Koryŏ Buddhist Paintings and the Cult of Amitābha: Visions of a Hwaŏm-Inspired Pure Land

Abstract

Many paintings of Amitābha were commissioned for devotional use by elites in numerous votive shrines and temples, and others probably played a role in the abundant Buddhist festivals and ceremonies of the Koryŏ period. Images of Amitābha and Amitābha triads functioned in a variety of devotional settings and the inscriptions on some icons suggest their use to enable all living beings in the dharma realm to be reborn in the Pure Land. Some images might have been used in deathbed rituals enabling believers to visualize Amitābha coming to escort them into the Pure Land. Inscriptional and visual evidence strongly suggests a Hwaŏm context for many paintings of Amitābha. Although aspirants sought rebirth in Amitābha’s Pure Land, the Hwaŏm doctrine of the interpenetration of all things in the dharma realm inferred the ultimate non-duality between Sukhāvatī and the Lotus Storehouse Realm. The cult of Amitābha in Koryŏ was closely associated with Hwaŏm Buddhism, particularly the “Practices” chapter at the end of the Avataṃsaka-sūtra in forty rolls. The genre of Amitābha and the Eight Great Bodhisattvas are linked to this version of the Avataṃsaka though verses and dhāraṇīs appended to manuscripts of the text and associated commentaries. The concept of the dharma realm that interpenetrates all things provides context for unique images, such as the Transformation Tableau of the Hwaŏm Pure Land , which both visually and symbolically interfuse the aspiration for rebirth in the Pure Land of Amitābha with the Hwaŏm path of bodhisattva practice. Other transformation tableaux of the sixteen visualizations of the Visualization Sūtra demonstrate knowledge of varied doctrinal positions that circulated in China on the types of people who are reborn in the nine classes of rebirth in the Pure Land. Such transformation tableaux functioned in the context of education and edification, along with devotion, encouraging lay people to become bodhisattvas or reminding them that they can be reborn in the Pure Land.