Lotus Treasury World: The Huayan Pure Land Belief―from Eastern Han Dynasty To Tang And Song Dynasty

The purpose of the present study is to discover the course of the Lotus Treasury World into becoming the Buddhists'ultimate aim. Two main aspects gained from the study are the changing course of the Huayan Pure Land faith during the thousand-year accumulation and its unchanging aim. The study also sought to answer the following questions: 1) What is the faith of Huayan Pure Land itself and what is the correlation and the difference between it and other faiths of Buddha lands, such as the Amitabha Pure Land? 2) What characteristics does the Lotus Treasury World have that have allowed the faith to circulate for thousands of years and still be esteemed by Buddhists today?Academic research about Pure Land faith is usually divided into three kinds: the Amitabha Pure Land, the Maitreya Pure Land, and the fusion history between Huayan and Amitabha Pure Land. The academic research of Huayan usually cares more about metaphysical analysis than concrete Pure Land faith. Based on pre-academic research, the present study tries another approach which gives it three fingerprints: 1) Breaking through the study frame of fusion between Huayan and Pure Land to directly research Huayan Pure Land Belief. 2) Breaking through the limits of the mere study of sutra translation and exegesis to research by combining sutra, practitioners in different times, and historical relics for a broadening view. 3) From the humanistic angle to observe the accumulation of religious cultural heritage of different historical times with positive realistic significance. The practice is as follows: First, restoring the definition of Pure Land in Budddhism, second, researching by the combined angle of the metaphysical analysis and the concrete Pure Land faith, and then taking the ideal reborn place of Huayan practitioners'choice at ordinary times and approaching their ends as reference. Through this new method, it is helpful to find not only the developing course and unchanging aim of Pure Land faith in Chinese Huayan study, but also the ultimate worldview, life practice and the next life pursuing of Buddhists.This text consists of three chapters:Chapter 1 Pure Land Categories and Lotus Treasury World Meaning: Looking gradually into from the macroscopic frame of humanistic concern, religious comparison and Buddhist Pure Lands'central meaning to the focus of the dissertation. The contents are as follow in order: discovering the essence of pursuing the ideal reborn place, comparing the Buddhist Pure Land and other religious ideal places, such as the Kingdom of Heaven, analyzing three aspects of Pure Land meaning in the Buddhist sutras (representation, reality, essence) and five categories of its preaching (world elsewhere, man's world, compassion vow, mind only, reality realm), generalizing Buddhist practitioners'Pure Land faith into three patterns (being reborn, development, present moment), and last defining Huayan Pure Land Belief.Chapter 2 The Course of Translation and Exegesis of Huayan sutra: three developing periods of Huayan Pure Land meaning―its sprout, its manifestation and its enriching to be reborn in Pure Land.Chapter 3 The Course of Huayan Pure Land Belief in China: taking the four developing periods of Huayan study(the translation and exegesis of Huayan sutra, the study of Huayan sutra and explanatory treatise, the foundation of Huayan school, the fusion of Huayan, Amitabha, and Ch'an)as the time ordinate axis, to generalize the four progressive phases of Huayan Pure Land beliefs (Lotus Treasury Reality worldview incubating, growing, maturing and mutually interpenetrating without obstruction).The study concludes with analyzing the course of Huayan Sutra translation and its Pure Land belief together, its three belief qualities (infinite space-time of life, boundless orientation of Buddhist practice, endless practice of altruism) and its spirit of mutual interpenetration without obstruction. The results of the study lead to the following innovative points: 1) The reason why Huayan Pure Land belief is still circulating to date is that the Huayan sutra has three aspects of Pure Land meaning and five categories of preaching and thus it contains three patterns of practitioners'Pure Land faith. 2) The key role of the Chapter on the Practical Vows of Samantabhadra from the Huayan sutra has dual character– the fusion bond between Huayan and Amitabha Pure Land, and the mature mark of Lotus Treasury Worldview. 3) Ch'an masters still carry forward mutual unobstructed Pure Land faith of Huayan Reality. 4) From the evolutionary naming of Dharma-realm Buddha statue to the emergence of the Oceanic Contemplation Picture of the Lotus Treasury World, the Huayan images enlarge the expressive form of the Dharma-realm in Buddha's body symbolizing"one is everything"to the universe panorama. 5) Lotus Treasury worldview not only influences Chinese Buddhism profoundly, but also endows the Chinese moral cultivation system with transcendent significance and a practice system, thus it contributes to a harmonious relationship and progressional reform of the society for generations and has important significance in the world today, etc.