Worldly Ethics and Transcendental Liberation: Yinguang’s “Eight-Verse Guiding Principles” in the Pure Land Path

This article reinterprets Yinguang’s (1861–1940) “Eight-Verse Guiding Principles” as a program that integrates worldly ethics with supramundane liberation in modern Chinese Buddhism. On the ethical level, Yinguang established “fulfilling one’s duties and preserving sincerity” as the fundamental code, insisting that moral responsibility and the guarding of right mindfulness revealed the innate luminosity of the mind. Building on this, the article looks at “eliminating selfish desires and manifesting illustrious virtue” (gewu zhizhi 格物致知) as a way to connect ontology to practice, highlighting the significance of “refraining from all evils and cultivating all virtues.” The practitioner made progress toward the ultimate objective of “purifying the mind” by following these steps. On the liberation level, the bodhi-mind functions as vow-power oriented toward Buddhahood for self and others. This dual aspiration functioned as the inner motivation for rebirth in the Pure Land and the attainment of Buddhahood. The triad of “faith, vows, and practice” furnishes an accessible soteriological pathway for ordinary beings who rely on Amitābha’s vow-power to achieve rebirth with karmic burdens. Methodologically, the study combines close reading of primary writings with modern theories of religious ethics and lived religion to show how name recitation (chiming nianfo 持名念佛) concentrates the mind and conduces to the samādhi of recitation, where “the whole mind is Buddha, and the whole Buddha is mind.” Framed within the broader dynamics of Republican-era moral reform and global Pure Land transmission, the article argues that Yinguang’s eight-verse guiding principles embodied the ideal of “reaching Buddhahood by way of the human path,” providing a historically grounded yet contemporary salient model for understanding Chinese religious culture today.