships and the law of land. Paradoxically, his rational accommodation of Buddhist teaching to Confucian norms was mixed with a strong sense of the independent dignity of the monk in contrast to the claims of the state cult. With remarkable courage he refused to conform to the traditional court ritual venerating the sacredness of the emperor. In a superb quasi-prophetic treatise entitled A Monk Does Not Bow Down Before a King, he argued that the monk does not lack loyalty or filial piety but has a higher loyalty to the universal Buddhist law, to which all men are subject.

On the whole, however, the bifurcation between the soteriological status of monk and layman prevented the formation of a principle of secular or lay social criticism. Lay patrons were expected to conform humbly to the given political values of the state, and in the last analysis the Sangrias power in both the north and south was dependent on the attitude of the patrimonial monarch, which might range from pious support to savage persecution, depending on utilitarian need or personal whim.

The conquest of the south and the unification of China in a.d. 589 under the Sui dynasty was followed by a deliberate effort on the part of the Sui rulers to use the three major religions coordinately to attain a higher level of cultural unity. Buddhism not only supplied the religious imagery but also the ideology behind the conquests of the founder of the Sui. He deliberately drew on the Buddhist traditions about King Aoka and justified the use of force by infusing it with cultic imagery: we regard the weapons of war as having become like the offerings of incense and flowers presented to the Buddha . Also of value was the psychological conditioning of the army through Buddhist-inspired emphasis on the otherworldly paradise and the trivial consequences of bodily wounds and death itself.

The Buddhist monasteries, patronized by wealthy aristocratic families, were important links between upper and lower status groups. They implemented a pietistic economic justice by distributing the wealth among the poora rational contribution in a time of low economic mobility. State supervision was tight. Monks were required to hold government-approved certificates of ordination and to submit to the supervision of a state-appointed Vinaya master.

In this situation of new political stability, which extended into the Tang dynasty (a.d. 618907), Buddhism underwent a remarkable institutional flowering. The Tang capital was a great center of Sino-Buddhist art and ceremonial, gilding the power of the royal Son of Heaven with suitable charismatic and aesthetic beauty. The provinces and villages were dominated by Buddhist temples and staffed with clergy who tended to the personal affairs of the faithful, simultaneously reinforcing wider social solidarity.

By the eighth century the diffusion of Buddhism had in many ways broken through many of the old particularisms and created a relatively unified Buddhist culture, moderating the severity of the ferocious penal codes and promoting many charitable works. The major Buddhist philosophical schoolsnow emerging in full strengthprovided varied outlets for personal choice and intellectual and soteriological satisfaction. These schools did not develop primarily out of institutional schism or sectarian dissent. Instead, they were formed around the teachings of one or more of the Indian stras, commentaries, and doctrinal systems expounded in China by a master and his designated successors. Confronted as the scholars were with the immense profusion of source materials, their practical goal was to reconcile and harmonize the texts. Some of the schools were based dominantly on the literature of the major Indian philosophical schools, Mdhyamika and Vijnnavda. But others, like Tien-tai and Hua-yen, had no specific Indian institutional counterpart except that implied by the existence of their key stras, around which they catalogued the other sources. Membership in the philosophical schools was necessarily limited to a relatively select literate group, although Tientai had an extensive lay following, and Pure Land for the reasons noted abovewas inherently capable of wide popular diffusion.

The most remarkable synthesis of Chinese and Indian values was achieved in the Meditation school of Chan (Zen). While it was based on the autosoteriological principles of yogic action, its leadership developed a unique meditative technique, which stressed practical, nondiscursive, and naturalistic media for attaining enlightenment. Its teaching was conveyed through a master-disciple relationship founded rigidly on the principle of patriarchal succession, but the school split into two main sects in the seventh century. The Tsaotung emphasized a gradual approach, including routine textual study in the traditional fashion, while the Lin-chi adopted an approach in which all residuals of abstract intellectualism, received texts, and dogmas were abandoned in favor of new techniques. Most notable was the public case (kan in Japanese), a method of question and answer designed to shock the routine patterns of thought that inhibit intuitive insight and the realization of the Buddha nature latent in every man.

Although the Meditation school retained much of the traditional monastic discipline, the essential teaching was communicated largely without ecclesiastical or textual encumbrances. This proved helpful not only in facilitating missionary mobility but also in surviving persecutions which destroyed the edifices, property, and literature of the more traditional schools. The Meditation masters frequently required their disciples to do manual labor, and the antinomian potentials of the teaching were held in check by adherence to the Confucian ethic. In its practicality and its validation of the natural world by the very act of transcending it, there is much of native Chinese naturalism and mystical Taoism. The school exercised considerable influence on the arts and aesthetic values by stressing the inner spiritual depths of the natural form and act.

Buddhism reached its zenith in China during the eighth century. But in the latter part of the Tang it began to weaken. The main factors in this decline were the rise of Taoist political power in the royal court and the renewed importance of Confucianism among the gentry, including the restoration of the bureaucratic examination system under new Confucian leadership. Internal rebellions and barbarian pressures on the frontiers contributed to the collapse of the great family systems on which Buddhism had relied. Equally important was the fact that once again the Buddhist temples and monasteries had become entrenched centers of irrational economic and political power, which from the viewpoint of the state outweighed their cultural contributions. In a.d. 845 a massive persecution was instituted during whichaccording to the Emperor Wuover 44,000 temples and monasteries were demolished and their properties confiscated, releasing millions of acres of land and their laborers. Monks and nuns were compelled to return to productive lay occupations.

This disastrous deinstitutionalization of Buddhism in the late Tang was capped in the Sung (9601279) by the Neo-Confucian reform, which effectively broke the back of Buddhist intellectual pre-eminence in philosophy and placed Confucianism on a new and metaphysically satisfying base. It represents an attack on the Buddhist world view, while at the same time appropriating from Buddhism not only much of its deeper philosophical orientation but also a new concern for the individual and questions of personal meaning. In the philosophical perspective of the great Neo-Confucian thinker Chu Hsi (11301200), understanding leads to a salutary enlightenment. This new image of the Confucian sage encroached on the unique role of the Buddhist monk.

Specifically, the Neo-Confucian attack on Buddhism was in two directions. First, there was an assault on the idea that, since the world is in constant change and flux, it is nothing but meaningless suffering and illusion. On the contrary, all change shows order and permanence in the larger process if not in particular things. Second, there was an attack on the idea that the world is empty and that one should turn away from outer sensations and progressively realize the artificiality not only of the world but also of the minds assertion of the independent reality of the world and the mind. On the contrary, instead of turning from the world, one must investigate its principles and discover its norms, as the basis for the active correction of worldly imperfection.

By the end of the Sung dynasty Buddhism lost much of its intellectual social grounding. The Mongols supported Tibetan Lamaism and Tantrism, as did the Manchus (16441911), for political reasons, but the long association of Buddhism with barbarian dynasties contributed to the general revulsion against it which characterized much of later Chinese intellectual thought. Monasticism continued, but under the closest government supervision. The Buddhist clergy were relegated to the service of popular religious needs and competed with the Taoist shamans for pre-eminence in magical therapy. Their main role was to pray for the souls of the dead, while the Taoists were specialists in the exorcism of demons and sickness. Individuals seeking their aid were not classified as Buddhists or Taoists but simply as Chinese consulting specialists who were essentially without congregations. A residue of Buddhist lay piety remained in several secret societiesmost notably the White Lotus Society, which served largely as a low-level Gemeinschaft organization with little in the way of real devotional fervor or religious universalism.

Japan had not participated independently in the cultural revolutions of the first millennium b.c. For Japan, like Tibet and southeast Asia, this transition occurred much later, in the sixth and seventh centuries a.d., under the impact of Sino-Buddhist values and institutions imported from Korea.

At first Buddhism was valued primarily for its magical power and its prestige as the symbol of the great civilization of China. The real breakthrough to its deeper resources was initiated by one of the greatest figures in Japanese history, Prince Shtoku (573621). Shtoku assumed the regency at a time when there was growing strife between the leading clans over imperial succession. He converted to Buddhism as a layman and, with the assistance of Korean monks, began to reconstruct his society on the broader ethical and cultural base provided by the new values. The innovatory significance of this conversion is suggested by a passage in one of the stra commentaries attributed to him: The world is falseonly the Buddha is true In this ecstatic affirmation of the fundamental principle of world rejection, he appears to have taken the first step in the process of liberating his society from the burden of the archaic institutions which surrounded him. His reconstructive enterprise was spelled out in a new ideology, embodied in a 17-article constitution a fusion of Buddhist universalism and Confucian ethics.

Shtoku actually ruled from the monastery, availing himself of its legitimation and the leverage provided by the monastic order. He sent embassies to China to bring back knowledge of Chinese civilization, which became the basis for the later Taika reform and codes based on Tang law, land systems, and bureaucratic principles.

In the Nara period (709 to 784) Buddhist doctrine found institutional expression in newly imported schools, representing both Hnayna and Mahyna teachings, including the Mdhyamika (Sanron) and Vijnnavda (Hoss). Buddhism dominated the religious life of the royal court and was patronized through the building of temples and monasteries and in other acts of merit-making piety. It provided important ceremonial media for reinforcing court solidarity. Significant contributions to state ideology were made by some of the more politically useful stras: The Lotus of the Good Law not only represented the unity of all forms of soteriological action in the one vehicle but also had a potential affinity for symbolizing national unity, which gave it a permanent place in Buddhist political theory. In 741 Emperor Shmu ordered copies of the Stra of the Excellent Golden Light sent to all the provinces. He directed the building of provincial temples, staffed them with suitable personnel, and built a central shrine to house the immense statue of the Lochana Buddha. By the mid-eighth century Buddhism was the cultic center and metaphysical base of state authority.

However, the Sangha itself began to gain new political powera process which culminated in an effort to institute a Buddhist theocracy under a master of the Hoss sect. This was finally blocked by opposing forces in the royal court, and at the close of the Nara and the beginning of the Heian period (794 to 1185) the Nara clergy was significantly discredited. Emperor Kammu deliberately undertook to dissociate the court from the Nara schools by moving the capital bodily to Kyoto and adopting the term heian (peace, tranquillity) to express his new political and cultural goals. He also encouraged the formation of a new Buddhist monastic order, under the leadership of Saich (767822), a reforming monk who had earlier withdrawn in disgust from the worldly meshes of Nara Buddhism. Saich established his own charismatic and doctrinal independence by studying with Tien-tai (Tendai) monks in China. He centered his teaching on the Lotus Stra and required his monks to undergo 12 years of study and discipline under the rules of the Vinaya. His specific social aim was to prepare them to assume positions of responsible leadership in joint support of the monastic order and the state.

With Kammus death in a.d. 806, the new emperor asserted his own patrimonial independence by promoting a new teaching, expounded by Kkai (Kb Daishi), a monk of aristocratic Japanese lineage who had studied in China and returned with Tantric doctrines culled from the Mantrayna (Chen-yen) school. Kkai, unquestionably a man of immense intellectual and artistic abilities, founded Shingonthe Japanese version of this school. Its esoteric teachings, rich ceremonial, and aesthetically satisfying symbolism appealed to the royal court. Shingon claimed to incorporate not only all the major Buddhist doctrines but also Confucianism, Taoism, and Brahmanism, forming a hierarchial system arranged in ten stages of perfection and capped by the esoteric mysteries. It thus provided an eclectic system of beliefs and practices capable of wide-ranging social penetration, which could be accommodated to the given social hierarchy through extension of the highest esoteric privileges to the elite. Shingons synthetic potential also found one of its most important expressions in dual Shinto, in which Shinto gods were designated Bodhisattvas in an effort to form a unified cultic framework.

The syncretic power and popularity of Shingon moved Saich and his successor, Ennin (794 964), to institute a Tendai esotericism, based chiefly on Ennins studies in China. But Tendai itself was victimized by a sectarian disruption stemming principally from a dispute over the right of patriarchal succession which developed when the emperor selected a blood relative of the aristocratic Kkai as abbot of the order. The conflict produced one of the most tragic periods in the history of Japanese Buddhism. The two camps not only split into hostile religious sects but also, in coordination with dominant clan-based feudal developments, formed fortresses of warrior-monks, who engaged in violent internecine warfare. During the medieval period this became a widespread characteristic. These hostilities were exacerbated by the fact that personal prestige and political status depended jointly on education in one of the monasteries and the monasterys respective position vis--vis royal or clan approval. Clan conflict was frequently defined along sectarian lines, with the great families supporting one feudal monastery against another. Equally important was the freewheeling legitimation allowed by the syncretic richness of the esoteric teachingsincluding suitable Shinto deities to signify the solidarity of each monastic fortress. The esoteric repertoire also gave rise to the Vajrayna sexual sacramentalism of the Tachikawa schoola heretical movement bitterly opposed by Shingon leaders and ultimately suppressed by imperial order.

In all of this the resurgent Buddhism of the early Heian seemed to have undergone a compromising worldly domestication. However, toward the end of the Heian period, amid increasingly violent clan wars and social disruptions, there were countervailing forces at work. In the Heian court, clearly under the influence of Buddhism, we find the emergence of a self-reflective poetry, literature, and drama marked by an extraordinary sophistication of mood and expression. Awareness of the transience of life and the melancholy of impermanent beauty was coupled with symbolism of withdrawal and a nostalgia for the tranquillity of the past. This easily degenerated into sentimentality and became a sign of courtly refinement, but nevertheless it signified a growing uneasiness and a renewed sense of human finitude and guilt.

The feudal wars finally resulted in the overthrow of the old Kyoto aristocracy and the installation of military rule under the Kamakura shgunate (11921333). However, effective stabilization of the society did not take place until the Tokugawa period, and during the intervening four centuries Japan continued to be devastated by protracted warfare. In this situation of deepening gloom and pessimism the energies of Buddhism were once again restored, in a new breakthrough which touched all social strata. Liberated from aristocratic ties to the defunct Kyoto court, it expressed its inherent universalism in ways which still dominate Japanese religious life today. The most important new movement was Pure Land Buddhism. The soteriology was basically the same as in the Chinese case. Self-salvation is impossible. The single efficacious act is the Nembutsu, the invocation and fervent repetition of Amidas (Amitbhas) namea practice already introduced earlier by Ennin.

The institutionalization of Pure Land in Japan was promoted by three unorthodox Tendai priests, Kuya (903972), Genshin (9421017), and Rynin (10711132). Kya left the monastery to preach to the masses and promote charitable public works. His missionary zeal even moved him to try to evangelize the primitive Ainus. Genshin popularized Pure Land in his book The Essentials of Salvation. Rynin expounded the teaching in songs and liturgy, intoning the Nembutsu and urging the unity of all men in the faith. His converts included monks, aristocrats, and common laity alike. Subsequent developments were even more radical. Ippen (12391289) followed the tradition of personal evangelism, preaching and singing in Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples about the omnipresence of Amidas compassion with a universalism which transcended all sectarian differences.

The sudden increase in the popularity of Pure Land during this period of hardship suggests that for the first time the meaning of the human situationnot merely the immediate conditions of personal well-beingwas called into question on a large scale. There was an increasing obsession with the idea that the world is hell and the human situation totally corrupt. Although it is clear that for many the heavenly paradise of the pure land was an affirmation of worldly pleasures, there were practices symptomatic of deeper stresses. People of all classes practiced ascetic vigils and fasts while concentrating on Amidas compassionate image. There were radical acts of physical self-mortificationfor example, gifts of a finger, hand, or arm to Amida or religious suicides by burning or drowningall indicative of deep disturbance.

Hnen (11331212) and Shinran (11731262) were responsible for the major forms of Pure Land, which still exist today. Prior to their efforts the images of Amida were to be found in the temples of almost every sect, and the Nembutsu had no orthodox exclusiveness. But Hnen insisted on the inherent superiority of Pure Land. His radical sectarianism and his success in winning converts resulted in persecution and exile. His disciple Shinran went further: mans total sinfulness means that calling on Amidas name is a useless effort toward merit making unless it is done out of grace-given faith and gratitude. Suffering and sin are the preconditions for personal salvation: If the good are saved, how much more the wicked. Monastic celibacy and the precepts are ineffectual and must be abandoned. The warrior, hunter, thief, murderer, prostituteall are saved through faith alone. Shinran held that monastic celibacy was not required, and he formed the True Pure Land sect (Jdo Shin) in reaction to some of the more conservative members of Hnens group, who still held to the celibate ideal and other traditional vows. The new sect was organized around Shinrans lineal descendants.

One of the consequences of Pure Land radicalism was that it provoked a counterreformation which brought new rigor to the Nara sects and reform movements within Shingon and Tendai. The most important reformer was Nichiren (12221282), a Tendai monk born the son of a fisherman, who took deep pride in his low birth and prophetic role. His reforming message was based on a call to return to the teaching of the Lotus Stra. The goal of his mission was a paradoxical combination of evangelical universalism, radical sectarianism, and fierce nationalism, demanding the cultural and political unification of Japan around Buddhism through faith in the Lotus alone. His position was sufficiently radical for him to form a new school, and his criticism of the incumbent regime resulted in the imposition on him of the death sentence, which was finally commuted to exile. His suffering he interpreted as inherently in keeping with the Buddhas message, and his disciples continued missionary activity despite continuous persecution, particularly during the Tokugawa shgunate.

Zen Buddhism was the third major movement to emerge out of the Kamakura matrix, although it did not reach full strength until the Ashikaga shgunate (1338e1573) and after. In its soteriology it was the reverse of the Pure Land and Nichiren sects, and it did not become equally popular, although it was immensely appealing to many individuals for whom neither otherworldly theism nor ascetic withdrawal were meaningful forms of religious action. It was successfully transplanted to Japan by Eisai (11411215) and Dgen (12001253). Dissatisfied with the condition of Tendai Buddhism, Eisai left for Sung China, where he studied with a Lin-chi (Rinzai) master. After returning to Japan he settled in Kamakura, where his practical teaching found popular acceptance among the new warrior aristocracy. Later he went to Kyoto, with the intention of blending both Shingon and Tendai esotericism with his doctrine. His alliance with the new political order and his compromise with the other sects were major factors in the successful institutionalization of Zen in Japan.

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