This paper examines the influence of the Nirvana Sutra 涅槃經 on the early formative stage of Pure Land Buddhist thought in China, focusing on three tropes common within the Nirvana Sutra and which also become central to the identity of the Pure Land path but are not found in the normative versions of the Sukhāvatīvyūha sūtra: buddha-nature as a universal, the importance of the category of people known as “ordinary beings”, and the transformation of Ajātaśatru from evil person to bodhisattva. Central to this development is the crucial role of a later Pure Land sutra known as the Guanjing 觀經 (Contemplation Sutra), which I argue is influenced by the Nirvana Sutra itself. The hermeneutic contexts for this discussion are the early commentaries on the Guanjing; although the Shandao commentary became the locus classicus for how these tropes function the Pure Land discourse, here I try to show how the two earliest commentaries on the Guanjing by Huiyuan and Jizang, both of whom are not considered patriarchs of the tradition like Shandao, were the first commentaries to feature these Nirvana Sutra themes.
Mark Blum (Tue,) studied this question.