A Chinese Buddhist Pure Land Service

Hello all,

Today I felt like doing something a little different after I read a nice email from a long-time reader named “Morris“. He’s a gentleman from New Zealand, and ethnically Chinese, so he wanted to share with me the Pure Land Buddhist temple he goes to, and the kind of service they have there. I felt this was a great opportunity because this blog talks so much about Japanese Buddhism, especially Pure Land Buddhism, but its rare to see how Pure Land Buddhism is practiced among other groups. Japan and Buddhism owe quite a bit to China, but Chinese Buddhism is still not as well-known in the West, so any opportunities to share are greatly appreciated.

Morris posted a photo album of the service here. If you’re curious at all to see a Chinese-style Buddhist service, I highly recommend you take a look.

I enjoyed this because I found aspects of the service that were readily familiar, such as chanting Amitabha Buddha’s name of course, but also the bells, the central image of Amitabha (slightly different style), the instruments used, and the black robes of the priests. This, as I was told, was due to Buddhists adopting the Confucian style of dress, which often used darker colored robes, rather than the ochre robes found in South East Asia. Other aspects were more unfamiliar such as the walking around the room in meditation.

Anyway, thanks for sharing Morris!