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Full Text of the Amida Kyo - the Smaller Pureland Sutra

The Smaller Pureland Sutra

Thus did I hear

 

Once the Buddha at Shravasti dwelt

In the Jeta Anathapindika garden

Together with a multitude of friars

One thousand two hundred and fifty

Who were arhats every one

As was recognised by all.

 

Amongst them...

Shariputra the elder, Great Maudgalyayana, Maha-kashyapa,

Maha-katyayana, Maha-kausthila,

Revata, Shuddi-panthaka,

Nanda, Ananda, Rahula,

Gavampati, Pindola Bhara-dvaja,

Kalodayin, Maha-kapphina, Vakkula,

Aniruddha,

and many other disciples

each similarly great.

Thus Have I Heard ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

FAMOUS WORDS

Buddhist sutras generally begin with these words.  Hearing is very important in Buddhism.  In fact, the essence of Buddhism is to hear the Dharma.

These words can be taken in a simplistic way and quickly passed over or they can be reflected on to some benefit.  Simplistically, one can take them as the introduction to a story that has been passed down from person to person.  At this level, what is being passed on is simply information.  The text often goes on, “once the Buddha was staying in such and such a place and there were with him the following people…”  Thus, the story teller establishes where the action takes place and the names of the participants and witnesses.  This gives evidence for the correctness of the story.  In an oral tradition, it would have meant, inter alia, “If you don’t believe me you can ask them.” 

Interestingly sutras usually do not say when the action took place.  Time was not important.  This omission has puzzled modern scholars who want to piece the story together with other stories to make a history.  This aspect evidently did not interest those who transmitted the sutras.  They were not concerned to give a historical account, they were concerned to transmit eternal truth.  So a sutra tells us about eternal truth appearing somewhere specific in the world to particular people.

TWO WAYS OF HEARING

Although we might quickly pass over the initial words, many of the scriptural commentaries linger over them and give some analysis.  This is because these words are important in their own right. “Thus have I heard” means “This is the way I heard it”.  It is worth pausing to ask “Heard what?”  In one sense the answer is obvious - heard these facts about what Buddha was asked and what he said, but sutras were not written for academic analysis nor for the obtaining of doctoral degrees.  They were for devotees.  The meaning is “This is how I heard the Dharma” or “The Dharma came to me in this way.” People who hear merely a story do not really hear the DHARMA.

There are two ways of seriously hearing the Dharma.  The first way is to hear something that you realise is of great value to yourself.  The person who hears in this way is called a shravaka.  The word shravaka is commonly translated as “disciple”, but it literally means “hearer”.  Shravakas have faith as a result of hearing the Dharma.  Perhaps we should stress REALLY HEARING IT, not just having it go in one ear and then get filed away under “other useful information”.  To really hear the Dharma is no different from what we mean by “being seized by Amida”.  People with such faith go to the Pure Land.

The second way of hearing the Dharma is to hear and be penetrated by universal truth that saves all sentient beings.  The people who sincerely hear this are called bodhisattvas.  Sattva means “being” or “spirit”.  Bodhi means the awakened Dharma.  A bodhisattva is somebody whose being or spirit is no longer their own, no longer just the expression of their personal karma, but now is bodhi.  Their being has been take over by Dharma.  They live in the spirit of awakening.

TATHAGATAGHARBA

This being penetrated by the eternal and universal Dharma is what is meant by the term tathagatagharba.  Tathagata is another word for Buddha. Gharba means embryo.  The person who has been penetrated by the Dharma in this way has within them the embryo of a future Buddha. Tathagatagharba often gets taken as a synonym for “Buddha nature”.  If you take the language this way, then the original meaning was not that everybody has Buddha nature from the beginning, but, rather, that one only has it when one has been penetrated in this way, when one has truly HEARD.

There is clearly a sexual metaphor here.  To truly hear the Dharma is to lose one's spiritual virginity.  One cannot go back.  Most people reading Buddhist texts may be engaging in some mild foreplay, but they do not risk committing themselves to the full act.

FOLLOWING THE CALL

The phrase, “Thus have I heard”, therefore, means “This is the way that I was awakened”.  The Dharma is universal, eternal and lacks for nothing, but one only participates in it when one has been penetrated by it.  Then one is no longer one’s old self.  The practical momentum of one’s old self - karma - continues, but it is not what one identifies with any more. 

There is an English usage that is valuable in this respect.  In English we talk about “having a calling”. One’s calling is what one’s life is dedicated to.  The phrase is generally associated with one’s life’s work.  Of somebody who is truly dedicated to their work or mission, we can say, “He didn’t just do it for the money, like most people. For him, it was a real calling”.  This idea of a calling is where the word vocation comes from, that being the Latin for calling.

I hope this makes it possible for us to appreciate the full significance of “Thus have I heard” and to understand why these words distinguish a sutra.  This tells us what a sutra really is.  The Dharma is infinite, but it enters and transforms us via some specific intimate encounter.  The sutras tell of these encounters.  They show the Dharma seed being planted in the world.

For the devotee, a sutra is not just another bit of historical information as it might be for the academic scholar.  Much of what we read about Buddhism has been written by such scholars, not by devotees. Such material is useful, but it requires a shift of perspective to realise the power one is dealing with. This power may have passed through the hands of the scholar, but it not penetrated her heart.

When one can truly say “Thus have I heard” then, as it says at the end of many sutras, “one has done what needs to be done”, and one will bring forth a Buddha in the future.

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A Dharma of Earthsea

Johnathan writes:

I recently got around to finishing Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. The novel follows Ged, a talented magic user, as he pursues his dream of becoming a great wizard. Though his aspirations were great, his education was frustrating for him, particularly at the beginning.

His first teacher was a renowned wizard in his own right, known as Ogion the Silent, who was famous for stopping a great earthquake that almost destroyed Ged’s homeland of Gont. As his name implies, he was a very quiet person. “He spoke seldom, ate little, slept less. His eyes and ears were keen. and often there was a listening look on his face.”

:: continue reading here

Lu Shan Hui Yuan ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya: 

Hui Yuan of Mount Lu (334-416) was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, founder of Pureland Buddhism in China.. 

Mount Lu

Mount Lu is in the centre of China, just south of the Yangtse River, nowadays close to the city of Jiujiang.  The area is a national park with spectacular scenery.  Throughout history there have been many hundreds of temples - Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian - in the area.  It is nowadays a popular tourist destination.

Formative Years

Hui Yuan was well versed in Taoism and Confucianism, which he studied in his youth and was from an early age noted as a remarkable scholar.  He was always enthusiastic for learning and when he was 21 he set off to study with the Confucian Fan Xuan.  However, he was prevented from getting there by warfare that was going on in the area and stopped at Mount Heng where he found the thriving Buddhist monastery of Dao An (道安, 314–385).  Hui Yuan’s brother Hui Chi joined him there and the two brothers became enthusiastic disciples of Dao An, accompanying him on many journeys through the war ravaged land.  During this period, Hui Yuan studied and wrote about the relationship between the Buddhist principle of Prajna Paramita and indigenous Chinese philosophy and religion.

Arriving at Lu Shan

By the year 386, Hui Yuan was already an important monk.  However, the progression of the war forced him eventually to part company with Dao An and the two brothers travelled south to safer country. They stopped to visit a friend at West Forest on Mount Lu and were greatly impressed with the area which was “pure, serene and suitable for calming the mind”.  They decided to stay and Hui Yuan resided there for the rest of his life. 

 

A Gift from Buddha

He resolved to establish a temple, but was not sure if it was proper to build one in the middle of a forest.  He  prayed to the Buddha for guidance.  That night there was a great storm.  Many trees were torn down, thus creating a clearing for the temple and also providing the wood for its construction.  He took this for a sign and engaged the local magistrate who organised the building.  The main hall of the temple is, in consequence, called the Shen Yun Hall, which means that it was donated by the Buddha. As the temple was to the east of where his friend lived it was called Dong Lin Temple (East Forest Temple).

Talmudic Dharma: Four in the Orchard ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

This morning as we had a delicious drawn out breakfast here in Petach Tikwa near Tal Aviv, a massive thunder storm developed lashing the building with wind and rain.  Vimala shared with us a story from the Talmud that has provoked many different interpretations among Jewish commentators and asked for our view.

He read to us from the book.  The book is laid out in an interesting way.  On each page the original Aramaic text is in the middle and the Jewish translation is to one side.  The various commentaries then unfold in a spiral around the page going down the right hand side, across the bottom right to left and then up the left side.  The text is small and dense, so there is a huge amount of traditional wisdom condensed into this volume.

The story is as follows. Four people enter the orchard.  They are told that in the orchard they will find the true marble.  They are warned that, when they see the marble, not to think of it as water.  The four each has a different experience.  The first, second and fourth are known historical figures, the first and second being lay seekers from distant history and the fourth being a famous rabbinic teacher.  The third is simply called “the other one”. The experiences of the four who enter the orchard are as follows.

The first peers into the marble and immediately dies.

The second glances at the marble and is wounded and goes mad.

The third sees the marble and cuts down all the trees.

The fourth sees the marble, is unharmed and goes forth into the world.

Vimala told us some of the traditional interpretations.  There is general agreement that entering the orchard refers to entering upon the spiritual path and that the marble represents the holy of holies, the shekinah, God. But what of the rest of the story?  Here opinions are diverse.  Some think that it tells us how meeting God can be dangerous.  Many are confused especially by the experience of the third person and by his lack of any specific designation.  Also, why is only one of the four a rabbi?  And so on.  A common assumption is that they represent good and bad ways of understanding, usually it being taken that the fourth is the best.

What did I think?

It came to me that all four represent valid ways of being on the spiritual path.  They are all good, but they are different styles.

There are those whose attention is transfixed by the Holy.  They are seized by Amida completely.  The ego dies.  They are completely intoxicated with this sacred vision; so much so that they are as if dead to the worldly world.  They are completely unified with the Love.

There are those who see the Holy and it “wounds” them.  This is like falling in love.  The lover longs for the Beloved.  To the observer, such a person is mad.  They do not care about worldly conventions. They only long to find the Beloved, to enter the sacred spirit.

There are those who encounter the Holy and are inspired toward purity.  Everything that is not the true marble is cut down.  This is the path of the Arhat, the purist.  They cannot bear that anything other than the Holy exist.  They seek passionately to renounce and eliminate all trace of impurity from their life.

There are those who encounter the holy and then go forth into the world to spread the Dharma.  This is the path of the bodhisattva.

Regarding the names, the first three are all lay followers and the last is one who takes on the religious life in a more formal way.  The first two and third are specifically named because those figures from history illustrate these ways of being.  The third is not specifically named because this is the common way of doing things - ordinary people associate spirituality with moral strictness.

Regarding not seeing water, perhaps this is not to see one’s own reflection (as one does in water), or anything that flows away, but to see the “true marble” which, like diamond in Buddhism, represents the enduring substance - that which is not impermanent. 

We then had a rich discussion of the different ways that one can play with these ideas as a means of understanding the spiritual path and the holy life.

Good food, good company, good discussion and remarkable weather - a fine breakfast.

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Talks from the Bodhi Retreat, December 2019

Here are the links to the audio and video recordings of talks from our recent Bodhi gathering in Malvern. The theme for the retreat was In Less Than a Day

1. Rev Master Dharmavidya: Post-Mappo and Innocence of Heart
   audio link – YouTube link
2. Acharya Susthama: Queen Vaidehi’s Vision of the Pureland
   audio link – YouTube link
3. Acharya Kaspalita: Outside Practice and Just as You Are
   audio link – YouTube link
4. Rev Master Dharmavidya: Regaining Innocence
   audio link – YouTube link

The Question of Exclusivism: Amidism is not monotheism ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

For some people, I notice, Amidism is close to being a monotheism. We come from a culture where monotheism has dominated for a couple of thousand years and wars have been fought over which is the correct monotheistic deity and even over fine points of how he is to be worshipped, so it is not unnatural that some people carry over some monotheistic attitudes. Furthermore, there are statements in Honen that can be taken as a basis for exclusivism. Among the Four Modes of practice that he includes in Ichimai Kishomon, for instance, is exclusive devotion to Amida Buddha, with the seeming implication that this excludes other Buddhas.

However, in the Smaller Pureland Sutra - Amida Kyo - which Honen revered as one of the Three Pureland Sutras, it is apparent that there are Buddhas in all directions and in the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra, which is not on Honen’s list of three, but which was the first Pureland sutra translated into Chinese and was long the foundation of Pureland practice in China, the samadhi consists in perceiving Buddhas everywhere. Furthermore, the Amida Kyo makes clear that what beings in the Pure Land actually spend their time doing is visiting the Pure Lands of other Buddhas and making offerings and worshipping them in ways appropriate to those Buddhas. This, therefore is a manifesto for respect between all Buddhist denominations and, by implication, between all true religions. In this latter sense, a religion would be true if its primary deity had the characteristics of a Buddha.

It is apparent, therefore, that in the Pure Land of Suklhavati, one of the main modes of revering Amitabha is actually the worship of other Buddhas in accordance with the styles appropriate to those Buddhas. Denizens gather the flowers that fall from the sky and take them as offerings.

Flowers falling from the sky, means, in Buddhist parlance, results emerging out of shunyata. The image derives from the assault of Mara upon the Buddha-to-be on the night of enlightenment when Mara’s hosts are turned into celestial flowers. The point is that the Dharma-farer does not live within the normal samsaric round. In normal mentality, “nothing comes of nothing”, as King Lear disastrously affirms. However, in the way of noble ones, everything comes of nothing, which is to say, is done for love.

Therefore, citizens of Sukhavati gather the fruits of love and offer them indiscriminately to innumerable Buddhas.

As soon as a person gives rise to “a single moment of true faith” (ichinen) they are naturally accepted as a citizen of Sukhavati. This will become their destiny after death, but it is also their identity here and now in this life, rather as if one might have got one’s passport to travel The activity of Pureland Buddhists here in this life is, therefore, naturally, to anticipate life in the Pure Land. Although this world is full of problems - social, political, ecological, and so on - Purelanders are natural bodhisattvas, “springing from the earth”, as it says in the Lotus Sutra, to assist Shakyamuni in his work of transforming this very world. We are not going to succeed in making this world perfect any day soon, but we have a direction.

Monotheism and exclusivism is dangerous, especially in the context of our Western culture where so much blood has been spilt and where, even today, powerful nations seek to impose their way of life upon others by force, which is as much as to say, “You will worship our god” even if it is only a coca-cola deity.

Amidism is a path for those who serve all sentient beings, not merely an exclusive segment. We are simply foolish beings, but, nonetheless, we can use our secondary faculties to do what good we can, and it is clear enough from this examination of the sutras that doing good essentially means performing intentional acts of gratuitous kindness. It means that we are not bound by precedent conditions, nor by a need for results, but proceed in faith. Our actions, embedded in faith, naturally speak the Dharma, no matter how foolishly we enact them.

It is clear from innumerable Mahayana sutras that the path to Buddhahood is the making of offerings to innumerable Buddhas. It is clear from the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra and the Amida Kyo that these Buddhas are to be found wherever one is and in all directions. There is nothing exclusive here in the sense of exclusivism that we are accustomed to in the West. Honen made his point about exclusion in order to simplify the practice, not in order to exclude beings from the beneficence of the Buddhas. First choose nembutsu, then everything becomes nembutsu, is the core of the message.

:: link to post on Eleusis

Post-Mappo Rediscover Innocence ~ Dharmavidya

The first Dharma talk of the 2019 Bodhi Retreat at Amida Mandala. Dharmavidya writes:

In my Dharma talk today I suggested that we are now in the fourth age of the Dharma. In the first age of the Dharma Buddha Shakyamuni was still in this world or had recently passed away and people became enlightened by direct encounter with him or with one of his great disciples. This was the age of direct inspiration.

In the second age of the Dharma, people were able to become enlightened and enter nirvana by means of self-power practices. It was not that these rituals had an intrinsic power, but they were what still connected practitioners with the original source. By doing what Buddha did, people received the transmission. This continued for eight hundred years or so.

By the third age of the Dharma, called Mappo, things had deteriorated. Although the self-power practices remained a shining example, there were few or no people capable of actually realising them. The times were degenerate. At this time there arose teachers who showed the path of faith as the only available possibility for deluded beings to reach the Buddha and receive the transmission, if not in this life, then in the next.

Now we are in the fourth age, the Post-Mappo. In this time of materialism it is not even possible for people to follow the path of faith with any ease. In fact, many people have become inoculated against faith by exposure to its degenerate forms. What can possibly avail us in these latter days? Life has become immensely complicated. People are under pressure from all sides to conform to the path of worldly success.

Those who still attempt self-power practices do so mostly for the sake of this-worldly benefit. We do not have Shakyamuni nor Shariputra, Kashyapa nor Ananda to show us the way. We are more sophisticated than the people of old, but this very sophistication blocks our way back to the source. What is needed now? What is needed now is a return to innocence.

Only by cutting through the interminable woes and worries of our age can we hope to find the light and this cutting through involves a great simplification and lightening. Lighten your life! Reclaim the innocent eye of the child without letting go of the knowledge gained by maturity. Learn once again to play and skip. Life has become too heavy.

We are all weighed down by possessions and responsibilities, deadlines and protocols, debt and work. Riding the Dharma, leap free. Break out of the prison. Embrace nature. Let the mind expand in wonderment. Talk to the stars and bathe in the light of the moon.

The innocent heart is unselfconscious. Through innocence one can find faith renewed. Through faith renewed one can find the real meaning of the practices. In these real forms one can meet the Tathagata. Meeting the Tathagata one can receive the transmission. It all unfords naturally.

We are in the fourth age, the Post-Mappo, and a return to the simplicity of innocence is now the only gate that is not locked.

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Paravritti (part 8 - final part): Faith and Courage ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

In both turning away and turning toward the element of faith is of crucial importance. Without it the turning does not complete because, panicking inside, we cling on to our old ways. In the case of turning away, one might arrive at the feeling of revulsion, yet still slip back into the bad habit. We might indulge obsessions and addictions until we feel sick and this might give us pause. However, one might then drift back. Think how many people have given up smoking for a short time, but soon taken it up again.

This happens because, however loathsome or foolish the habit, it still served some purpose in our life. It still fed the ego. We tend to dignify our bad habits by calling them “needs” and when we are without them we feel “needy”. To bear this feeling of lack requires faith. Buddhism is about faith in emptiness. The ego fights back and always wants to fill the emptiness, usually with something unwholesome.

Similarly, in the case of turning toward. One might have a generous impulse, but then, as from nowhere, a string of thoughts urging caution spring up. Soon one has talked oneself out of it, or, we might say, Mara has talked one out of it. By then, in any case, the moment has passed. Perhaps one now feels badly about oneself, but, however that may be, the fact is that the opportunity has been lost. To not give in to such cowardly thinking requires faith. Faith means knowing what Mara is up to yet acting anyway.

THE FAITH TO PLUNGE INTO LIFE

The life of faith is thus also one of much spontaneity, exuberance and enthusiasm. The kind of Buddhism we are talking about here is not one of cold detachment. It is not by ever greater self-control that one becomes liberated, but by releasing the energy of joy, compassion, and belief in what one is doing and living.

Where does such faith come from, one might ask? The bedrock of our faith is confidence that we - even beings such as we, prone, as we are, to such cowardice, addiction, obsession and destructiveness - are loved and cared for by the Buddhas. The light of their smile is always shining and even though we live in the tormenting realm of impermanence, there is a spirit that is not impermanent that runs like a silver thread through every dimension of existence. This spirit has the feeling of emptiness. It is beyond purity and impurity. It is the light that comes from the Tathagata who glances back.

In Buddhism, we call this refuge. We take refuge from the harm that might otherwise be done by our wayward mind; we find a shelter, a pure abode, where emptiness is experienced, not as terrifying, but as total liberation. Alone, we are inclined to panic, but when we have Buddha always in mind as our spiritual companion, we can turn back, confront Mara, and defeat him, since nothing prevents us. Finding inner silence and stillness, we become invisible to his armies, and this calm is then experienced, not as a loss, but as a lightness and ease - something to be happily grateful for.

Thus, when paravritti occurs, conforming to the precepts ceases to be an effort and becomes the only natural way to act. In fact, we no longer need precepts as our natural action will be what precepts attempt to point out. Self-power means exerting effort in order to conform oneself to the path, but in the condition of paravritti such effort is non-effort.

CONCLUSION
In this series I have tried to show how paravritti gives us a practical sense of spiritual awakening and the life that flows from the awakening of faith. We can be inspired by the examples of the Buddhas and ancestors. Each of them turned back from the seduction of conventional life and social posing and so were able to live authentic lives. They were each very distinct persons, aware of human limitation, yet free in spirit.

The idea of turning back can be applied in the many different ways in which we can experience natural freedom. I hope this exploration helps us to appreciate many different Buddhist teachings that all inspire us to make a crucial turn in our lives.

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Amida Buddha Welcomes All Refugees ~ Jeff Wilson

 

“Shinran Shonin” (detail), 2007. Painting by Yoji Nishi. Reproduced with permission: Jonen-ji Temple, Hokkaido, Japan.

:: Jeff Wilson explains how the Jodo Shinshu school of Pure Land Buddhism emerged from the refugee experiences of its two Japanese founders, Shinran and Rennyo.

“We live in the age of the refugee,” according to Chilean playwright and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman, and the daily onslaught of news seems to confirm his grim observation. From crises in Europe and Asia to walls along the Mexican border, refugee and migrant issues are among the central concerns of our time. These days I find myself reflecting on how they relate to my dharma teaching and practice as a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist. Perhaps this is especially so because my lineage emerged from the experiences of exile and suffering of our most important founders, Shinran and Rennyo.

Shinran, the thirteenth-century founder of the Jodo Shinshu (Shin) school of Buddhism, lived in an age of profound disruption, with civil wars, foreign invasions, plagues, and natural disasters. He was orphaned at the age of nine and forced to enter the monastery when his relatives could not provide for him.

Shinran practiced Buddhism for twenty years at the elite Tendai complex on Mt. Hiei before finally joining a new community focused on the Pure Land path. This radical movement preached buddhahood for all beings and pushed back at the strict hierarchical order of medieval Japan. Inevitably, followers of that movement were persecuted. Rivals trumped up charges and the community was outlawed. Some of its members were executed, while Shinran, his elderly teacher Honen, and several of his peers were stripped of their ordinations, branded as criminals, and forced into exile far from their homes in Kyoto. Shinran, for having sought a path that was open to all, found himself a refugee in the remote snow-bound province of Niigata.