48. THE ESOTERICIZATION OF CHINESE
BUDDHIST PRACTICES
George A. KeyworthDespite the fact that serious scholarly debate persists regarding both
the working definition of esoteric Buddhism (mijiao ) and the
question of what might securely be viewed as “esoteric” in China, Chi-
nese Buddhist practice has since the ninth century become increas-
ingly focused upon the bodhisattvas, who have the means to help avoid
disasters and acquire good fortune (chuzai zhaofu ), rather
than on distant, otherworldly buddhas (Sharf 2002b; McBride 2004,
2005; Gimello 2004; Orzech 2006a, 2006b). Practice, in contrast to phi-
losophy or doctrine, refers to ritual, which forms the foundation of
the two great civilizations underpinned by Buddhism in China: India
and China. In China, ritual propriety (li ) means performing the
hierarchically determined acts that usually concern family relations; in
India, ritual—seen through the Chinese looking glass—is represented
by the act of offerings to nourish (Skt. pūjā, Ch. gongyang ) the
gods and divinities who regulate the universe around us.
For nearly two millennia, Chinese Buddhists have developed intri-
cate rituals that marry Indian and Chinese forms of veneration, and
which cannot be retroactively separated into the cultural categories of
“China” or “India.” This is not the case for China’s neighbors, Japan
and Tibet, where the introduction of esoteric and tantric Buddhist
ritual practices (draped in very Indian guise) thoroughly transfig-
ured both preceding Buddhist and indigenous religious rites. Using
the paradigm of esoteric Buddhist transmission from either Japan or
Tibet has been one less than ideal method used by scholars to inves-
tigate Chinese Buddhist ritual. The other, far from ideal as well, has
been to principally excise Chinese Buddhists from the discussion of
ritual in China, in favor of locating ritual in imperial, Confucian, Neo-
Confucian, Daoist, or local religious circumstances. Therefore, investi-
gating the effects of esoteric Buddhist literature, teachers, and practices
in China must occur within the context of both Chinese cultural norms
as well as Buddhist rites that pre- and postdate the broad dissemination
of esoteric Buddhism in China in the seventh and eighth centuries.