Tao-ch'o (562-645)

An early Chinese Pure Land thinker and theoretician. Tao-ch'o lived through the persecution of Buddhism in the north in 574, and from this experience he concluded that he was indeed living in the third age of the Dharma (see mappō), in which the situation and capacities of people to hear the teachings of Buddhism and put them into practice were too degenerate for any to succeed under their own power. The proper response, therefore, was to forget about any kind of religious practice and concentrate on calling upon Amitābha's name so that by his power one may be reborn in a place more conducive to attaining liberation. Thus, Tao-ch'o went further than his master T'an-luan (476-542) in reducing Buddhism to the single practice of reciting Amitābha's name. T'an-luan had four other auxiliary practices which Tao-ch'o, out of pessimism for the times, seems not to have emphasized, although it is certainly not clear that he rejected them either. He concentrated on getting his followers and disciples to recite Amitābha's name as many times as possible, using dried beans as a way to keep track of their progress. They would literally fill whole bushel baskets every day in their zeal for the practice. He himself recited the name 70,000 times daily. In his only surviving work, the An Lo Chi, ostensibly a commentary on the Amitāyurdhyāna Sūtra but really a wide-ranging exposition of Pure Land thought, Tao-ch'o attempted mainly to answer criticisms of Pure Land thought and practice, primarily from the Ch'an camp. For example, the critics asked how simply reciting Amitābha's name could possibly have such powerful effects. The answer to this was simple: there is no power inherent either in the reciter or in the words recited. The power was with Amitābha alone, and his was certainly sufficient to bring the devotee to the Pure Land.

A Dictionary of Buddhism, Oxford University Press, 2003, 2004 (which is available in electronic version from answer.com)