Jingtu
JINGTU. The Chinese term jingtu ("pure land"), pronounced jōdo in Japanese, refers to the Chinese Buddhist tradition of devotion to Amitābha Buddha in order to be reborn into his Pure Land as a means of attaining enlightenment. Because many Amitābha devotees believed that sincerely chanting Amitābha's name guaranteed salvation in the next life, this practice became an auxiliary spiritual discipline for most Buddhists in East Asia and an important refuge for the laity, but often became a primary and sometimes exclusive orientation in times of crisis. At the heart of this exclusivistic tendency was despair about achieving enlightenment through traditional practices based on one's own effort, and enthusiasm over the compassionate vow of Amitābha to welcome devotees at death to the blessings of his Pure Land. Beginning in the seventh century CE, this tendency became recognized as a separate religious orientation called the Pure Land teaching (jingtu-zong).
Unlike counterparts in Japan, Pure Land devotees in China never developed into a centrally organized property-holding denomination with formalized methods of succession (except for the White Lotus movement during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries). Instead, the Pure Land devotional movement was a loosely knit association of individuals based on the promises of Indian scriptures interpreted by Chinese thinkers and supported by such practical devices as rosaries, paintings, liturgies, and stories about supernatural visions and deathbed miracles indicating successful rebirth into the Pure Land.
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