A Fistful of Sand

  In the vast landscape of Buddhist practice, the figure of Amitābha Buddha stands as a central beacon of light, compassion, and wisdom. In both Hongaku Jōdo as a Mikkyo lineage and Vajrayana Buddhism, the practice of Amitābha as the root guru is not just a means for personal enlightenment, but a path toward deep inner peace and harmony—the very qualities that are essential for the cultivation of world peace. This article explores how Guru Amitābha leads to profound inner transformation and how this inner transformation can ripple outward to promote peace and harmony on a global scale. Amitābha as the Embodiment of Inner Peace At the heart of Amitābha’s practice is the recognition of his boundless compassion and infinite wisdom, qualities that naturally cultivate peace within the mind. Amitābha, often visualized as bathed in a radiance of golde...

(Art by Nembutsu Art ) In the first volume of the Collection of Passages on the Land of it Peace and Bliss [by Tao-ch’o] we read:   One might ask, “If all sentient beings have the Buddha nature, and as each of them from ancient times to the present must have encountered many Buddhas, why then do they still continue through cycles of birth and death and fail to escape from this burning house?” To such a question, I should answer that according to the holy teaching of the Mahayana, it is actually because they have been unable to cast aside birth and death through exercising one of the two kinds of the excellent Dharma, that they have not been able to escape from the burning house. One is called the Holy Path and the other is called Rebirth in the Pure Land. In these days it is difficult to attain Enlightenment through the Holy Path. One reason for this is that the Great Enlightened One’s passing has now receded far into the distant past. Another is that the ultimate principle is prof...

I n the past I was able to teach the Buddha’s Dharma throughout the day without ever mentioning him or using a Pali or Sanskrit word. I’ve given up on that. Once the Buddha is taken out of the equation people are free to twist the teachings anyway they want to because the teaching has no context. I’ve seen psychoanalysts of all stripes damage a patient’s life by using Dharma teachings secularly avoiding what might be perceived as a religious connotation.   Whether or not “Buddhism” is a religion or not is a matter of interpretation. As a practitioner of the Dharma I find the Buddha is immensely important to me. It is after called Buddhadharma. If we can all agree that these teachings originated with the Siddhartha Gautama then the importance of the Buddha cannot be over estimated.   It is true that Dharma, as taught, is to be used in secular settings but I am just a tad skeptical of a secularized Dharma having great long lasting value. If one cannot ha...

Nagarjuna urges us not to mistake the finger for the moon. He tells us not to confound words and meaning, that is, not to mistake the secular words that are used to point to ultimate truth for that truth itself. We are able to see the moon because of the finger. However, we should not look at the finger and think that it is the moon. This is the meaning of the phrase, “Rely on the meaning, not on the words.” Here, the topic of our discussion is the significance of symbols. Dr. Nubuo Haneda got himself into considerable controversy and argument with some of the hard liners in Jodo Shin Shu (True Pure Land school) people a few years ago by advancing the idea that Amida was a symbol and not to be taken as a literal being living out in space somewhere. At the time I had already been teaching that message at a Zen center I worked at. I likened Amida, Tara, Manjushri and all the Cosmic Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to Jungian or cultural archetypes, though they are not exactly the same. Late...

Hongaku Jodo Website Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. I hate to be a downer but the facts are there is no one who has been born that can avoid sickness, aging, weakness, separation from and death of your loved ones, loss of wealth, and the hate and harm of your enemy. The poor want to become rich, the childless want to have children, the unemployed want to have a job, and so Saṃsāra goes. How many of these desperate dreams will come into being? It often seems like there is no solution to our problems. People all over the world are dying in terrible ways, car accidents, terrible diseases, mudslides, violence of war, violence of poverty, many in hopelessness take their own lives. We are constantly threatened with human extinction through nuclear, biological or climate catastrophe. Unexpected death is facing us everyday. We are taught that even though a living body can die consciousness never dies. The person manifests around this consciousness and a persona...