pureland

[Dr Di]

the Buddha taught by discreet and expedient means. he often spoke in metaphors. how then can we take the idea of the pureland of Amitaba literally, when on the level of ultimate truth there are no separate bodies or things.

[Kaspalita]

Because often doesn't mean always. This world exists in a real and concrete way, why might not others? I feel like I'm pretty separate from you, I don't know what you had for breakfast, or even if you had breakfast at all....

we live in a specific world, a world of real things, in relationship to each other, we're plainly not all one thing - on this level at least, and the Pure Land falls into this category (if we take the teachings in the most literal sense)

You ask, 'how?' - I would say, we can just try and see what happens - I find it useful to have a relationship with 'something'. Of course, I don't really know what the Pureland is like, and how it's different from Nirvana (Although I can give you the doctrinal answer). I can't really understand the level of ultimate truth, and I don't think any of us bound in human bodies can.

You're right that the Buddha often used skillful means, look at the Lotus Sutra....and I think the LPLS is from around the same time...what does this mean?

That we have a teaching that we can relate to, with truth on many levels, a powerful story to move us, and inspire us - and perhaps somewhere to go see Amida when we die....

[Dr Di]

thank you so much for your reply. you are right. we do function on a conventional level here and now. as a psychologist I tend to be more abstract than most and I suppose it concerns me when Buddhists get a level confusion. I tend to think in absolutes and you and I are absolutely of one mind for me.

[yaakov matri]

Thank you very much for the interesting discussion.
Kaspalita, can you please add here some words about the doctrinal answer to the difference or similarity between Nirvana and the Pureland?
Namo Amida Bu
Yaakov

[Kaspalita]

I think the essential differences would be something like,

Nirvana is the state of mind of a Buddha. So the possibility of being in this state of mind exits where ever sentient beings exist.

There are some conditions that make it easier to enter Nirvana, and some that make it more difficult. The Pureland view is that the heavy karma that each of us carry make it impossible to enter Nirvana through our own effort, no matter how much good we do, it is tainted by self, and we have lifetimes of evil holding us back.

This world is not set up in a way to make entering Nirvana easy, there is much suffering and so on, which we habitually run from, and thus run from Nirvana.

The Pure Land is a place in which the conditions are ideal for entering Nirvana - There is a Buddha at the centre, (this is the definition of a Pure Land, or Buddhafield whom you can make offerings to, and listen to the Dharma and so on. I've heard it described as a University for Buddhists.

It's much easer to be 'in the flow' of Nirvana in the Pure Land. The essential thing, of course, is giving up selfishness.

When we recognise our evil nature in this life, we realise there is nothing we can do under our own power that' going to get us to Nirvana....so we call upon the Buddha in the Western Pure Land, Amida, who has made a vow to come to us, and take us to his Pure Land where we can practice the Dharma freely.

Once we attain Nirvana (in any world), when we die we can either choose Paranirvana, or to come back and help other beings.

Hopefully this helps a little, I am only just getting to grips with this myself - and of course there are many subtleties and variations of understanding, between and even within different schools...

Namo Amida Bu

[Dharmavidya]

Nirvana is to be free from greed, hate and delusion, beyond selfish passion, pride and conceit.

A Pure Land is a realm where the intention of a Buddha prevails. In a Pure Land everything is under the influence of a Buddha.

In this world we can put ourselves under the influence of a Buddha to whatever degree we are capable - that is called taking refuge. However conditions here are not terribly conducive. This is a world in which many sufferings with their concomitant spiritual dangers are unavoidable and much works against the spiritual purpose. Refuge here involves faith.

The spiritual purpose, I take to be, to live as noble and loving a life as possible in the midst of the difficulties and indignities that beset us.

In this world, happiness is inherently elusive, and dukkha is unavoidable. We cannot claim a right to happiness, despite what modern consumerism thinks, nor expect it to be possible for everybody, or all the time. Sometimes doing the noble or loving thing brings us tragedy.

When we meet unhappy circumstances there is (spiritual) danger. Our self-defensive reactions, fuelled by long karmic habit, may get the better of our love. We are bombu.

Buddha's teaching will help us to pass trough such difficulties without incurring enduring spiritual damage. I do not think Siddhartha will have been blythe when his friend was killed, but he was able to help the killer at a later date; and when Siddhartha was injured it says that he bore it with fortitude, not that he remained happy.

In the midst of all our difficulties there may arise the wonderful vision of a Pure Land and this may inspire us.

[Pundarika (orna)]

Thank you very much, Dharmavidya and Kaspalita for your replies to my question. It helps clarifying the issue.

Reading your replies, I was wondering: Did the Buddha Shakyamuni thought an ordinary person can attain Nirvana in one`s present life cycle?

A passage from the Samyutta Nikaya reads thus:

"Bikkhus, if a person immersed in ignorance generates a meritorious volitional formation… But when a bikkhu has abandoned ignorance and aroused true knowledge, then, with the fading away of ignorance… he does not generate a meritorious volitional formation… since he does not generate or fashion volitional formations, he does not cling to anything in the world. Not clinging, he is not agitated. Not being agitated, he personally attains Nibbana. He understands: "destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being." "
(Part II, 12 (Nidanasamyutta), 51 (1) )

When Shakyamuni says: "…has abandoned ignorance and aroused true knowledge…"
Could he mean something like: `when faith has been awakened (in this bikkhu`s life) `? Or, did he mean that a vision of a pureland arouse in this bikkhu`s heart?

And if so, did he mean this `Nibbana`, in the way described in the quoted passage, may happen to ordinary humans who were his listeners? Did he speak of an ideal so difficult to `attain`?

Namo Amida Bu
Yaakov

[Robert McCarthy]

Belief, faith, grace, pureland. Can it only be experience that gives meaning to these terms beyond mind? Pureland is to each of us what we make of it; if faith were only a product of belief, could it be any more than belief and what are we naming as faith?
Faith is our spiritual fuel on this planet and surely we only gain this from some experience which we know to be other than mundane. To surrender to the experience, surrender our belief, our self; to see our nature. To be given this experience is to be given grace.
Faith then generates our passion to express love in encounter. Happiness is not to be pursued, a fleeting moment of satisfaction, hardly able to co-exist with empathy. Happiness creates desire to hold it, reduces passion. Passion holds us and leads us, not happiness.
Faith turns us to belief, it is not belief that turns us to faith.

[caroline brazier]

The question of whether to take the Pure Land literally is an interesting one. I think the answers to such questions have to be in the space where myth and literalism merge. Amida means without measure and I think that a quality of Amida is that we are not able to measure Amida's light or life. In other words as bombu we cannot possibly know Amida in his/her fullness. Our minds are ordinary and limited.

On the other hand we can intuit the existence of forces far greater than we have the capacity to know. We represent these intuitions as best we can with myths, images, words, whatever. So the myth is neither more or less real than the actuality, but rather our attempt to convey an experience which is beyond our grasp. So we cannot judge another for his or her language. Nor can we really know what it is that they describe, eve if they use the same words as we do.

I think we can intuit a benevolence which continues beyond this life. We can sense the richness of that in the imagery of the sutras.

In the end this is no different to our everyday avidya. As humans we create perception of the world which is distorted and confused by our conditioned minds. This is to be bombu. Even our loved ones remain mysterious others.

[Mark Savage]

Hi, Diane, the Buddha of course taught that we were to 'see for ourselves' and to 'test for ourselves' in effect that we were not to take things as a given, not to have blind faith, but to have aware faith. We therefore individually have a responsibility to question and to investigate and come to our own decision. Does the last part of your sentence relate to concepts of interconnectedness, if so how do you think this relates to the literal or otherwise nature of the Pureland?

[Andrew Weare ( Yao Xiang -ZBOHY )]

Wow..that is an excellent and deep question. We have this level of seeing things as separate, but when we put on our "atomic-magnetic-mono-pole vision spectacles" we see no separation but a flux of micro-matter swirling shapes, colours, living things. Then there is the Law and conditions that determine 'what goes where and how'. There are levels of awareness such as a deep dream which could cause one to break into a sweat or sleep-walk, and, though not as 'real' as the daily wake state, it is real as far as the nervous system goes. Seeing things as "not two" ( in Sanskrit 'Advaita' ) is another level beyond our dualistic seeing and appreciation, which we need to attain through mind concentration techniques such as mantra chanting or deep meditation or deep devotional practices, and each moment, daily, mindful watching and dropping extraneous thoughts allowing them to wane away without entertaining unskilful thought. There are ''separate things" at this, our well used level of seeing, and this does not disappear when the 'whole' is seen. "Maya" is the illusion of 'two' - a rent veil. The seeing through 'two' is to behold Amitabha. To behold Amitabha is to see through the 'two'. Then we are Amitabha. Hence the very reverence for the deity, deeply done and deeply bowed to...fully, with gallons of love, may we enter the Pureland. Namo Amitabha Buddha ! Andrew, Alaska., ( Yao Xiang )

[Andrew Jameson]

When you take a view on anything, you have to be partial to the 'view' that your seeing, two things seem to be going on here your 'partiality' for a certain view and the view itself, perhaps it's better not to form too concrete opinions and 'viewpoints' - this way you leave ways 'open' for larger 'viewings', but if you do take a view on anything it seems to be because you are attached, seek out of find a sort of'comfort' in that perspective you hold. We seem to have more then enough to chew on with finding the near-stepping stones to simple kindness, then peering off into the horizon.

[Kaspalita]

orna matri said:

Thank you very much, Dharmavidya and Kaspalita for your replies to my question. It helps clarifying the issue.
Reading your replies, I was wondering: Did the Buddha Shakyamuni thought an ordinary person can attain Nirvana in one`s present life cycle?

Hi Yaakov, and all - I just wanted to respond briefly to what you'd written- firstly by recommending re-reading Dharmavidya's The New Buddhism if you have a copy, there is a chapter there in which he discusses enlightenment, and the different ideas about what this means in different schools and so on.

To respond directly to your quote from the Sutra,it's clear from the Pali text that people were becoming arahat's quiet frequently - (Arahat meaning one who has defeated desire), you might say that this was the result of many rebirths prior to this, building up merit - But I've just been reading the story of Angulimala, and his previous lives weren't so good, it's suggested right before his human rebirth as Angulimala he was a Yaksha or evil spirit, and yet, in his next lifetime, on encountering the Buddha he became an Arahat.

This perhaps says something about the power of a living Buddha to awaken us, as much about what we are awakened to, and the possibility of liberation in one lifetime.

Anyway the official Pureland line - if you are trying to keep within the framework of Mahayana Buddhism, is that it's possible in one lifetime, just very difficult, especially in these times so long after the death of Buddha Shakayamuni (thus gone one) which is why we rely upon the great merit Amida (thus come one) rather than our own meagre merit.

Of course what exactly is nibbana, or nirvana - are open questions really, the Buddha spoke so much in terms of what they were not - the absence of attachment, for example, rather than in positive terms - that we find it difficult to describe.

Is awakening of faith the same as nirvana? Faith is a great force for good, it can transform our lives, faith, in Ojo - rebirth in the Pureland, in Amida's love, can give us the grace to live a noble life, can give us the courage of our convictions - to live a good life amidst this world of suffering, if this is the transformation that happens, then perhaps yes - is the answer to our question. I'm not sure

Really the awakening in the Pureland way of thinking is to our own selfish nature, unlike Angulimala displaying his garland of fingers, his past evil karma for all to see, we so often hide from our own nature.