A Little Something About Pure Land Buddhism
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| Three Pure Land Sages |
Bishop Koshin Ogui of the Buddhist Churches of America introduced me to Pure Land Buddhism in the 1990s. He also recognized me as ordained clergy and gave me my Dharma name. At the time he was the Master at a Jodo Shin Temple in Cleveland. Ogui was also the Master at the Midwest Buddhist Temple in Chicago. A remarkable man and teacher he was instrumental in my taking on the unified practice he held so dear. The emphasis of my practice varies with my needs. This is the way the Buddha taught. One size does not fit all any more than one tool in the box is sufficient for all jobs.
One of the main themes he emphasized was the unified practice. This is where Jodo and Zen are combined into one integrated whole. The Chinese invented this method thousand or so years ago. Tendai and its predecessor T’ien T’ai demanded this method of unifying practices. Since each being is unique, each being responds best to a unique practice.
Based on what I have learned about Pure Land over the past 20 plus years, there seems to be multiple levels of Pure Land practice. Which level a person gravitates to depend entirely on their karma – naturally. Three different levels jump out immediately.
The most popular level is the populist level, which takes the mythography of Amitabha, the Three Sages and the Pure Land as being literally existent. At this level, there is the actual belief that a being called Amitabha Buddha exists in a place in the Western heavens. His only purpose to exist is to lead all beings to the Western Pure Land so that he can aid them in the process we call enlightenment. Upon a faithful person’s death, Amitabha and his retinue will come to the death bed and escort them into the Western Pure Land where all things are beautiful and Dharma is taught all day long in beautiful ways. Enlightenment is inevitable.
There is a second level that assumes Amitabha is a real being that exists as a manifestation of the characteristics of infinite wisdom and infinite compassion. In this view the Pure Land is some place in which we already exist. We cannot see it because we are stricken with impure karma. It is a much more mystical approach. In these two views of Pure Land Amitabha is a living being that is capable of answering prayers, altering karma, and manifesting miracles to help the devotee. His retinue, the Bodhisattvas Avalokitesvara, Mahasthamaprapta, Manjusri and Samantabhadra, make themselves visible to us in times of stress and need. In the first level, upon death we are reborn into the Pure Land of Amitabha while in the second view the Pure Land will manifest when we have purified our mind through recitation of the name Amitabha.
A fourth level is based on Vajrayana views. In this practice Amitabha is also a literal being that one aspires to find a literal unification with him, actually becoming him. In the powa practice, primarily found in Tibetan Buddhism, the practitioner attempts to transfer his or her consciousness into the Pure Land, experiencing it now in its totality.
All four views are equally valid, just different. Many Pure Land practitioners go through phases where they try a combination of the four approaches looking for something that fits their style and inclinations. Sometimes Pure Land practice looks like American Christian Protestantism, sometimes a lot like Zen, sometimes remarkably close to Catholicism. Pure Land practice is remarkably versatile.
Over the years I have experienced a longstanding frustration with Pure Land (jingtu) and Zen (ch’an) studies. It seems that it is the dominion of a specific sort of historical narrative that takes Kamakura-period Japanese Pure Land, Zen and even Tendai Buddhism as either the norm or the terminus (or both) of all Pure Land, Zen and Tendai Buddhism. It’s as if no other forms of these traditions exist in a contemporaneous with this generation of humanity or that all previously existing forms of these sects were somehow inadequate and less keen than the Kamakura versions.
As far as Pure Land is concerned, retrospection seems to make it easy to believe that, somehow or another, there is a certain kind of kind of logic inherent in the belief in Amitābha and his Pure Land led inevitably to the doctrines and practices of the Jōdoshū, the Jōdo Shinshū, and the Jishū, the complex systems detailed by Hōnen, Shinran, and Ippen. Their systems deny the value of human action and endowed Amitābha’s “other-power” with exclusive salvific power, became the Final Culmination of Pure Land Buddhism’s maturity. The theory is that all forms of Pure Land teaching prior to these figures exist only in their relationship to this culmination.
Such a presentation of Pure Land history theorizes historical development in a linear fashion, that is, a chain of events moving from one link to the next. Most historians see historical events in terms of a river or a tree rather than a strain line. Branches sprout at various points and some continue their growth parallel to other branches while others go in different directions.
In reality, whatever that means to you, Chinese Pure Land Buddhist thought and practice has developed its own path very different from the Japanese forms, It never adopted the Shinran and Ippen systems in any meaningful way. Nor does it deny the need or efficacy of self-power, that is, of human moral determination and spiritual practice. Recognizing the need for confidence in the “other-power” of Amitābha. Chinese Pure Land practice views the path to rebirth in the Pure Land more as a cooperative partnership between co-equal twin powers of self-power and other-power. The Japanese schools offer no explanation that acknowledges the Chinese Pure Land experience.
In Chinese Pure Land there seems to be taught simultaneously two seemingly contradictory messages. First, there is the teaching that maintains that human moral efforts, ethical living, taking and keeping precepts, and making vows, are fundamental to Buddhist practice; they never question the need for them as essential elements of the Buddhist path. Second, at the same, sutras, such as the Meditation Sutra, tell us Amitabha’s original vows are enough to deliver even the deathbed convert, who has not done one single good deed in his or her entire life, to the Pure Land; their rebirth in the Pure Land will in turn lead inevitably to their attainment of Buddhahood. This implies that ethics and precepts are not essential to Buddhist practice. So we have these two seemingly contradictory messages without any effort by scholars to try to reconcile the differences. Such a thing would have been inconceivable to the Kamakura mindset. Total reliance on the other-power (tariki) and devaluation of self-power (jariki) seemed to be the best resolution. It also differentiated Pure Land (Jodo) from Zen, which relies solely on self-power. The Chinese were reluctant to develop an exclusionary Buddhist system.
In actuality, there is no self-power or other-power. There is the only momentary experience of ego and the transcendent mind. Power does not accurately describe the energy of these two aspects of being. In Chinese Pure Land it said that there is only one Mind and we are all using it. Here of course, they refer to the Buddha Mind, hongaku. It is also said that sincerity is having no single thought. Sincerity is “tapping into” the single mind that never changes.
Ultimately the seeming contradiction exists in our words and minds but not in the practice itself. The Meditation Sutra approaches the practice from the Zen point of view. Dogen Zenji taught that merely to sit in Zazen was enlightenment. The Meditation Sutra implies that to be sincerely in the practice of Pure Land practice is to be enlightened in that moment of practice. On the other hand, those that cannot enter that rarified state of mind require ethical practices coupled with sincere faith are necessary. So, there is no contradiction.
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