The ideal expressed in this doctrine is a harmonious totality of things leading to the perfectly enlightened buddha. The buddha nature is present potentially in all things. There are an infinite number of buddhas and buddha realms. There are myriads of buddhas in every grain of sand and a buddha realm at the tip of a hair.
The universe is fourfold: a world of factual, practical reality; a world of principle or theory; a world of principle and facts harmonized; and a world of factual realities interwoven and mutually identified. The first three aspects are the particular emphases of other Buddhist schools. The fourth aspect—emphasizing the harmonious whole—is the distinctive doctrine that represents the perfect knowledge that was attained by the buddha Vairochana and is communicated in the Avatamsaka-sutra. Tiantai/Tendai
The school known as Tiantai in China and Tendai in Japan is one of the most important schools in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. It is significant for its doctrines, which in many respects are similar to those of the Huayan/Kegon school, and for its influence on devotion. The school’s doctrines and practices are focused on the Indian or Central Asian Saddharmapundarika-sutra (“Lotus of the True Law Sutra”) as well as on the Mahaparinirvana and Mahaprajnaparamita-sutras.
Sometimes called Lotus (Fahua in Chinese; Hokke in Japanese), this school, which apparently had no separate development in India, took its name from the mountain in southeastern China where the basic interpretation of the Lotus Sutra was first propounded in the 6th century. The origins of the school, however, are to be found in the early 5th century when the original text of the Sanskrit sutra was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva and was then taught in North China by the monks and first patriarchs, Huiwen and Huisi. The latter’s student Zhiyi, who established a famous monastery on Mount Tiantai (“Heavenly Terrace”), is regarded as the true founder of the school because he propounded the systematic interpretation of Lotus doctrines that came to be widely accepted. His interpretation spread to Japan in the early 9th century, where Saichō (known posthumously as Dengyō Daishi), a Buddhist priest who studied the teachings first in Japan and then on Mount Tiantai, founded a Japanese Tendai school. He also founded a monastery on Mount Hiei that became one of Japan’s greatest centres of Buddhist learning.
Along with the Vajrayana Buddhist school of Shingon, with which it was closely connected, Tendai became one of the most important influences on Japanese religious culture. Tendai has been markedly syncretistic, incorporating the teachings of various Buddhist schools and those of Shintō, the indigenous Japanese religion, into its traditions.
The Lotus Sutra, which is recognized by Tiantai and Tendai as the locus of the most exalted Buddhist teaching, emphasizes the notion of the one way (or “vehicle” or “career”) for attaining salvation (Buddhahood). It claims to be the definitive and complete teaching of the Buddha, who is depicted as a transcendent eternal being, preaching to arhats, gods, bodhisattvas, and other figures, using all sorts of sermons, lectures, imaginative parables, and miracles. The Lotus is an object of devotion in this school, and those who preach, recite, or hear it are believed to accrue religious merit.
In the Lotus the three ways of salvation supposedly preached by the Buddha are adjusted to the level and situation of the hearers: shravakayana, the way of the disciples (shravakas), appropriate for becoming an arhat; pratyeka-buddhayana, the way of those who aim at salvation for themselves alone; and bodhisattvayana, the way of those (the bodhisattvas) who, on the point of attaining salvation, give it up to work for the salvation of all other beings. All are forms of the one way, the buddhayana, and the aim for all is to become a buddha.
The Tiantai/Tendai tradition divides the Buddha’s teachings into five periods. The first immediately followed the Buddha’s enlightenment, when, without success, he preached the Avatamsaka-sutra. The second is the so-called Deer Park period, when he preached the Agamas (Theravada scriptures) to those with ordinary human capacities. In the third or Fangdeng (“broad and equal”) period, he preached the Vaipulya or early Mahayana teachings, which were intended for all persons. During the fourth period he preached the Mahaprajnaparamita doctrines concerning absolute voidness and the falsity of all distinctions. Finally, in the Saddharmapundarika and Mahaparinirvana (“Wisdom”) period, he taught the identity of contrasts, the unity of the three “vehicles,” and the ultimate authority of the Lotus Sutra.
Central to Tiantai/Tendai doctrine is the threefold truth principle (following Nagarjuna’s [?] commentary on the Mahaprajnaparamita), according to which all things are void, without substantial reality; all things have temporary existence; and all things are in the mean or middle state, synthesizing voidness and temporary existence, being both at once. The three truths are a harmonious unity, mutually including one another, and the mean or middle truth is equivalent to the absolute suchness. The world of temporary appearances is thus the same as absolute reality.
Tiantai/Tendai propounds an elaborate cosmology of 3,000 realms. There are 10 basic realms, respectively, of buddhas, bodhisattvas, pratyeka buddhas, shravakas, heavenly beings, fighting spirits (asuras), human beings, hungry spirits or ghosts (pretas), beasts, and depraved hellish beings. Each realm, however, includes the other 9 and their characteristics, and counting these together thus yields 100 realms. Each of these in turn is characterized by the 10 features of suchness manifested through phenomena—form, nature, substance, power, action, cause, condition, effect, compensation, and ultimacy—which thus brings the total to 1,000 realms. Finally, each of these realms is divided into living beings, space, and the aggregates (skandhas); hence, the whole of things consists of 3,000 realms.
Those realms interpenetrate one another and are immanent in one moment of thought: “one thought is the three thousand worlds.” The universe is not produced by thought or consciousness but is manifest in it, as is the absolute suchness: hence, the central importance of concentration (zhi) and insight (guan) that leads to a realization of the unity of things and their manifestation of the ultimate. Pure Land
The main text of the Pure Land schools is the Sukhavativyuha-sutra (“Pure Land Sutra”). Written in northwestern India probably before the beginning of the 2nd century ce, the Sukhavativyuha exists in two original versions, a longer one that emphasizes good works and a shorter version that emphasizes faith and devotion alone. This sutra tells of a monk, Dharmakara, who heard the preaching of Lokeshvararaja Buddha aeons ago and asked to become a buddha. After millions of years of study, Dharmakara vowed, among other things, to establish a Pure or Happy Land (Sanskrit: Sukhavati; Chinese: Qingtu; Japanese: Jōdo), also known as the Western Paradise, if he achieved Buddhahood. In this Pure Land no evil would exist, the people would be long-lived, they would receive whatever they desired, and from there they might attain nirvana. Dharmakara then revealed in a series of 48 vows the means by which this Pure Land can be reached. Several vows emphasize meditation and good works on earth as a prerequisite, but the 18th one (a famous vow in the later development of Pure Land schools) states that, if one merely calls the name of the Buddha at the moment of death, then one will be reborn in the Pure Land.