bering, reciting, and explaining the scriptures, while
the first advocates “formless repentance,” as in the
statement “Since one’s own mind is void of itself, there
is no subject of demerit or merit.” This “formless re-
pentance” not only became popular in Chan Bud-
dhism, but also led to a reduction of repentance in
Japanese Buddhism to the single act of recognizing the
emptiness of all things—doer, deeds, and karma.
Zhiyi emphasized, however, that both “practices of
form” and “formless practice” are preliminary, but at
the time of realization, both methods are discarded.
Instead, based on the statement in the NIRVANASUTRA
that “In the mind that is ‘one moment of thought’ one
is able to name and evaluate each of the incalculable
birth-and-deaths,” Zhiyi asserts that at every moment
one is to understand three truths: emptiness, the value
of provisional worldly truth that includes precepts and
repentance, and an inclusive middle path. As a result,
one empathizes with the pain of all beings and causes
them to cross over to unboundedness.
This inclusion of others into one’s repentance
caused a dramatic increase in repentance rituals in
China. Shioiri Ryodo(1964) observed the remarkable
fact that the Chinese pilgrims who traveled most ex-
tensively in India—FAXIAN(ca. 337–418), XUANZANG
(ca. 600–664), and YIJING(635–713)—reported only
two public Buddhist repentance rituals in India and
Southeast Asia. By comparison, Chinese Buddhist re-
pentance rituals are prominent as regular public cere-
monies, so that more than one-fourth of the ritual texts
collected among contemporary Chinese Buddhist
practitioners by Kamata Shigeo (1986) are repentance
texts. These ceremonies pervade the Chinese Buddhist
liturgical year and constitute a major bond between the
monastic elite and the laity, and between the world of
Buddhism and Chinese society.
The Chinese transformed Buddhist repentance
practices because they believed that the sufferings of
the dead can be visited upon the living, and the ac-
tions of the living can transform the sufferings of the
dead. Chinese Buddhists also assumed that a con-
spicuous public display of regret and anguish over
previous wrongs would influence cosmic powers to
show mercy. As a result, public repentance during the
GHOSTFESTIVALto relieve the suffering of deceased
family members became a major ritual in Chinese so-
ciety from medieval times to the present (Teiser,
1988).
See also:Festivals and Calendrical Rituals; Precepts
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sity of New York Press, 1996.DAVIDW. CHAPPELLRITUALIn the Pali nikayasthere are four stages to final liber-
ation: (1) stream-enterer (sotapanna), who has
glimpsed NIRVANAand will attain full liberation in no
more than seven rebirths; (2) once-returner (saka-
dagamin), who will be reborn only once more; (3) non-
returner (anagamin), who will have at most one more
lifetime in a celestial pure abode; and (4) ARHAT, who
is fully liberated in this life. Each of these stages is as-
sociated with the elimination of progressively moreRITUAL