When Christ went to China

When Christ went to China: The Pure Land tradition in Buddhism

When we think of Christian History what easily comes to mind is Israel, Rome and Europe in general… Unless we are talking about modern evangelism, China seems completely removed from the picture. But this is not necessarily the case.

It is hard to look at all the striking parallels between Christianity and Pure Land Buddhism (the Amitabha Buddha tradition) and label them as pure coinscidence, specially when we learn that, at some point in Late Antiquity, Christianity indeed made its way into China.

CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM

In Christianity it is believed that we can attain salvation through Jesus Christ. When Jesus atoned for the sins of mankind in the cross, he delivered the ways to salvation by faith. Theologians may have different views on how exactly individual good deeds (works) play a role in salvation, but overall faith in the merit attained by Jesus Christ in the cross is always a major player in the process. Therefore, salvation consists (totally or partially, depending who you’re asking to) in receiving this merit from Jesus Christ. But what is this salvation, specifically? For Christians this salvation means being granted eternal life in a heavenly paradise; the opposite of this is the eternity of torture in Hell received by the unsaved)

Buddhism in the other hand has a very different approach to salvation.

Buddhism believes in reincarnation or rebirth. This endless cycle of rebirth is seen as both negative and vicious, as it is caused by mundane attachment to things and by the ignorance or lack of self-awareness of one’s true divine nature _ the so called “Buddha nature”. Once one starts realizing this Buddha Nature within and releases from his earthly attachments, he progressively gets more and more enlighten and eventually reaches the state of “Nirvana”: the end of this cycle of multiple reincarnations or rebirths. But this is no “one and done” process, it is often said to take many lives to get there.

PURE LAND BUDDHISM AND ITS PARALLELS TO CHRISTIAN FAITH

Pure Land Buddhism is a very popular religious tradition in China and it has something of a twist when it comes to its view of salvation.

Pure Land Buddhism is focused on the “Amitabha Buddha”, also known as Amituofo. This enlighten being has accumulated so many merits through his life that he was able to manifest a new world, a paradise known as the “Pure Land”.

An important part of the belief is calling Amitabha Buddha’s name. By calling his name it is possible to get reborn into this Pure Land. This Pure Land has all the conditions to achieve perfect enlightenment or Nirvana, which means no efforts through multiple lives are required! It is possible to go to paradise right after this life!

As you can see, it is very different from mainstream Buddhism and a lot more like Christianity but confined within a Buddhist cosmology. There is less focus on the idea of getting enlightened by one’s own wisdom and efforts through many incarnations and instead a greater emphasis on getting into an afterlife paradise by receiving someone’s else merit.

Just like Christians seek Jesus Christ for protection and salvation, Pure Land Buddhists are told to take refuge in the Amitabha Buddha so they can find everlasting peace in his merits and in his Pure Land Paradise.

As I have researched more, I’ve found out that Pure Land Buddhism also has a strong preoccupation in not getting reborn in Hell. Buddhist traditions in general do believe in hellish realms one can get reborn into but, in my understanding, they rarely make a big deal out of it. Just like many Christian believers, one of the Pure Land Buddhist practitioners’ main concerns is to avoid spending the afterlife in the infamous fiery pit of torture.

Also, the idea of “Eternity” is not prominent in Buddhism or Eastern religion in general, it is thou incredibly recurrent in the West religious tradition, in fact, it is impossible to talk about Christian salvation without using the word “Eternity”. So, how strange is it that the Amitabha Buddha is granted the title of “The Eternal Buddha”…

THE EVIDENCE

But do we have enough evidence to back up my claims? Indeed, we do have very strong indicators that this may be the case.

TIMELINE: First, Buddhism is a religion way way older than Christianity, but the Pure Land Buddhism tradition itself only started to be developed after the 1st Century AD, therefore, when we look at the timeline it is in no way out of the realm of possibility that the Pure Land Buddhist tradition received influence from Christianity.

SYNCRETISM: My second point is that Buddhism in general is very often a victim of religious syncretism. In other words, it is very common for Buddhism to get mixed with other religions. For example, the Zen Buddhist tradition was heavily influenced by the Daoist minimalism, Tibetan Buddhism has incorporated the large pantheon of Tibetan native deities and, strikingly, when Buddhism made its way into the Hellenistic world, it incorporated Zeus and the other Greek gods as companionships to Gautama Buddha.

Therefore, no big stretch of imagination is required to deduce what would happen if, back in the old days, Buddhism met Christianity. It is not hard to see a new branch of Buddhism being created by incorporating Christ and Heavenly salvation into its Buddhist cosmology.

HISTORY: To believe that, at the peak of the Christian expansion, someone would come up with very similar ideas to Christianity even under completely different cultural surroundings requires a great leap of faith! West and East have met before, the Greco-Chinese war of the Heavenly Horses (104–102 BC) is a great example of that. So, to inquire about a possible encounter between Chinese and Christians during the early centuries of Christian Era is the logical way to go.

And do we have any evidence for that? Yes, actually, plenty of that.

Around the 6th Century AD, there was the Nestorian Church, also known as “The Church of the East”. This Church has split from what later became the Roman Catholic Church and spread through many places in Asia, including (guess what?) China!

That’s it! There was in fact contact between Christian evangelists and Chinese pagans (or Buddhists) around that time period!

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m not trying to say someone in China created Pure Land Buddhism as an attempt to harmonize Christianity and Buddhism or that the Pure Land tradition is a carbon copy of the Gospel, as if someone has taken Christian ideas and relabeled them with Buddhist wording. Pure Land Buddhism has a long story of its own independent development before the 6th Century CE.

Still, the final form of Pure Land Buddhism as we have today might have had strong Christian influences that go back from the 6th to the 14th Centuries (or maybe even prior to that).

I’m sure key concepts such as the Amitabha Buddha himself, Pure Lands and a shorter path to salvation were already existent within the traditions before Christianity came into the picture. But I do believe the way all these elements were finally tied together to make sense in one single religious creed was in fact heavily influenced by the contact with the Nestorian Church missionaries.

In conclusion, it would be unfair to try to reduce Pure Land Buddhism to a sort of “Christianity made in China”. But it’s equally absurd to simply deny all the parallels it indeed has to Christianity, as well as to overlook all the historical background presented here.

As I see, the Pure Land tradition is the closest thing we have to a “Christian Buddhism” and it’s not hard to see the Amitabha Buddha as a Chinese counterpart to our very Westernized Jesus Christ. I can’t help myself but to feel fascinated by the very existence of such tradition. It is quite absurd that, even in times of Globalism, very little is spoken about this missing link between West and East, being this the very reason I felt the need of writing this article.