Spirituality can be interpreted in a world affirming or a world denying manner. Buddhism can certainly be interpreted in a world denying manner - it often is - and this extinctionist interpretation supports an ascetic tendency in practice. It is common for people to regard Buddhism as a form of privation and for Buddhists to think that to be Buddhist is to imitate the Buddha even in his mistakes. Thus Siddhatha Gotama spent five years or so practising austerities before becoming enlightened. People then think that the thing for a Buddhist to do is to become enlightened and that the way to do this is to do what Buddha did and lead an austere life. This completely overlooks the fact that when Buddha became enlightened he said that all the asceticicism he had practised was ignoble and worthless. His enlightenment, in fact, incorporated precisely such an insight: neither the pursuit of austerity nor the pursuit of indulgence constitute a wholesome path. True spirituality is liberationist rather than extinctionist. Some see that Siddhartha was enlightened while sitting under a tree and so spend hundreds of hours sitting as if under a tree in the hope of becoming enlightened. I did so myself. What nonsense! If he had been enlightened while eating cherries would we now think that spiritual practice consisted of cherry eating? And what if we can't find the right tree to sit under?
So privileging asceticism is a mistake. Yet the world denying view remains, and has always been, widespread. Here is the death poem of Matsuo Basho, generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest haiku poets:Sick, on a journey,Is this how we should view life and death? A dream wandering on over fields already withered? A sickness? No doubt Basho is even at this final point in life being ironic about himself. Much Buddhism is about sending up the ego. He is saying, here I am this close to death, my life withering away, yet even at this point, my mind is still full of fantasies leading me along. What a fool I am!
Yet over withered fields
Dreams wander on.
As an Amidist I can certainly relate to the "What a fool I am" sentiment. At a playful level "All is vanity" is a hugely liberating sentiment. Nonetheless, much religion, in practice, takes the fun out of it and makes this negative diagnosis of life into a weighty matter.
Maharaj Neem Karoli Baba, one of the most renouned Hindu gurus of recent Indian history, when he died in 1973, said "Today I am released from Central Gaol forever." On the one hand, one can understand that a dying saint may understand that he is on the way to a better place. On the other hand, is regarding this world as a gaol really the height of spiritual understanding? Is this life essentially to be seen as a penitential sentence? What sort of enlightenment is that?
As Amidists we do not see enlightenment as the goal. People may be more or less enlightened in various ways as a result of insights that naturally occur as incidences of grace along the spiritual path, but the aim is not to imitate Siddhartha Gotama's path nor attain his attainment but to imitate him in having a path - he does not want me to be him, certainly not an imitation, I am sure, he wants me to fulfil my own path. This means entering into what reality confronts me with in as deeply honest a manner as possible.
Take the question of relationships, for example. In Buddhism it is the celibate life that is often held up as an ideal. There is even the story, widely popular in India, of how the Buddha manages to remove Nanda from his beautiful wife and lead him through a process in which he is converted into a celibate monk. Celibacy is held up as the preferable state and one is apparently fortunate if one can escape from the passion (or fire) of intimate relationship and enter upon the celibate path which is depicted (in Ashvaghosa's Saundarananda) as being rapturous: "I have extinguished the burning fire of passion with the water of steadfastness; now I have come to utter rapture, like someone slipping into a cool lake in the summer heat"
What appears to be true, however, is that every case is unique. For one person at one particular stage of life celibacy may be hugely liberating, rapturous, and a basis for an upsurge of creativity, whereas at another phase or for a person in different conditions, celibacy may be a withered field over which few dreams wander. Again, for another person or at another stage, a relationship may be precisely the challenge or the companionship on the path that is needed.
On the spiritual path people change and grow. The influence of Amida in our lives is profound and we do not come into this life just to mark time. The epitome of intimate relationship is that it also be a spiritual path. To live within a pact of deep honesty and to be able to spend a substantial part of one's life with somebody who, while knowing one deeply, is still willing to ask the penetrating question and provide the ambiance of love within which a genuine answer is, even if painful, nonetheless bearable, is a wonderful gift. All our Buddhist training is training in love and sometimes this is best done from a position of celibacy from which one can love everybody and sometimes from a position of intimacy where one can love one person specially and learn to subdue one's separate ego by living the Dharma life as a couple.
Spirituality is a matter of fulness of life and that means fulness of love. Constantly reminding ourselves by means of the nembutsu that we are loved by Amida just as we are, we become capable also of loving one another, if not completely unconditionally, then at least to a much greater degree than formerly. We are constantly growing in love and, therefore, changing. Our threshold of honesty adjusts as we become more sensitive to what is going on in our lives. The nature of our path itself changes as we pass from one stage to another.
It is said that one enters the path through the sangemon. Sange means contrition and mon means gate. However, when we say sange, we are not talking about some kind of penitential process but rather about a willingness to live in the condition of deep honesty that melts the heart. When we see into our own addictive patterns, our deeply hidden cruelties, our meanness and dejection, if we are not then defeated by attachment to our idealised self-image, we experience the melting of the ice in our heart. What had been hard and brittle becomes soft and open. Many of the things that I have done in life have been unconventional. Sometimes others have been shocked or hurt. Sometimes their feedback has helped me to identify processes at work in myself that I would have preferred to ignore. Holding to the discipline of looking objectively - being able to say "yes, that is in me"; and, "no, there is not that in me now" - is part of the core discipline of what it is to be on the Buddhist path. Many, however, think that all that is needed is to conform to a particular outward pattern of life or to dedicate enough time to a particular ritual or practice. I greatly value the spirit of the Buddhist precepts and I do my best to be honourable and honest, but it is also important to face one's daemon and not simply live a stifled existence.
While it is fairly easy to say what a world denying spirituality looks like, it is much more difficult to say what a world affirming one is like. The Buddha did his best. He told us that it is a middle way, avoiding extremes. It is a matter of wholehearted outlook, wholehearted thought, wholehearted speech, wholehearted deeds, wholehearted lifestyle, wholehearted effort, wholeheartedly keeping the greatest thing in mind, wholeheartedly entering into the samadhi of love; but what each of these things means in a specific life is something that each must fathom in their own unique case. As a sangha we try to help one another to do so and to provide the conditions of kindness and support in which it is possible for each of us to pass through our many transitions amoungst good friends. A life affirming spirit is one in which we affirm one another in all our diversity: it is harmony without suffocation.
To avoid the extremes means to be human. Extremes arise when one pushes a logical line of thinking to its limit. This world is not Central Prison, but nor is it paradise. Things are not perfect as they are, but then nor is this hell. There is always something to do here: always another step, always a need to be "going beyond", reaching the other shore and returning. The truly spiritual person is not just intent on getting out of here, but nor does that person think that there is nothing to be done. Love is an active principle that never rests and never has a final formula. The divine way is never machine-like, but always creative and, therefore, never predictable and not even reasonable. We can make codes and sutras and books of guidance, but each has to interpret them according to time and place, internal and external conditions, relying on the best guidance that is to hand at the time.
All paths can be interpreted in a life affirming way or a life denying way. Pureland is no different. You could see it as a message that this world is no good and the best thing to do is to get to the Pure Land as soon as possible. Or, one can understand that Amida's love is constantly at work in whatever world one happens to find oneself, that "birth and death are both the same" and wherever one is there is something wonderful to affirm. That wonder may be called faith or love or Dharma or whatever, but there is always spiritual work to be done. Namo Amida Bu.
References
Ashvagosha's Handsome Nanda, translated by Linda Covill, New York University Press
Sushila Blackman (1997) Graceful Exits: How great beings die. Boston: Shambhala
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