|
|
Pure Land, like all Mahayana schools, requires first and foremost the development of the
Bodhi Mind, the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.
From this starting point, the main tenets of the school can be understood at the main
levels, the transcendental and the popular - depending on the background and capacities
of the cultivator.
1. In its popular form, i.e. for ordinary practitioners in this spiritually degenerate age,
some twenty-six centuries after the demise of the historical Buddha, Pure Land involves
seeking rebirth in the Land of Amitabha Buddha. This is achieving within one lifetime
through the practice of Amitabha recitation with sincere faith and vows, leading to
one-pointedness of mind or samadhi.
Thus at the popular level, the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha is an ideal training ground,
an ideal environment where the practitioner is reborn thanks both to his own efforts and
the power of Amitabha Buddha's vows. No longer subject to retrogression, having left Birth
and Death behind forever, the cultivator can now focus all his efforts towards the ultimate
aim of Buddhahood. This aspect of Pure Land is the form under which the school is
popularly known.
2. At the advanced level, i.e. for cultivators of high spiritual capacity, the Pure Land
method, like other methods, reverts the ordinary, deluded mind to the Self-nature True Mind.
In the process wisdom and buddhahood are eventually attained.
The high-level form of Pure Land is practiced by those of deep spiritual capacities:
"When the mind is pure, the Buddha land is pure ........to recite the Buddha's name
is to recite the Buddha of the self-mind."
In its totality, Pure Land reflects the highest teaching of Buddhism as expressed in the
Avatamsaka Sutra: mutual identity and interpenetrating, the simplest method contains the
ultimate and the ultimate is found in the simplest.