Quote:
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Originally Posted by Miss Hepburn
What is 'Pure Land'?
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The sky123 answer:- Now.
The Cobbler's answer:- It is my own simple reference to what is more formally called "Shin Buddhism" and more specifically in my own case, "Jodo Shin Shu". It's "father" in time and space was Shinran, a contemporary of Dogen (13th century Japan) Each sought their "time and place".
The faith revolves around Amida, variously imagined and conceived. Some will see Amida as him (or her) "up there" or "out to the west" who comes to us at death to escort us to the Pure Land, the Western Paradise. Others will "know" Amida as Reality-as-is and the Pure Land is here, now, when seen in faith, with new eyes. And, I suppose, all points in between. We are all unique. The main point is not how Amida is "imagined" but the actual "realisation" of compassion in our mind/heart - which can in fact be greater in a simple soul with a more concrete concept of Amida. Therefore,
ideally it is very egalitarian. Pure Land knows no "masters". We are all "bombu's", foolish beings, which has no intellectual connotations. One can recognise oneself as a bombu while having an IQ of 160. It is rather the recognition that we are totally incapable of engineering our own "salvation" in any way, shape or form.
Although in time it can be traced back to Shinran, who insisted that saying the nembutsu was the sole "practice" needed, its genesis is lost in the mists of time. Nagajuna, one of the greatest "philosophers" of Buddhism, originator of the Mādhyamika, Buddism's central philosophy, in fact wrote hymns to Amida. Scholarship continues, as it does in Biblical studies in Christianity.
That is about it for now.
Namu-amida-butsu
Or, as Meister Eckhart has said:- If the only prayer we ever say is Thank You, it is sufficient.