A Buddhist Investiture of the Gods: Aesthetic Responses to mo-fa in Medieval Tang Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism Jason Kin Wai Yan 7AATC901 An Introduction to Buddhism through Its Arts January 12, 2015 1 In writing of the Buddhist metaphysics of the tripartite (di)vision of time, which follows an architectural schema of saddharma, saddharma-pratirūpaka, and paścimakāla as sequential ages, Jan Nattier calls attention to its historical universality in Buddhist Asia: The story [of the Dharma’s decline in paścimakāla] circulated in numerous languages and in a variety of recensions…. Transmitted and preserved with enthusiasm[,] this prophecy was held in the highest esteem among Buddhists in India, Central Asia, and China, and the number of surviving translations and recensions serves as an index of its ongoing popularity.1 At the same time, the Maitreya Buddha is associated with paścimakāla in virtually every Buddhist account. Positioned as a Bodhisattva currently residing in the Tuṣita Heaven who will succeed Śākyamuni and restore the Dharma in the degenerate Third Age, the teleological terminus in Buddhist eschatology, Maitreya functions as a pivotal savior figure who palliates and exorcises anxieties of the Dharma’s extinction by redeeming its authority. Alan Sponberg observes, “Maitreya is one of the few truly universal symbols occurring in the Buddhist tradition, one holding a role of importance in Theravāda as well as Mahāyāna cultures.”2 Just as the philosophy of Three Ages pervades Buddhist discourse, so too does Maitreya. Yet, Sponberg further intuits, “no other figure in the Buddhist pantheon combines universality and adaptability in the way Maitreya does.”3 Insofar as the narrative of Maitreya as Buddha-to-be obtains in every Buddhist denomination, it is also imperative to excavate the nuances that surround the manifold incarnations of and reception toward Maitreya devotion that vary across Buddhist Asia. Likewise, Nattier calls attention to the inflections of the Three-Ages rhetoric within the religio-cultural contours of medieval China, cogently identifying that while there exists terms that directly correspond to saddharma (Ch. 正法住世 zheng-fa zhu-shi) and saddharmapratirūpaka (Ch. 像法住世 xiang-fa zhu-shi) in medieval Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist 1 Jan Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Philosophy of Decline (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991), 3-4. 2 Alan Sponberg, Introduction to Maitreya, the Future Buddha, eds. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 2. 3 Ibid, 3; emphasis mine. 2 literature, a crucial disjuncture surfaces between paścimakāla and its apparent Chinese cognates, 末法 mo-fa and 末世 mo-shi, which have hitherto been deployed interchangeably as approximates of the Sanskrit source-word. Nattier cautions that whereas paścimakāla is “read in the sense of a ‘latter’ or ‘future’ age [but] not as a ‘final’ age in the superlative sense,” the sense of finality and termination is conversely rendered “explicit in the Chinese expressions” and further declares: We should no longer view the term mo-fa as a Chinese translation of an Indian Buddhist term…. [for] the term mo-fa took on a life of its own, stimulating seemingly endless commentarial reflections in East Asia. Mo-fa is thus a Chinese ‘apocryphal word’: a term created in China with no identifiable Indian antecedent.4 As Nattier demonstrates, mo-fa cannot be unproblematically apprehended as paścimakāla translated, be it linguistically or semantically; instead, mo-fa merits recognition as a contextual expression located within the Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist imaginary. Recalibrating mo-fa as a Chinese Buddhist innovation, then, necessarily gestures toward hermeneutical implications for inquiries of medieval Chinese reactions to the prophesized extinction of the Dharma, not least of all Maitreya (Ch. 彌勒) devotional practices. If mo-fa is distinctively Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist in both origin and character, so too are the responses to it. Echoing Sponberg’s earlier caveat, Daniel Overmyer writes, “Though Maitreya’s basic promise is constant, the needs and interests of his devotees shape what they see.”5 Thus emboldened by the revision of mo-fa as a Chinese Buddhist neologism, I look to the representations of Chinese Buddhist visual culture developed at its zenith, the Tang Dynasty (CE 618-906), in the Mogao Grottoes (Ch. 莫高窟) to argue that religious responses to mo-fa must likewise be comprehended as circumstantial practices that simultaneously constitute and shore up an endemically Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. 4 Nattier, Buddhist Philosophy of Decline, 103; 107-8. Daniel L Overmyer, “Messenger, Savior, and Revolutionary: Maitreya in Chinese Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Maitreya, the Future Buddha, eds. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 110. 5 3 In other words, I propose that medieval Chinese engagements with the anticipated decline of the Dharma have to be apprehended as Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist responses to the Sinic articulation of mo-fa, and not to the Indic tenet of paścimakāla. In doing so, I further attend to the particular/peculiar proliferation of mo-fa responses in medieval Chinese Buddhism that surpass a singular fixation on Maitreya worship. Joseph Kitagawa illuminates a contradictory phenomenon: despite mo-fa’s prominence in East Asia, “the potentialities of Maitreya as the symbol of eschatological vision… have rarely been actualized.”6 Overmyer concurs: “Maitreya is only rarely a chief object of devotion”7 in Chinese Buddhist scriptures. I turn to the Mogao representations of other celestial entities, such as Amitābha (Ch. 彌 佛) and Avalokiteśvara (Ch. 觀世音菩薩), to propose that the Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition has installed an elaborate bureaucracy of savior Buddhas and Bodhisattvas that counterbalances and contravenes Maitreya’s monopoly as the exclusive agent to transcend mo-fa’s exigencies. Kenneth Ch’en writes, “Only after [Maitreya] was imported into China did he become an important figure.”8 Indeed, briefly referenced as a Buddha-to-be anticipating his earthly tenure during a future paścimakāla that is only dimly alluded to in the Cakavatti Sutta of the Pāli canon, Maitreya largely remained an indeterminate deity in his Indic point of origin. Yet, the same figure curiously became endorsed as a focus of worship in medieval China. This enthusiastic reception to Maitreya, I suggest, is imparted by Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism’s distinctive “emphasis [on] devotional faith and [the] reliance on the supernatural powers of deities for salvation [as opposed to] the cultivation of morality and self-discipline that are stressed…. in the somewhat older Hināyāna tradition.”9 China first encountered Maitreya in 6 Joseph Kitagawa, “The Many Faces of Maitreya,” in Maitreya, the Future Buddha, eds. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 18. 7 Overmyer, “Messenger, Savior, and Revolutionary,” 115. 8 Kenneth K S Ch’en, The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 7-8. 9 Dorothy C Wong, Chinese Steles: Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of a Symbolic Form (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 91. 4 the fifth century through the translation and dissemination of the Maitreya Sutras—the Sutra on Maitreya’s Descent (Ch. 彌勒 生成佛), the Great Sutra on Maitreya’s Ascent (Ch. 彌勒大成佛經), and the Sutra on Visualizing Maitreya in the Tuṣita Heaven (Ch. 觀彌勒菩薩 升兜率天經). These three texts collectively (and verbosely) reiterate Maitreya’s messianic properties as the Buddha-to-be appointed to restore the Dharma during its prophesized end and to inaugurate a Golden Age in the human realm (Skt. Manuṣyaloka; Ch. 人界) on a scale that is not evidenced in Theravāda or Hināyāna Buddhist traditions, thus cohering with the Mahāyāna Buddhist principle of securing salvation through a deference to higher beings. Put otherwise, it is precisely the recognition of—and insistence on— Maitreya’s role as a savior Buddha in the age of mo-fa that has ensured his prominence in medieval Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism: the distress over mo-fa is redacted by the “anticipation of the coming of the future Buddha, [which] gave [Chinese Buddhists] grounds for optimism and hope.”10 The ninth-century Tang Chinese Paradise of Maitreya ink-and-color silk painting, originally housed in Cave 17 of the Mogao Grottoes,11 typifies the Chinese Buddhist enthusiasm for Maitreya’s messianic qualities. Here, Nattier’s observation that one of the four narrative typologies that characterizes the Maitreya myth is the ‘here/later’ trope,12 where the believer anticipates a this-worldly encounter with Maitreya in a subsequent rebirth on earth, provides a instructive point of entry to consider the painting—the Paradise of Maitreya deploys the ‘here/later’ motif to retrieve and celebrate Maitreya’s potency as a savior Buddha who resuscitates the Dharma and terminates mo-fa; it expresses the “utopian impulse”13 that is likewise inhered in the Maitreya Sutras. Measuring 1.39 meters by 1.16 meters and framed 10 Kitagawa, “Many Faces of Maitreya,” 16. Since acquired by the British Museum and now under the purview of its Oriental Antiquities department; cataloged OA 1919.1-1.011. See Appendix A for image. 12 Nattier, “The Meanings of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analaysis,” in Maitreya, the Future Buddha, eds. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 26. 13 Sonya S Lee, Surviving Nirvana: Death of the Buddha in Chinese Visual Culture (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 69. 11 5 by inscriptions extracted from the Descent sutra, the painting visually communicates the Golden Age that commences upon Maitreya’s descent. If a “deep-seated pessimism… pervades in the mofa-related texts, [a] notable characteristic of the eschatological discourse of the time,”14 the painting’s choice of material—the Descent sutra’s concluding episode, a scene of plenty, peace, and regeneration—clearly gestures toward a desire to fortify against anxieties of an apocalyptic mo-fa by conversely emphasizing the paradisiacal aftermath occasioned by Maitreya’s achievement of Buddhahood and subsequent descent. Indeed, the painting’s overall symmetry imparts an overt sense of harmony, visually reproducing the order that Maitreya restores to a mo-fa-afflicted world. Here, Maitreya dominates in terms of size and commands recognition as the authoritative figure who presides over the depicted Golden Age by virtue of his position at the center, from which he preaches the Dharma to an attentive audience composed of both human and celestial beings. The painting is noteworthy for its representation of human life in great detail—an emperor and empress undertake a head-shaving ordination ceremony, a wedding procession is underway, and human figures exchange generous gifts of silk or grain. Human and Dharma are reunited through Maitreya, whose achievement of Buddhahood is confirmed by his serenity and seated position. In a sense, then, the painting prefigures and crystallizes the logical implications of the ‘here/later’ motif: the Golden Age that Maitreya inaugurates is a transformation of the earthly realm into a paradise that rivals the heavens. At the same time, the painting also innovatively synthesizes the ‘here/later’ trope with yet another version of the Maitreya myth—the ‘there/now’ trope, where the believer aspires for an immediate encounter Maitreya in the Tuṣita Heaven (Ch. 兜率天). In medieval Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist culture, art has historically been co-opted as a conduit or medium for the believer to commune with deities through contemplation and introspection; such visualization 14 Sonya Lee, Surviving Nirvana, 70. 6 practices, it is posited, facilitate an encounter with the divine. If so, it is clear, then, that the Paradise of Maitreya provides “an ideal form of the [Maitreya] myth for [believers] whose religious aspirations exceed the bounds of merely acquiring merit and waiting for a rebirth in Maitreya’s presence.”15 The extensive entourage of Buddhist deities, such as Vaiśravana and Virūpākṣa, the guardian kings who flank Maitreya on either side, occupy a considerable portion of the scroll, thus markedly mirroring the Tang Chinese illustrations of otherworldly paradises, such as the Story of Amitabha’s Western Pure Land painting in Cave 217 (which will subsequently be examined at length). Put otherwise, while the painting ostensibly depicts Matitreya’s earthly Golden Age, it also easily registers as an illustration of Maitreya’s otherworldly abode, the Tuṣita Heaven. As Sponberg argues, “the objective of visualization is not simply to produce an image of Matireya himself, but to place oneself in the presence of Maitreya and his heaven.”16 While the Paradise of Maitreya foretells Maitreya’s as-yet unrealized advent on earth, it also enables the viewer to envision a communion with Maitreya in his Tuṣita Heaven through a meditative act of contemplation undertaken in the profane here-and-now. In integrating the ‘here/later’ and ‘there/now’ tropes for the express purpose of celebrating Maitreya’s triumph over mo-fa as either Bodhisattva or Buddha, the Paradise of Maitreya simultaneously reinforces and illuminates the Tang Chinese Buddhist logic of a devotional surrender to spiritually superior beings as a means of procuring salvation. Yet, it is also apparent that Maitreya worship failed to sustain longevity in medieval China despite the persistence of mo-fa discourse. While this can be partially attributed to the persecution of foreign faiths in 854CE toward the Tang dynasty’s collapse, which interrupted Buddhism’s dissemination in medieval China, Arthur Wright also indicates that the decline of Maitreya devotion preceded the persecutions, writing that Maitreya was “gradually 15 Nattier, “Meanings of the Maitreya Myth,” 30. Alan Sponberg, “Wonhyo on Maitreya Visualization,” in Maitreya, the Future Buddha, eds. Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 101. 16 7 superseded by the cult[s] of Amitābha.... [and] Kuan-yin.”17 In other words, Maitreya worship waned vis-à-vis the hierarchization of the Buddhist pantheon in medieval China, where believers came to venerate a host of competing deities, thus compromising Maitreya’s exclusive status as vanquisher of mo-fa. As Kenneth Ch’en pertinently illuminates, the Pure Land tradition, arguably the most prominent sect in medieval Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism, particularly holds Amitābha and Avalokiteśvara in high regard and asserts that: The Pure Land Sutra… teaches that the Buddha Amitābha presides over a Western Paradise or Pure Land where all beings who have absolute faith in him will be reborn. When such beings die, they will be escorted to the Pure Land by the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, the chief helper of Amitābha. Amitābha does not leave his heavenly abode—he remains there forever—and so he has to rely on Avalokiteśvara to rescue beings in the human world.18 For the Chinese Buddhist, the promise of a rebirth in Amitābha’s Pure Land as a member of the titular Buddha’s retinue perhaps registers as a more attractive option than a rebirth in Maitreya’s Tuṣita Heaven, only to accompany Maitreya’s earthbound descent as part of his entourage upon mo-fa. It is imperative to recognize that Nattier’s suggestion that mo-fa is a ‘stylistic variant”19 of mo-shi—as if the former is a twice-removed Sinophone cousin of the Sanskrit paścimakāla—elides a key distinction between mo-fa and mo-shi that exceeds cosmetic differences and that has crucially informed Chinese Buddhist practices. While mo-shi, the less-deployed term that was completely abandoned by the ninth century in Chinese Buddhist philosophy, configures the Dharma’s decline as a gradual process within a temporal framework, mo-fa, the far more common term, excises any references to time or temporality—fa (Ch. 法) indicates the Dharma while shi (Ch. 世), age or period. mo-fa is preoccupied with the Dharma’s end and conveys a sense of urgency and immediacy as if the event is imminent, thus legitimizing the medieval Chinese Buddhist turn to other divine 17 Arthur F Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford and London: Stanford University Press, 1959), 82. Ch’en, Chinese Transformation of Buddhism, 6; emphasis mine. 19 Nattier, Buddhist Philosophy of Decline, 107; emphasis mine. 18 8 figures, such as Amitābha and Avalokiteśvara, who could guarantee a much more accessible or immediate form of salvation in contrast to Maitreya’s uncertain arrival. This impulse for the exaltation of alternative Buddhist deities is evidenced in the Tang Chinese representations of these deities in the Mogao Grottoes such as the eighth-century Story of Amitābha’s Western Pure Land mural painted on the north wall of Cave 217.20 The Pure Land mural is a visually resplendent illustration of Amitābha seated on a lotus throne and preaching the Dharma to an audience of Bodhisattvas and celestial beings such as the flying apsaras in his Pure Land paradise (Ch. 西方淨土天); it envisions the splendors that believers reborn into Amitābha’s heaven (will) experience. Like the Paradise of Maitreya painting, the Pure Land mural is characterized by an intense symmetry that directs its viewer’s focus to Amitābha, whom the mural’s line of symmetry bisects. Indeed, Amitābha is the only figure depicted in front-view whereas every other figure in the mural is represented in profile, turned toward him. That it functions as an object of contemplation to access Amitābha’s paradise is confirmed by the vertical right margin of the mural, which instructs the viewer in the sixteen visualization methods that will ensure one’s permanent rebirth in the Pure Land. Yuheng Bao et al note its faithful reproductions of Tang-dynasty architectural styles and propose that the mural is a “reference source for the history of Chinese architecture,”21 a statement that ostensibly appears at odds with the mural’s otherworldly subject. Indeed, the mural’s representation of Amitābha’s heaven resembles contemporaneous Tang Chinese palaces and furthermore incorporates depictions of celestial personae participating in secular activities such as dance and song. This integration of resolutely human phenomena, in a sense, appears incongruous with the mural’s representation of a transcendental realm. Yet such an aesthetic strategy also provides an anchor for the Tang Chinese Buddhist viewer—through selectively 20 Remains at its original site. See Appendix B for image. Yuheng Bao, Qing Tian & Letitia Lane, Buddhist Art and Architecture of China (Lewiston, Queenston & Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), 72. 21 9 appropriating recognizable images that represent the glories of Tang civilization, the mural facilitates a visualization of Amitābha’s paradise; it materializes in familiar terms for its viewer the promise of a permanent rebirth and tenure in a joyous Pure Land liberated from trauma and anxiety over the Dharma’s termination through devotion to Amitābha. The thematic concern of the early tenth-century Avalokiteśvara ink-and-color silk painting scroll, housed originally in the same cave as the Paradise of Maitreya,22 is likewise that of salvation, albeit directed toward one of the most popular divinities in Chinese Buddhism. A commissioned piece, the 77cm-by-48.9cm painting depicts Avalokiteśvara standing on a lotus throne. Set upon the bodhisattva’s crown is Amitābha’s image, reiterating Avalokiteśvara’s association with the Buddha and, by extension, the Pure Land. Attending to the Bodhisattva are human devotees who, as the accompanying inscriptions on the scroll confirm, are portraits of the commissioner’s younger brother and elder sister, the nun Yanhui; the inscriptions announce that the scroll is intended as an offering dedicated to his sister and his deceased parents in hopes that they find rebirth in the Pure Land, and as a prayer that the Tang empire acquires peace and that the Wheel of the Dharma will continually turn. The painting is peculiarly dated the tenth year of the last Tang Emperor Tianfu’s reign—four years after his deposition and the dynasty’s turbulent collapse; Dunhuang’s remote location at the Empire’s peripheries invariably meant delays in receiving news from the Tang capital. The commissioned painting is a petition to Avalokiteśvara to maintain the Dharma and to secure entry into the Pure Land paradise in a period of tumult and hardship that could easily be identified as mo-fa instead of looking to Maitreya and a rebirth in Tuṣita. In other words, by the Tang Dynasty’s final days, Chinese Buddhists have responded to mo-fa—or thisworldly chaos, at least—by appealing to other Buddhist deities for immediate forms of salvation, thus bypassing an emphasis on Maitreya exclusively. 22 Since acquired by the British Museum and now under the purview of its Oriental Antiquities department; cataloged OA 1919.1-1.014. See Appendix C for image. 10 John Kieschnick illuminates that “Buddhism was always closely linked to Buddhist images [in medieval China].… Indeed, a common epithet for Buddhism in Chinese texts is the ‘teaching of the icons’ (xiangjiao). And images never ceased to be a central feature of Chinese Buddhist devotion.”23 Through an examination of the Tang Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist images in the Mogao Grottoes, it is evident that the medieval Chinese Buddhist tradition devised and developed an inventive approach to the indigenous mo-fa discourse: through the investiture of an enlarged pantheon of alternative savior Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, such as Amitābha and Avalokiteśvara, Tang Chinese Buddhist practitioners circumvented a singular preoccupation with Maitreya devotion; they endeavored to find, and discovered, substitute means to secure salvation in a much more immediate fashion—not through rebirth in the Tuṣita Heaven only to descend to the human realm again, but through a rebirth in the Pure Land paradise. 23 John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 53. 11 Bibliography Bao, Yueheng, Qing Tian & Letitia Lane. Buddhist Art and Architecture of China. Lewiston, Queenston & Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. Ch’en, Kenneth. The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Kieschnick, John. The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Kitagawa, Joseph M. “The Many Faces of Maitreya: A Historian of Religions’ Reflections.” In Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Edited by Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Lee, Sonya S. Surviving Nirvana: Death of the Buddha in Chinese Visual Culture. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. Nattier, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Philosophy of Decline. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991. ———. “The Meanings of the Maitreya Myth: A Typological Analysis.” In Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Edited by Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Overmyer, Daniel L. “Messenger, Savior, and Revolutionary: Maitreya in Chinese Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century.” In Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Edited by Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Sharf, Robert. Coming to Terms with Chinese Buddhism: A Reading of the Treasure Store Treatise. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. 12 Sponberg, Alan. “Introduction.” In Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Edited by Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ———. “Wonhyo on Maitreya Visualization.” In Maitreya, the Future Buddha. Edited by Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Wong, Dorothy C. Chinese Steles: Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of a Symbolic Form. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. Wright, Arthur F. Buddhism in Chinese History. Stanford and London: Stanford University Press, 1959. 13 Appendix A—The Paradise of Maitreya (Cave 17) (Source: The British Museum; http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/asia/p/paradise_of_maitreya,_ink_and.aspx) 14 Appendix B—The Story of Amitābha’s Western Pure Land (Cave 217) (Source: https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/198/flashcards/3096198/jpg/western_paradise1427BE7EC785324635E.jpg) 15 Appendix C—The Avalokiteśvara Painting (Cave 17) (Source: The British Museum; http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/asia/a/avalokiteshvara,_ink_and_col-2.aspx)