What is Sino-Buddhism?

First in a series

The Development and Evolution of Sino-Buddhism

Part 1 in a series. First version: June 21, 2022

It is a fact beyond dispute that the original form of Buddhism as taught by the Gautama Buddha circa 500 BCE is very different from Buddhism as practiced in the Sino-centric world today. By Sino-centric I mean: China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet, Siam (Thailand), Cambodia, the Ryukyu Islands (now part of Japan), Burma, and Malaysia.

Sino-Buddhism is the term I use for the practice of Buddhism as found in China, Vietnam, & Korea. Because I am still learning about Tibetan Buddhism and I find the practice of religion in Japan to be very odd, I limit my comments to China, Vietnam, and Korea.

My own introduction to Buddhist theology dates back to when I was 10 years old. However, what I was taught bears little relation to Buddhism as it is actually followed by the vast majority of its adherents. I venture to say that almost no Americans or Europeans understand is how Sino-Buddhism actually works as a religion. My effort to understand Sino-Buddhism has taken several decades and I could be mistaken on a number of issues.

Where does Sino-Buddhism come from?

To understand Sino-Buddhism, we must go back to the beginning. Buddhist teachers arrived in China during the Eastern Han Dynasty. Who these teachers were is unknown, nor can we say where they came from, though it is very likely that they came from India and traveled west, around the Himalayas before turning east, following one of the Silk Roads into Han territory. Shortly after the fall of the Han Dynasty (~200 C.E.), Buddhist doctrines were being translated into Chinese. By 500 Buddhism was so influential that one of the most important kings of the central Chinese state declared that he was a Buddhist deity - I refer to Emperor Wu of Liang.

In his life, Wu of Liang was likened to Ashoka (r. 270?-230?), the somewhat mythic Buddhist ruler who conquered most of India and then converted to Buddhism. From Wu of Liang’s court in Nanjing, Buddhist teachers traveled to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (nominally a part of Wu of Liang’s kingdom). Wu of Liang’s promotion of Buddhism was the primary cause of the spread of the religion to the kingdoms of Baekje and Silla in Korea, and from there, into Japan. The fact that Wu of Liang’s empire disintegrated in the last months of his life, much like Ashoka’s kingdom fell apart immediately upon his death, was proof to the Confucian scholars that Buddhism was unsuitable as a foundation for a good state. However, it could not be denied that for for the nearly 50 years of rule, the State of Liang was peaceful and prosperous.

A merger of Confucian ideas about state-craft and Buddhist ideas could become the foundation for a truly effective Chinese state, and this is what happened.

Sino-Buddhism - The Core Values

First, Sino-Buddhism is focused on this life and how to live this life as well as possible. However, instead of focusing one’s mind on mastery of the Classic texts, as the Confucians did, followers of Sino-Buddhism focused on perfecting human relationships. This is, in one sense, an easier task as it requires much less study, and it is far more appealing to women. On the other hand, it is a life-long task and it requires a life-time of effort, so it is demanding.

What I mean by perfecting human relationships is living one’s life such that no one around you is troubled by your actions. People talk about harmony in Sino-centric nations but I do not think this captures the idea well. If you imagine life as playing a piece of music continuously for several hours, then that is a reasonable analogy. Living correctly takes a great deal of effort, not only must you know your instrument, but you must play at the right time, and you must understand what other people are doing because life is improvised to a large degree. A master player in the music of a community must also work to help other people accomplish their goals as well.

My understanding is that this idea of living life well with other people in a community is not Confucian. A Confucian scholar studies the Classics, masters the material, and sets an example of correct behavior to other people but society is not required. A Confucian scholar is expected to study and behave correctly regardless as to what other people are doing. The Confucian scholar is like a tree, if the forest dies around him, he is expected to stand alone. Confucian scholarship is much like modern academic life, a professor teaches in a college but he or she is expected to attain their mastery of their field on their own.

I wish to emphasis that this idea that a Sino-Buddhist is deeply concerned with the community is not a Classic Buddhist ideal. Instead, Classic Buddhism agues that all human attachments are a source of karmic burden, and thus strong attachments to other people will prevent you from attaining enlightenment.

The Sino-Buddhists rejected the Classic Buddhist ideal completely. Instead, Sino-Buddhists sought to build and maintain very strong emotional connections with family and friends. While the Confucians thought that good relations with other people would follow as a natural result of studying and mastering the classic texts, the Sino-Buddhists didn’t agree. Instead, the Sino-Buddhists believed that good relations with other people could only be achieved by working explicitly towards that goal.

In my opinion, 900 years of Chinese history (from 400 BCE to 500 CE) proved the Sino-Buddhists were correct. The Confucian scholars were, as a group, not a great deal better than the average person. My personal experience with highly educated scholars is that their mastery of a field of knowledge does not make them very good people. It does improve them, but it also creates arrogance, and, in most, a blindness towards important aspects of life.

• Classic Buddhists say: avoid getting involved in other people’s lives.

• Sino-Buddhists say: make your relations with other people as good as you can.

In principle, the Confucian scholars agreed with the Sino-Buddhists and so, they were willing to work with them.

In addition to this focus on making community life good, the Sino-Buddhists introduced three major innovations to Buddhist thought, each of which made Buddhist practice a better fit with pre-existing Chinese ideas about the nature of man.

#1 - Gaining Merit

The most important invention of the Sino-Buddhists was the idea of gaining merit through actions. The Sino-Buddhists made the following statement:

• If you peform meritorious deeds, this will improve your current life and make the time before your next incarnation much shorter and more pleasant.

Initially, the Sino-Buddhists only accepted a limited number of meritorious actions, such as helping to pay for the translation of Buddhist sutras into Chinese or donating land for a Buddhist monastery. Later the scope of meritorious actions grew so much larger such that a person could gain merit every day by acts such as leaving food at a monastery, or buying a little fish or bird and setting it free.

The Sino-Buddhists expressed the idea of how meritorious deeds help you in this life by saying, “The Buddha will ward off some measure of disaster”. Note how cleverly this is expressed. If disaster does strike, the Sino-Buddhist response is: “It would have been even worse, had you not acquired so much merit.”

As to the second part, that your time before your next incarnation will be shorter and more pleasant - this is easy to say and impossible to prove. No doubt many people believed it, and Sino-Buddhist funeral practices all emphasized this issue. Most importantly, this fit with the ancient Chinese practice of worshiping the spirits of one’s ancestors. What better way to show respect for one’s ancestors than by shortening their time in Bardo (中有)?

# 2: Transference of Merit

Starting around 400 CE, leaders of Buddhist temples in China stated that some Bodhisattvas were so compassionate that if you did a meritorious deed on a specific day and prayed that the merit you acquired should be given to someone else - usually your parents - then one of the Bodhisattvas would see to it that an equal measure of merit would be given to you. In modern terms one might call this the “two for the price of one - Sale”.

An example of how transference of merit worked: you spent 10,000 taels of silver and commissioned a statue of the Buddha. Then, on the special day, you donated to your local temple, and prayed that the merit gained from giving this statue should be transferred to your deceased mother. The head of the temple would then assure you that all the merit had been transferred to your mother, and that Kuan Yin or Amitabha or some other Bodhisattva, out of a sense of deep compassion, had taken an equal measure of merit from their nearly limitless pool, and given that merit to you!

As a tactic for gaining donations, this was extremely clever. We can see how this fits with the older Chinese belief in ancestor worship, as well as appealing to the transactional nature of Chinese society. Plus, the person making the donation no longer look like he (or she) is buying your way to heaven. Instead, the person making the donation is doing this all for someone else’s benefit, with the hope that the Bodhisattva will recognize the sincerity of their donation and will reward them appropriately. One of the most famous donations in Chinese history was the Qianlong Emperor’s building of the Tower of Tower of Buddhist Incense (佛香阁) next to Kunming Lake in the name of his mother.

Note: the doctrine of transference is very old but in Classic Buddhism, it only applied to feeding Buddhist priests and the merit gained could only be transferred to someone who was aware of the transfer.

#3 - Being Reincarnated in the Pure Land

The idea of reincarnation was core principle of the Buddhists, just as it has been a core belief of all the Indian religions. Belief in reincarnation was accepted by nearly everyone in China by 700 CE, whether they were Daoists, or Confucian scholars.

[Note: this is a guess on my part. I base this guess on the the commonly used expressions such as “I am greatly in your debt. I cannot hope to repay you in this life, so in a thousand future lives, I will serve you” or “Alas, we were not fated to be together in this life. Perhaps in our next life, the gods {in charge of reincarnation} will be more kind”, or “These two people have never gotten along. In a previous life one must have wronged the other”. I see these expressions over and over in Chinese stories, everyone says them - rich or poor, scholars or farmers. The idea that this life is simply one in a sequence of lives is deeply embedded in Chinese language and thought.]

However, the Sino-Buddhists invented something very interesting which they worked into the idea of reincarnation. The Sino-Buddhists spread the idea that as a result of praying to the Amitabha (阿弥陀佛) you could be reborn in the Pure Land. The Pure Land is very close to the Christian and Islamic idea of Heaven. Three important differences are: (1) You are physically alive in the Pure Land, you are not a spirit. (2) although you live in the Pure Land for a very long time, you will die and be reborn, perhaps back on Earth. (3) You don’t have to be that good to be reincarnated in the Pure Land. The Sino-Buddhists taught that entry into the Pure Land was open to ordinary faithful Buddhists.

I note here that Buddhists teachers the US and Europe rarely talk about the Pure Land and the Amitabha. It took me many years to discover that belief in the Pure Land is a core element of Sino-Buddhism, and nearly all Sino-Buddhists pray to the Amitabha. My guess is Buddhist teachers in the West think of the Pure Land doctrine as a perversion of Classic Buddhism.

In my view, the Pure Land Doctrine is an immensely comforting doctrine and it transforms Buddhism from a non-sensical quest for personal annihilation into a totally different and far more attractive religion, which looks a great deal like Christianity: pray to the Amitabha, do good deeds, avoid evil deeds, and you will go to “heaven” after death. What’s not to like about this?

None of these three concepts is found in Classic Buddhism.

This idea of gaining merit through performing specific deeds has no relationship to Classic Buddhist theology. In Classic Buddhism, it is impossible to gain merit because there is no such thing as merit. All you can do in your life is try to escape karma and - potentially - attain enlightenment. No action you take in this life can make your present life better, except in the extraordinarily unlikely case that you actually attain enlightenment.

It is important to understand how rare attaining enlightenment is thought to be. In the 1,000 years since the Buddha attained enlightenment (500 BCE to 500 CE), it was believed, by Buddhists, that fewer than 50 people had attained enlightenment. Sometime before 1,000 CE, Chinese Buddhist monasteries made it a rule that no member of the monastery was allowed to claim they had attained enlightenment. Realistically speaking, it seemed to any rational person that the quest for enlightenment was almost certainly doomed to failure in any given life time.

Further, almost no one can help you attain enlightenment. A person who gains enlightenment has no real connection to anyone else gaining enlightenment, each person must follow their own path. Classic Buddhism is a solitary quest for personal escape from the cycle of rebirth and no other living human can plausibly guide you in this effort. Further, every attachment in this life including friendship, love, working, taking care of people; all of this prevents you from attaining enlightenment.

The Chinese disliked all of this. For the Chinese, family connections are hugely important. For the Chinese, the idea that the world is basically transactional was central to their understanding of relations. You do things for me, and I do things for you, that’s how the world works. Also, the Chinese like the material world. They like pretty objects such as carefully sanded jade, or gold, or porcelain. The Chinese love improving nature and making things more beautiful by dint of human effort. The Chinese see the world and imagine how they could transform it to make it better.

Classic Buddhism views all art as waste of time, or worse, as a trap, where you end up desiring the art you make or buy, and thus you have a desire for the world which prevents you from attaining enlightenment. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition of making mandalas out of sand, and then destroying it, is a Classic Buddhist ideal - you make the art only to help focus your mind. You destroy the art to remove your attachment to it.

Sino-Buddhism in Practice

It is certainly true that ever since 200 CE, in every generation, tens of thousands of Chinese men and women gave up their names, their families, their possessions, and entered into monasteries with the intention of gaining enlightenment. It must be admitted that Classical Buddhist ideas were known and followed in China from 200 CE all the way to 1949 CE.

However, the number of people who actually tried to attain enlightenment by a complete rejection of the world represented only a tiny fraction of the population. The vast majority of Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese people who claimed to be Buddhist, did not follow the Classic Buddhist religion. Their lived version of Buddhism is how Buddhism functioned and created Chinese society.

In practice, the Sino-Buddhist religion is focused on human relationships. It rewards and honors people who donate money to temples and the community at large. It encourages people to behave kindly towards others because it holds out the prospect of being reborn in the Pure Land for those who people who behave well.

Sino-Buddhism is what I call a highly functional religion. It is relatively easy to follow, the moral precepts seem good, there is plenty of forgiveness for mistakes, and it offers a meaningful and worthwhile life to nearly everyone.

When I visit modern Taipei or the old part of Hanoi, I can see the Sino-Buddhists built temples on nearly every street. Their temples are fully integrated in the community. The temples feed the hungry with the money and food which is donated. Unlike the Classic Buddhists who hide away from mankind, seeking their own personal salvation through isolated meditation and contributing essentially nothing to human civilization, the Sino-Buddhists seem to be living good lives, rich in friends and family, and working to make a better world.

The Classic Buddhist quest for enlightenment seems to me to be a stupid quest that, if carried to its stated goal, would result in the extinction of the human race. The Sino-Buddhists, by contrast, seem to have created a highly functional religion which, together with Confucian ideals, made China the longest-lived and one of the best civilizations in human history.