The English speaking world deserves this ..
English transcription:
If you were to go to China or Japan and you asked a random Buddhist off the street what kind of Buddhism they practiced, it's very likely that they would say 'Pure Land Buddhism'. Pure Land is by far the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in East Asia, and there are good reasons for it. It is considered to be the easy path to enlightenment, a method that everyone can practice even in the bustle of a busy life, and generations and generations of revered Masters have used and recommended this method of practice. Yet Pure Land Buddhism remains relatively unknown in the West.
I think that there are a number of reasons for this, but we'll come to that later. First of all, what exactly is Pure Land Buddhism? The general idea of pure land is relatively straightforward: There is a Buddha, that is, an awakened being called Amitabha, who out of compassion for all suffering beings created a world called the Land of Utmost Happiness. Beings who are born there never experience any suffering and are constantly surrounded by great awakened beings and by the teachings of the Buddha —even the Birds are said to sing the Dharma— so that they never fall back on the path to awakening, and they are assured of eventually reaching buddhahood. Now, when Buddha Amitabha was still an unawakened being practicing to become a Buddha, he vowed that if anybody recited his name with complete sincerity and at the time of death that person was not born in his Pure Land, then he wouldn't become a Buddha. But because he did become a Buddha, we know that his vow was fulfilled, and so anybody who recites his name with complete sincerity will, after passing away, be born in his Pure Land, where they are assured of waking up to the ultimate nature of reality. So the gist of Pure Land practice consists in reciting the name of Buddha Amitabha with the aspiration to be born in the Land of Utmost Happiness after death, where one is assured to become a Buddha without having to undergo a terrible amount of hardship and difficulty. Okay, let's pause here for a bit.
One of the reasons Buddhism has become really popular in the West is because it is often perceived to be very rational, even scientific. It does not rely on believing in a dogma but rather on personal experience. There are famous, often quoted sutras in which the Buddha enjoins his disciples not to take things on blind faith, but examine things and have a critical mind, so on the face of it Pure Land Buddhism may seem like the antithesis to all of this. It relies on faith and on an external power to achieve salvation after death. However, throughout the history of Buddhism in China it was often the great chan masters, renowned for their meditational prowess and for their deep understanding of the mind who enjoined their disciples to practice Pure Land as a valid way of achieving enlightenment. So... what's going on here? Is Pure Land a corruption of the original spirit of Buddhism? Or is it a distillation of its main tenets in a way that is easy to understand and practice? In this video series I'll try to answer this question by looking a bit more closely at the Pure Land method and the underlying philosophical and psychological principles that connected with the rest of the Buddhist teachings.
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Historical Overview
So first of all, where does Pure Land Buddhism even come from? Well, the practice of bearing in mind the virtues of a Buddha —an enlightened, perfectly wise, infinitely compassionate being, in order to calm and gladden the mind has always been around in Buddhism. It is one of the contemplations that the historical Buddha suggested for his disciples right before passing away. However Pure Land practice as such is mainly outlined in three sutras or discourses of the Buddha: the Contemplation Sutra, the Greater Amitabha Sutra, and the Smaller Amitabha Sutra, which in many monasteries of East Asia is recited daily to this day. There are also a number of Indian commentaries that served to give legitimacy to Pure Land practices as well. One of them is a section of the Treatise on the Ten Levels, attributed to Nagarjuna, one of the most influential Mahayana philosophers, believed to be a great bodhisattva. In this text, Nagarjuna describes what he calls the hard and the easy paths of practice. The hard path is to engage in the practices of austerity, meditation, ethical conduct and self-sacrifice over many lifetimes. The easy path on the other hand is to seek birth in a pure land. Another important text was the Verses of Aspiration by Vasubandhu, another figure of towering influence in Buddhist thought. In these verses, Vasubandhu describes a number of specific practices for attaining rebirth in the Pure Land. However, it wasn't until these texts went to China and then to Japan, where they were taken up and interpreted by practitioners, that the Pure Land tradition came more or less into the form in which it is practiced and understood to this day.
The Buddha's Conundrum
I think that in order to make sense of the Pure Land method, it's really helpful to take a step back and put it into context with the wider principles of the Buddha's teaching. In other words, What is Buddhism fundamentally about? The fundamental premise of Buddhism is that all living beings are trapped in a dissatisfying and self-perpetrating state called 'samsara'. Samsara is a state characterized by suffering and confusion, and it is self-perpetuating because we are constantly sewing the seeds for its renewed arising. The nature of this state was summarized in the following statement by the great Indian Buddhist philosopher and poet Shantideva: "Although wishing to be rid of misery, living beings run towards misery itself." Now, what the Buddha realized is that there is a way to put a stop to this dissatisfaction, permanently. There's a way to stop the cycle of suffering and confusion and to attain real peace and happiness: nirvana. And he also saw that all living beings have the potential to wake up to this reality. However, although we all have everything we need to achieve the state of complete liberation, in practice this requires us to let go of some of our most cherished habits and assumptions, like believing we exist as an independent, enduring self, or reacting with attraction and aversion towards things in the world. Seeking the Buddha's Liberation is in a way like looking for the color red while wearing blue-tinted glasses: there's nothing wrong with our eyes but as long as we keep wearing these glasses, we will never see the color red. So, in short, because we are so committed to delusion, it is very hard for us to let go of it despite the pain that it causes us. This was seen by the Buddha himself. It is said that right after he woke up, he was discouraged from teaching because he thought that it would be too difficult for other people to understand his message. Enough now with teaching what only with difficulty I reached. This dhama is not easily realized by those overcome with aversion and passion. Now fast forward thousands of years, across many different cultures, time periods and masters, and the question remains the same as when the Buddha first woke up: How do you go from THIS to THAT? How can you go from being totally engrossed in a story about yourself and the world, to complete freedom of mind? I think that it is by focusing on this particular problem that we can begin to appreciate what the Pure Land method is doing. You see, the fascinating thing is that the tradition is quite explicit that there isn't a single "right way" to go about this. It's more of a "whatever works" approach. The Buddha himself compared his teachings to a raft that is used to cross from one side of a river to the other. He said that none of his teachings were meant to be taken as ultimate truths, but rather as tools for overcoming suffering. Once they have served their purpose, however, we should let go of them. So there are many methods we can use when walking towards awakening, depending on our personal preferences, our cultural context, and our unique proclivities. A famous analogy compares all the different types of practice to the various doors of a huge palace. They are all different, but they all lead into the same place.
2 Ways to Frame the Problem
Now, if the fundamental problem is going from THIS towards THAT, as it were, then I think there's two ways we can think about how to accomplish this. The first is to start from THIS and go towards THAT, so to speak. What I mean by this is starting from our own present circumstances as a person who finds themselves in a world, who perceives objects of the senses and who experiences dissatisfaction of various kinds. Starting from here, we can then begin to look closely at our experience as is given to us in a process of detailed investigation. Slowly, as our mental powers become more refined through ethical training and meditation, we can start to see through what once appeared as solid truth. Thus, this is a process of skepticism and investigation in a way, which is perhaps best summarized in the Chan phrase: "If you see a demon, slay the demon. If you see the Buddha, slay the Buddha". We probe and investigate relentlessly, until nothing but knowing remains. Eventually, when we can completely see through and put down even the subtlest aspects that construct THIS, THAT will come forth. This approach to cultivation holds a very distinct appeal to the mother mind, as it relies on the idea of investigating, knowing for oneself, and not relying on an external source of authority, which is, I believe, why schools like Theravada and Zen are among the most well known in the West. However, let us consider a second way of approaching the problem. What if instead of starting here, with THIS, we took THAT as our starting point? What If instead of going from here to there, we brought THAT to THIS? What if instead of starting from the condition we find ourselves in now, we started from the inconceivable liberation joy and wisdom of the Buddha, and we tried to harness its power to break through the obstacles that prevent us from accessing that space here and now? This, I think, is one way that may be useful for thinking about the Pure Land method. As we saw, the main practice in Pure Land is to recite the Buddha's name with concentration and sincerity. One advantage of this approach is that the mind has a distinct point of focus, allowing it to harness the full energy of one's religious imagination and devotional aspiration. In the Chinese tradition it has been said that for many people this method will be easier to practice than the other approach, as it is easy to go astray in advanced meditation practice without very solid supporting conditions and the guidance of a skilled teacher. Thus, there's a famous saying: "Having Chan but lacking the Pure Land, 9 out of 10 stray from the road. Lacking Chan but having the pure land 10,000 out of 10,000 who practice it will go".
Non-Duality of This & That
However if you've been following so far you should have a number of questions at this point. We just said that THAT is completely beyond anything that can be gleamed from THIS, so if one calls on the name of the Buddha, wouldn't one still be doing it from the point of view of a living being? Wouldn't it still be just a conditioned thought amongst other conditioned thoughts? An idea of the mind that not the real thing, which is beyond all thought? This is a very fair point. In Chinese Buddhism there's a saying: the Pure Land method is fighting poison with poison. That is, to call on the Buddha with the conditioned mind is indeed to use a conditioned thought. However, although when we are calling on the Buddha we are still doing so as an ordinary being, it is a skillful use of a false thought. It is using what is not real to go towards what is ultimately real. If you're still not convinced, I don't blame you. I think that in order to see how this makes sense, we need to go a bit more deeply into a few philosophical ideas in Mahayana Buddhism, and into the details of Pure Land practice. Actually, there is a fundamental problem with this picture of samsara and nirvana. It is still presenting them as two distinct "states". But according to Mahayana Buddhism, this is quite misleading because actually the ordinary mind of samsara IS the mind of awakening. Or as Nagarjuna put it in his Verses on the Middle Way: "There's no distinction whatsoever between samsara and nirvana. There's no distinction whatsoever between nirvana and samsara". Thus, it would really be more accurate to picture these as two sides of the same coin. This may sound confusing, but think about it for a second: The point is that awakening is the state that is beyond all conditions. It is by definition not something that can come into being or that can be attained. Anything that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing, and therefore conditioned. So if awakening was something that could be gotten at, or obtained, or could come into being, then it would not really be awakening. So if Awakening doesn't come and it doesn't go, then we have to concede that it has been here all along. This may seem like a play on words, but it's actually pointing to an extremely profound principle, which is that the aim of our practice is not really to go anywhere, or to attain anything, or even to get rid of anything, but rather to learn to see differently what is already here and now. If we take this principle to heart, then the idea of calling on the Buddha suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched. After all, we are simply calling on something that is present here and now already. Something that is natural to us. Perhaps the most natural thing to us. Therefore when we call the Buddha, it is almost like we are saying: "Yes I know know that I have all these confused thoughts and habits that result in so much suffering, but that's not who I really am. At some level I am confident that my true home, the true condition of my mind is... the Buddha. Wisdom, and compassion, and freedom. So let me call on that."
I think this is a good place to end this video. However, there's still many more questions I want to address, such as how do you actually practice the Pure Land method? And is the Pure Land a real place, or is it only a metaphor? That's why I will be posting a second, and possibly even a third part in this Pure Land series. I hope that something in this video was useful to you. May you be happy and free!
I would appreciate it if you could publish a text that I can translate into Spanish. My lack of English prevents me from appreciating the publication.
Thank you, health, peace, and abundance of good things on all occasions.
I have produced the text. May you be well. :)
Thank you so much.
It has been an interesting explanation, from which I conclude that the more faith we put in finding the way, the easier it may be for us to find it. Attitude and way of seeing seem to be important. The unity or uniqueness of the whole over the apparent dualities.
I will be waiting for your next publications.
I reiterate my gratitude and wish you the best at all times.
This practice reminds me of the Tibetan practice. My friends would recite special mantras of the guru Rinpoche which would connect to the ‘mind’ of the teacher (guru) so she could attain, share, participate in the process towards ‘emptying’ the mind and attaining ‘enlightenment’. To me it was like jumping on the wagon which was traveling towards the part of enlightenment. She didn’t have to build the wagon herself so it saved her time and energy.
At first, I couldn’t understand how spending hours reciting mantras everyday would help towards enlightening her mind.
The process itself made it impossible for her to be distracted by negative thoughts or actions! The mind became focus and calm so she could have ‘smadhi’ very fast.
However, here, the Buddhist tradition hardly talked about this recitation methods. Serious practitioners have to practice meditation seriously to achieve call the steps towards enlightenment.
To each his or her own. Everyone is at the right place so long as the mind is turned towards the Buddhadharma.
This seemed a bit different from the previous ones of emptying the mind and removing desires. It initially looked similar to religion like Christianity where believing can lead to salvation. But the explanation was really helpful in teaching the differences and how to help us go about it.
Nice share!