War, Public Letters, and Piety: The Making of a New Pure Land Patriarch in Modern China

This article traces the rise of a Pure Land movement in twentieth-century China and the canonization of its leader, Monk Yinguang, as a patriarch and an emanation of Bodhisattva Great Power, one of the two bodhisattvas flanking Buddha Amitābha in the Western Pure Land. Although scholars have long recognized this influential tradition of practice, its lack of institutions such as direct master-disciple transmission has posed methodological challenges to the study of this distinct yet decentralized Buddhist tradition. How has this movement reproduced itself over the last century and around the globe? How do scholars make sense of the patriarchs of a tradition without lasting institutions? Using the materials collected by Yinguang’s followers, this article uncovers the anchoring schemas that canonized Yinguang as the thirteenth Pure Land patriarch when China was plagued by war, poverty, and colonial intrusion. I argue that Yinguang’s rise hinged crucially on a refashioning of the bodhisattva spirit as poor people’s philanthropy (PPP). PPP’s simple guidelines reformulated the premodern nonelite soteriology into a spiritual blueprint for commoners who wished to secure Great Power’s protection through their daily pious actions and to establish local civil society organizations. In contrast to other movements that established centralized organizations, Yinguang’s indifference toward institutionalization, far from being a disadvantage, opened up new possibilities. By disseminating ideas instead of institutions, PPP both remade Yinguang into a spiritual leader who transcended any particular organization and ensured that the flourishing of the movement was not tied to the success or failure of any particular group.