Repentance Rituals for Eliminating Karma: The Penitential Practice of Ouyi Zhixu
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This paper analyzes repentance rituals developed by the Chinese Buddhist monk Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655): his Procedure for Performing the Sutra of Divining Good and Bad Karmic Retribution, his Procedure for Performing the Repentance of the Sutra of Brahma’s Net and his Ritual of Repentance and Profession of Vows to Venerate the Bodhisattva Dizang. I argue that the crux of these rituals lies at the point when Ouyi calls upon practitioners to recognize their inability to change their karma, recognize their reliance on the power of bodhisattva figures like Dizang, and put their trust and confidence in them. In Ouyi’s repentance rituals, there is a clear tension between the affirmation of karmic cause-and-effect and the assertion that repentance can eliminate karma entirely (mieye 滅業), and I claim that this tension serves as the lynchpin for transformation, which is further heightened by the type of karma that Dizang is said to eliminate -- namely “fixed karma” that would otherwise relegate serious transgressors to hell.
