Fazhao

[2][4][1] Fazhao was born in present-day Dadang Village in Yang County, Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province, to a secular family with the surname Zhang.

This experience profoundly affected Fazhao, leading him to Mount Heng (Hunan), where the vision's scenery matched his meditative insight.

The Buddha smiled and entrusted Fazhao with a profound Dharma teaching, instructing him to disseminate the five tempo nianfo method across the world to benefit countless beings.

This marked Fazhao’s second major spiritual experience, reinforcing the sacred nature of nianfo as a universal practice in the western Pure Land.

[2] The Guang Qingliang zhuan also states that Fazhao created an stone stele of this revelation and also wrote it on his monastery's wall.

[2][8] Fazhao was even granted the ‘national teacher’ (guoshi 國師) title by Emperor Daizong 代宗 (r. 762–779), indicating his popularity among the elites.

[9] Fazhao's work significantly contributed to the mainstream acceptance and propagation of Pure Land Buddhism during the Tang dynasty.

[5] Fazhao's teaching is considered by modern scholars to be a fusion of the three main Pure Land lineages of China at the time, those of Huiyuan, Shandao and Cimin Huiri.

In his Ritual Manual he writes:In accordance with the temperaments of the sentient beings, the Tathāgata establishes whether the teaching is profound or brief, all leading them to reality.

[9] In 767, while demonstrating the practice of the five ways of reciting nianfo at Yunfengsi monastery, it is said that miraculous events occurred, including the appearance of Amitābha in the clouds.

[5] Fazhao was also known for standardizing the Chinese nianfo phrase into the now common na-mo a-mi-tuo fo ("adoration [or prostration] to Amitabha Buddha').

Fazhao's teaching criticizes the radical Chan of Shenhui's southern school, as Cimin Huiri does, for their rejection of classic Buddhist practices like reciting sutras, buddha contemplation, nianfo, and cultivating good deeds.

However, he also taught that meditation on the Buddha could lead to the formless realization (literally: non-recollection, 無念) of the Dharma nature that the Chan schools were seeking, which is not outside our own heart-mind.

For example, his large Ritual Manual states: "With constant sitting meditation, chanting sūtras, and reciting the name of the Buddha, one will certainly attain the realization and enlightenment”.

[18] In one of his hymns, Fazhao also states that Chan meditation and nianfo practice have the same ultimate intent:There is nonduality in the Tathāgata’s teachings, but sentient beings always have discrimination.