The Studies On Ethics Of Chinese Pure Land School

Pure Land school of Chinese Buddhism, whose chief tenet is salvation by faith in Amitabha Buddha. The Pure Land school, which taught relatively simple methods of recitation of the Buddha's name for the purpose of attaining rebirth in the Western Heaven (Pure Land), became the most popular form of Buddhism among the common people and lay practitioners on the Chinese history. It produced the extensive but profound influence to Chinese culture and civil mental state in customses, therefore it's very valuable to research it in many ways,including its ethics thought.In Chinese Buddhism history, the Pure Land school had completed the translations from idiotropic(self-power) religion to devotional(other-power) religion, this change made the Pure Land school express a bigger difference in the aspects of its ethics thought by comparison mutually with the other schools, this paper tries to elaborate its ethics thought from four aspects so as to reveal the characteristic of its ethic. As the philosophic basis of the Pure Land school , retribution for karma tells us the salvation by'other-power'of Amitabha is the key to sentient beings'rebirth in the Western Heaven, this make the Pure Land school put the ethics relation of practitioner and Amitabha at the initial position, Amitabha's other-power provides the key to handle the ethics relations of person and person, person and society, person and nature and body and soul. Buddha-nature Treatise of the Pure Land school expresses a kind of information, namely everyone is perfect, may realize morals ideal by moral striving, however to realize morals ideal can't work hard by individual moral striving only, the other power's help is more important. Rebirth Treatise is the view of the moral cultivation, the Pure Land school regards morality cultivating as a important qualification for gaining rebirth, because one's morals striving in this life still has some value in gaining one rebirth at a higher grade or level in the Pure Land, and this affect the length of time that it will take to achieve Buddhahood once there. Direct reward and circumstantial reward expresses in a specific way the morals ideal of the Pure Land school, but the Pure Land school places the morals ideal to the other shore world.