The Pure Land and The Heart Sutra

[Serenity509]

Honen recognizes three forms of Nembutsu practice, even though he prefers one above the others for ordinary people:

The Three Kinds of Nembutsu according to Honen

Honen arranged the kinds of nembutsu which prevailed among Buddhists in his day from the standpoint of the intensity of its liberative power. In the first, the practitioner’s self-power is seen as exceeding the Buddha's; in the second the two are equal, while in the third the Buddha's power goes beyond the devotee's, as shown below:

(1) In the Mo-ho-chih-kuan (Jp. Makashikan) Vol. II, Chih-I, the third patriarch of the Chinese T’ien-t’ai school (Jp. Tendai) prescribed the four kinds of samadhi for Tendai practitioners to lead them to realize the Truth of the Three Perspectives (isshin sandai) of emptiness (ku), existence (ke), and the non-duality of the two (chu). In the first of the four, a practitioner who finds it difficult to meditate upon the truth, because of various mental distractions is to call upon the sacred name of Amida in a loud voice, and to ask for help. In the second, the practitioner is to call upon the sacred name of Amida incessantly at the same time meditating upon Amida as the symbol of isshin sandai, in order to realize the truth of the identity of all things in the universe.

(2) In the Ojoyoshu, Genshin advocates the nembutsu, but regards it as one out of many of the universally acknowledged religious disciplines and not the only one necessary for Birth (ojo). It only definitely promotes one's ojo when helped by the Five Forms of Prayer (gonenmon): 1) prostrating oneself before Amida Buddha (raihai), 2) praising Amida's sacred name in terms fitting the Buddha of boundless light and wisdom (sandan), 3) desiring to be Born into the Buddha's land (sagwan), 4) meditating upon Amida and the things of the Pure Land (kanzatsu), and 5) feeling compassion for the suffering and wishing to save them by directing all one's own accumulated merit to them (eko).

(3) Shan-tao, quite different from the preceding two, declares in his Commentary on the Meditation Sutra that the nembutsu is the one practice prescribed in the Original Vow of Amida, which unfailingly brings ojo to everyone who just does it with a sincere heart, no matter whether his character is good or bad, deluded or wise, etc. Obviously, this is the interpretation that Honen adopted for his practice and teaching.
http://www.jsri.jp/English/Pureland/DOC ... mbutsu.htm

Please notice that the first type of Nembutsu incorporates concepts like emptiness.

[nilakantha]

Neither the Lotus nor Vimalkirti says anything of the sort. Pure Lands arise simaltaneusly with a Sambhogakaya Buddha in Akanishtha Heaven. Pure Lands are real places not states of mind.

Please stop posting things without researching it first:

Because his wisdom is pure, his mind is pure. And because his mind is pure, all the blessings he enjoys will be pure.

"Therefore, Jeweled Accumulation, if the bodhisattva wishes to acquire a pure land, he must purify his mind. When the mind is pure, the Buddha land will be pure."

At that time Shariputra, moved by the Buddha's supernatural powers, thought to himself: "If the mind of the bodhisattva is pure, then his Buddha land will be pure. Now when our World-Honored One first determined to become a bodhisattva, surely his intentions were pure. Why then is this Buddha land so filled with impurities?"[4]

The Buddha, knowing his thoughts, said to him, "What do you think? Are the sun and moon impure? Is that why the blind man fails to see them?"

Shariputra replied, "No, World-Honored One. That is the fault of the blind man. The sun and moon are not to blame." "Shariputra, it is the failings of living beings that prevent them from seeing the marvelous purity of the land of the Buddha, the Thus Come One. The Thus Come One is not to blame. Shariputra, this land of mine is pure, but you fail to see it"...

The Buddha then pressed his toe against the earth, and immediately the thousand-millionfold world was adorned with hundreds and thousands of rare jewels, till it resembled Jeweled Adornment Buddha's Jeweled Adornment Land of Immeasurible Blessings. All the members of the great assembly sighed in wonder at what they had never seen before, and all saw that hey themselves were seated on jeweled lotuses...

The Buddha said to Shariputra, "My Buddha land has always been pure like this. But because I wish to save those persons who are lowly and inferior, I make it seem an impure land full of defilements, that is all. It is like the case of heavenly beings. All ate their food from the same precious vessel, but the food looks different for each one, depending upon the merits and virtues hat each possesses. It is the same in this case, Shariputra. If a person's mind is pure, then he will see the wonderful blessings that adorn this land."
http://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/ ... 16199.html

The next lines in Chapter 17 of the Lotus Sutra continue:

…and he will see this sahā-world [our world of defilement] whose land is lapis lazuli, plain and level, its eight roads marked off with jambūnada gold, lined with jewel trees…

It sounds like a description of the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, but Shakyamuni is speaking of this world of ours here and now. When one has such confidence in the Dharma, through mindfulness and joy, this world, in spite of its suffering becomes a Pure Land to us.

Back in chapter 16, the Buddha speaks again in verse:

…I am always on the Divine Vulture Peak
And in every other dwelling place.
…
Tranquil is this realm of mine,
Ever filled with heavenly beings,
parks, and many palaces
with every kind of gem adorned,
Precious trees full of blossoms and fruits,
Where all creatures take their pleasure;
…
My Pure Land will never be destroyed,
yet all view it as being burned up,
and grief and horror and distress
fill them all like this.
All those sinful creatures,
by reason of evil karma,
throughout the asaṃkhyeya kalpas [many eons]
hear not the name of the Precious Three [Buddha, Dharma and Sangha].
http://jkllr.net/2008/12/24/shakyamuni- ... pure-land/

If all Dharmas are empty, if Nirvana is Samsara, then there is no separation between the Pure Land and the everyday world in which we live.

So it should be easy to see that we're using Pure Land in two different senses. The first is as the Pure Land of the Eternal Buddha Mahavairocana, who is also the metaphysical reality on which Samsara is based. In the Vimalakirti Sutra, Shakyamuni manifests a vision of a Pure Land as part of his teaching that the Perfections are essential for the production of a Buddha Land. Later in the scripture, Vimalakirti, a bodhisattva from the pure land of Abhirati, also manifests that pure land as pedagogical device, even though it's his homeland.

The Pure Land mentioned in the Lotus is obviously the noumenal pure land of the Eternal Buddha Mahavairocana. The Buddha is eternally present and so is his Pure Land, but not phenomenally. Our Saha world is a product of our collective bad karma, but, like all other phenomena in the universe, owes its limited reality to being based on the Dharmakaya and his pure land, the Dharmadhatu.

Sukhavati is a real place, created by the Vows of Dharmakara. It is just as the Sutras teach. If you are born there you will be born in a lotus flower as a man. If you don't like that idea, choose another destination.

[Serenity509]

Sukhavati is a real place

There are two complementary conceptions of the Pure Land: as different and apart from the Saha World and as one with and the same as the Saha World. When the mind is pure and undefiled, any land or environment becomes a pure land (Vimalakirti, Lotus, Avatamsaka Sutras ...). At the noumenal level, everything, the Pure Land included, is Mind-Only, a product of the mind.
http://www.ymba.org/books/pure-land-patriachs/glossary

created by the Vows of Dharmakara.

The Lotus Sutra is well-loved for its parables, especially the parable of the burning house, in which the Buddha illustrates the doctrine of expedient means. Is it possible that the story of Dharmakara Bodhisattva is itself another parable of the Buddha, an expedient means for conveying a higher truth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Sutra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upaya#Par ... ning_house

Since we know that, even as far back as in the Pali canon, the Buddha taught in parables, should it come as a surprise that the story of Dharmakara Bodhisattva itself might be a parable based on the Buddha's own life story?

I cannot say for sure whether or not this actually took place. But based on what we now know about the history of the universe and human experience, it probably did not really happen. If Monk Dharmakara lived innumerable eons ago, he would be older than the earth, which is said to be between five and ten billion years old.

There are fewer and fewer Jodo-Shinshu Buddhists who take the story as fact. Especially in North America, most teachers and lay members understand it as a myth. Myth, however, does not mean false or untrue. Myth helps explain a deeper meaning that cannot be better explained any other way. Our appreciation of the myth agrees with that of Prof. Joseph Campbell who so eloquently helped to educate the modern public about the truth and power of myths. There are, however, many people who still see myth as false; that is why I am referring to the Jodo-Shinshu myth as “sacred story” to avoid any confusion.
http://www.yamadera.info/ocean/chapter-9.htm

[nilakantha]

We'll never agree, but if you have some time, read this article from the perspective of Orthodox Chinese Pure Land:

http://purelanders.com/2011/12/11/mind- ... ha-buddha/

[Serenity509]

We'll never agree

There's nothing wrong with that.

read this article from the perspective of Orthodox Chinese Pure Land:

It's often said that mind-only or metaphorical interpretations of Amida and the Pure Land as a reality that can be experienced here and now are invented by halfhearted believers who just can't accept traditional teaching. This article, however, historically demonstrates that is not the case:

http://www.cloudwater.org/index.php/pur ... d-practice

[DGA]

Honen recognizes three forms of Nembutsu practice, even though he prefers one above the others for ordinary people:

The Three Kinds of Nembutsu according to Honen

Honen arranged the kinds of nembutsu which prevailed among Buddhists in his day from the standpoint of the intensity of its liberative power. In the first, the practitioner’s self-power is seen as exceeding the Buddha's; in the second the two are equal, while in the third the Buddha's power goes beyond the devotee's, as shown below:

(1) In the Mo-ho-chih-kuan (Jp. Makashikan) Vol. II, Chih-I, the third patriarch of the Chinese T’ien-t’ai school (Jp. Tendai) prescribed the four kinds of samadhi for Tendai practitioners to lead them to realize the Truth of the Three Perspectives (isshin sandai) of emptiness (ku), existence (ke), and the non-duality of the two (chu). In the first of the four, a practitioner who finds it difficult to meditate upon the truth, because of various mental distractions is to call upon the sacred name of Amida in a loud voice, and to ask for help. In the second, the practitioner is to call upon the sacred name of Amida incessantly at the same time meditating upon Amida as the symbol of isshin sandai, in order to realize the truth of the identity of all things in the universe.

(2) In the Ojoyoshu, Genshin advocates the nembutsu, but regards it as one out of many of the universally acknowledged religious disciplines and not the only one necessary for Birth (ojo). It only definitely promotes one's ojo when helped by the Five Forms of Prayer (gonenmon): 1) prostrating oneself before Amida Buddha (raihai), 2) praising Amida's sacred name in terms fitting the Buddha of boundless light and wisdom (sandan), 3) desiring to be Born into the Buddha's land (sagwan), 4) meditating upon Amida and the things of the Pure Land (kanzatsu), and 5) feeling compassion for the suffering and wishing to save them by directing all one's own accumulated merit to them (eko).

(3) Shan-tao, quite different from the preceding two, declares in his Commentary on the Meditation Sutra that the nembutsu is the one practice prescribed in the Original Vow of Amida, which unfailingly brings ojo to everyone who just does it with a sincere heart, no matter whether his character is good or bad, deluded or wise, etc. Obviously, this is the interpretation that Honen adopted for his practice and teaching.
http://www.jsri.jp/English/Pureland/DOC ... mbutsu.htm

Please notice that the first type of Nembutsu incorporates concepts like emptiness.

"concepts like emptiness" are involved in some way or another in all three. Pure Land Buddhism is a Mahayana Buddhist practice, and you're going nowhere fast in Mahayana if you can't come to grips with sunyata. This is true in Zhiyi, whose own teachings emerged from his engagement with Madhyamaka, even though he doesn't think sunyata is the final answer.

[Serenity509]

We'll never agree

There's nothing wrong with that.

read this article from the perspective of Orthodox Chinese Pure Land:

It's often said that mind-only or metaphorical interpretations of Amida and the Pure Land as a reality that can be experienced here and now are invented by halfhearted believers who just can't accept traditional teaching. This article, however, historically demonstrates that is not the case:

http://www.cloudwater.org/index.php/pur ... d-practice

Thanks. I agree with you for the most part, except I see that many people are not able to understand concepts like emptiness, and so they need the Dharma presented in a simpler form.

[Serenity509]

On an ultimate level, there is no distinction between self-power and Other-Power, as your true nature and Amida's nature are one and the same. Yet on the level of foolish beings such as ourselves, we need Other-Power to escape the confines of our false ego-self. This is why we say Nembutsu.

[nilakantha]

We'll never agree

There's nothing wrong with that.

read this article from the perspective of Orthodox Chinese Pure Land:

It's often said that mind-only or metaphorical interpretations of Amida and the Pure Land as a reality that can be experienced here and now are invented by halfhearted believers who just can't accept traditional teaching. This article, however, historically demonstrates that is not the case:

http://www.cloudwater.org/index.php/pur ... d-practice

Thanks. I agree with you for the most part, except I see that many people are not able to understand concepts like emptiness, and so they need the Dharma presented in a simpler form.

What we must not forget is the importance of faith. As the Lord told the Kalamas: " You yourselves do not have pure . wisdom with which to know w hether there is an afterlife or not. You yourselves do not have pure wisdom to know which deeds are transgressions and which are not transgressions." Madhyama Agama

Since Buddhavacana is our only source for metaphysical and moral truth, we must make sure we don't innovate. Where in the Five Dharmas of Maitreya do you find support for the contention that Pure Lands are allegorical?