Part Six · Two Streams · One Buddha-Name, Parting and Rejoining

At the close of the last part we saw it: that buddha-name of "tether the mind to one buddha, devotedly call the name, recollection-upon-recollection unbroken" was originally one thing. But in history, it parted into two great rivers.

Part Six walks along these two rivers.

One flows outward. Following the face of "devotedly call the name," it became the Pure Land school — honest holding of the name, seeking birth in the West. In this part, the three patriarchs Tanluan, Daochuo, and Shandao will, generation by generation, dredge this river deep and steady — deep enough that even the most afflicted, the dullest, the most hopeless can wade across.

One flows inward. Following the face of "seeing the mind, seeing the nature," it became a counter-question within the Chan school — not seeking the West at all, but pressing that buddha-name hard into the mind, until it pressed out a single question: "Who is recollecting the Buddha?"

Between the two rivers stands a bridge — Zhiyi of Tiantai, who arranged buddha-recollection into a stair of levels reaching both banks. And far down the thousand-year stream, the masters Yongming, Yunqi, and Ouyi gathered these two long-parted rivers back into a single current.

Outward, inward, bridge, confluence — five chapters, one conversation spanning a thousand years. We look first at how the Pure Land river was dredged deep, patriarch by patriarch.