​

​
​Participatory Grace

​Chinese Pure Land Buddhism

In Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, salvation or awakening is neither solely a matter of heroic self-achievement nor entirely passive dependence. It is cooperative. There is a compassionate power at work in the very nature of things—identified with Amitābha Buddha—that carries beings toward liberation. Yet human participation still matters. We are invited not only to receive grace, but also to respond to it in ways that deepen awakening and expand our capacity to help others.

So we learn from Charles B. Jones in his book Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice (University of Hawaii Press, 2019).

As a process theologian, I cannot help but think that the philosopher who so influences process theology, Alfred North Whitehead, was a Chinese Pure Land Buddhist in spirit, even as he knew little if anything of Pure Land Buddhism. In Whitehead there is a Love at the heart of the universe, who works in the world through life-giving and light-giving persuasion, not coercion; who does not create the world but who seeks to save it; and who is equally present to all sentient beings, sharing in their suffering and joy. Whitehead speaks of this Love as the consequent nature of God in Part V of Process and Reality and as a Harmony of Harmonies in Adventures of Ideas. Pure Land Buddhists speak of it as Amitābha. 

In Jones’s rendering, Indian Pure Land Buddhism can be compared to climbing a steep mountain through arduous spiritual discipline. The journey is possible, but difficult, requiring immense effort and spiritual capacity.

Japanese Pure Land Buddhism—especially in some interpretations associated with Shinran—is more like an elevator. One does not climb by one’s own power at all. The elevator rises by the power of Amitābha Buddha’s vow alone. One entrusts oneself completely to other-power (tariki), and the ascent occurs through grace rather than through one’s own spiritual accomplishments. The movement upward does not depend upon our cooperation in the sense of adding effort to grace. The elevator carries us.
​
Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, by contrast, develops a more synergistic model. It is like an escalator. The escalator is already moving upward. Grace is already operative. Amitābha Buddha’s compassionate vow permeates reality itself, continually carrying beings toward liberation. One need not create the path from scratch. One is already being upheld.
Yet human participation still matters.

If a person simply stands on the escalator, they will indeed ascend. But if they walk upward—through recitation, ethical living, meditation, compassion, mindfulness, and disciplined practice—they move more quickly toward awakening. The point of “getting there faster” is not spiritual competitiveness or private achievement. Rather, it is relational and compassionate: the sooner one matures spiritually, the sooner one can help alleviate suffering for others.

This is one reason the metaphor is so powerful. It avoids two extremes:

• the anxiety-producing burden that everything depends solely on one’s own effort, and
• the passivity that can arise if practice is thought to have no meaningful role at all.

Instead, it presents spiritual life as participatory grace.

From a comparative perspective, this idea resonates strongly with themes in process-relational thought. Reality itself is graciously structured toward healing, wholeness, and awakening. One might say that the universe includes a lure toward compassion and beauty already at work within each moment of experience. Yet creatures participate in how fully and quickly those possibilities become actualized. The sacred—or in Pure Land language, Amitābha’s compassionate vow—does not coerce. It invites, carries, supports, and empowers.

The escalator metaphor also has pastoral wisdom. Many people become discouraged either because they feel they must “save themselves” through impossible effort or because they fear they are spiritually inadequate. Jones’s interpretation suggests another possibility: you are already being carried. The movement toward wholeness is already underway. But your participation matters because your participation helps the healing move more fully into the world.

There is also something profoundly communal in this. Awakening is not merely for oneself. Walking up the escalator is partly an act of compassion for others, because spiritual maturation increases one’s capacity to serve, comfort, guide, and love.
In this sense, Chinese Pure Land Buddhism presents liberation not as isolated self-perfection but as cooperative participation in a field of compassionate grace already flowing through reality itself.

​Chinese Pure Land Buddhism:
Understanding a Tradition of Practice

by Charles B. Jones

Interview with the Author
​

Today’s guest is Charles B. Jones, Associate Professor and Director of the Religion and Culture graduate program in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America. He will be speaking with us about his new book Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice (U Hawaii Press, 2019), just published in the Pure Land Buddhist Studies series with University of Hawaiʻi Press.

Jones is the author is several articles and books, including Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State 1660-1990, which was a foundational work in the field and the first history of its type to be published in any language. Now, Jones is once again breaking new ground with this study of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, which is the first book in any western language to provide a comprehensive overview of the Chinese Pure Land tradition, a notably understudied area in western-language Buddhist Studies scholarship.
In this work, Jones explores many of the core doctrines, practices and controversies of

​Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, situating them historically and in the modern. period,drawing on a wealth of previously unexamined primary sources, many of which he is making available to readers in English translation for the first time. This book challenges readers to rethink many longstanding assumptions about Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, including the nuanced relation of self-power and other-power as conceived in the Chinese tradition, the notion of Pure Land as a so-called “easy” path appealing to non-elite practitioners, debates about the nature of the Pure Land itself and how it is thought to exist in the world, the multifaceted practice of nian fo (念佛, nembutsu in Japanese or “buddha-recollection”), as well as the deeply fraught question of the historical development of the lineage of Pure Land “patriarchs”. This work will be of interest to all scholars of Buddhist Studies, and a valuable classroom resource for teaching Pure Land Buddhism, Buddhist Studies and Chinese Religions.

Lina Verchery is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies at Harvard University. She specializes in the study of modern Chinese Buddhist monasticism, with a secondary focus in Religion and Film. She can be reached at [email protected] or via her website www.linaverchery.com.

Publisher's Description
​​

Chinese Pure Land Buddhism: Understanding a Tradition of Practice is the first book in any western language to provide a comprehensive overview of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism.

Even though Pure Land Buddhism was born in China and currently constitutes the dominant form of Buddhist practice there, it has previously received very little attention from western scholars. In this book, Charles B. Jones examines the reasons for the lack of scholarly attention and why the few past treatments of the topic missed many of its distinctive features.

He argues that the Chinese Pure Land tradition, with its characteristic promise of rebirth in the Pure Land to even non-elite or undeserving practitioners, should not be viewed from the perspective of the Japanese Pure Land tradition, which differs greatly. More accurately contextualizing Chinese Pure Land Buddhism within the landscape of Chinese Buddhism and the broader global Buddhist tradition, this work celebrates Chinese Pure Land, not as a school or sect, but as a unique and inherently valuable "tradition of practice."

This volume is organized thematically, clearly presenting topics such as the nature of the Pure Land, the relationship between "self-power" and "other-power," the practice of nianfo (buddha-recollection), and the formation of the line of "patriarchs" that keep the tradition grounded. It guides us in understanding the vigorous debates that Chinese Pure Land Buddhism evoked and delves into the rich apologetic literature that it produced in its own defense. Drawing upon a wealth of previously unexamined primary source materials, as well as modern texts by contemporary Chinese Pure Land masters, the author provides lucid translations of resources previously unavailable in English. He also shares his lifetime of experience in this field, enlivening the narrative with personal anecdotes of his visits to sites of Pure Land practice in China and Taiwan.
​
The straightforward and nontechnical prose makes this book a standby resource for anyone interested in pursuing research in this lively, sophisticated, and still-evolving religious tradition. Scholars--including undergraduates--specializing in East Asian Buddhism, as well as those interested in Buddhism or Chinese religion and history in general, will find this book invaluable.

---