True and Expedient Discourses: This Defiled Land and That Pure Land in the Works of Tanluan

Abstract

In the three Pure Land sūtras, especially in the Wuliang shoujing 無量寿経, true discourse appears in the eighteenth vow and the passage declaring its fulfillment, while expedient discourses can be found in the nineteenth and twentieth vow and the passages declaring their fulfillment which describe three grades of birth in the Pure Land and a kind of birth in the Pure Land for those who doubt the Buddha’s wisdom. How does Tanluan 曇鸞, the pioneer of Other-power Pure Land Buddhism based on the three Pure Land sūtras, understand these discourses about birth in the Pure Land? In this paper, I discuss the way birth in Amida’s Pure Land is presented in the works of Tanluan, especially the Jingtu lunzhu 浄土論註 and the Luelun anle jingtuyi 略論安楽浄土義, from the perspective of true and expedient discourses, and I show that both discourses are necessary to clarify the meaning of ordinary people’s birth into the Pure Land of Amida Buddha.