A Perfect Tapestry
February 5, 2009 Periodically I receive an email or letter saying the writer has read or been told that the Buddha did not teach the Pure Land sutras and that they were written later by others.
If there were only a handful of sutras that mentioned the Pure Land or Amitabha Buddha, this might be viewed as a possibility. But in fact, there are references to Amitabha Buddha and/or the Pure Land, in about 200 sutras. These range from the eight-page Amitabha Sutra to Thomas Cleary’s 1643 page translation of the Flower Ornament Sutra.
These frequent Pure Land teachings are like threads in a sutra tapestry woven by Sakyamuni over his forty-nine years of teaching. Not only are the Pure Land teachings consistent with his other teaching threads, they are a crucial part of his teachings. Remove the sutras that refer to Amitabha and/or the Pure Land, and you begin to unravel the whole tapestry.
If you still have doubts about the validity of the Pure Land teachings, please ask yourself the following:
1. Believing in causality and understanding the teachings, how could any student of the Buddha write a sutra and claim it to be by the Buddha? This would be an outrageous breaking of the precept against lying and a betrayal of him. The effects of such an act would terrify anyone with a basic understanding of the teachings.
2. Conversely, not believing in causality and lacking understanding of the teachings, how could any student of the Buddha, or anyone else, have written so many perfect teachings? How could any person without understanding have woven so perfectly all the threads of the Pure Land teachings into the Buddha’s tapestry of teachings?
2. Accomplishing the unaccomplishable—ghostwriting a sutra. One simply does not sit down and write a sutra. How could anyone have managed to so flawlessly include the Pure Land teachings in so many sutras?
As Buddhists, each of has our chosen path to follow. For some, that path is the Theravada teachings. For others it is the Mahayana teachings with the different schools. Actually, we read in the sutras that the Buddha taught 84,000 methods! The number 84,000 is a symbolic number meaning the Buddha taught innumerable methods.
The Buddha taught so many methods because the beings he wanted to help had such a wide range of abilities and levels of understanding. But the Buddha wanted us to respect each other’s choice, not speak ill of what others have chosen or cause others to lose their confidence in the teachings. Every method taught by the Buddha leads eventually to enlightenment. And the Pure Land teachings, now said to be the most widely practiced Buddhist teachings in Asia, is one such path taught by Sakyamuni Buddha.
For centuries in countries such as China, Vietnam, Tibet, and Japan, wise and accomplished masters and laypeople have immersed themselves in Pure Land study and practice. In China, those with good fortune studied and practiced as many as sixteen hours a day, year after year. They studied and chanted the sutras. They chanted the name of Amitabha Buddha. And thus they were reborn in the Pure Land. The Pure Land accounts of such events have been scrupulously investigated before being reported. Accounts of such rebirths have continued to our times, including the one of Master Dixian’s student.
The reality is that what is suitable for one person may not be suitable for another. And what one can believe, another cannot. At the end of the Amitabha Sutra, Sakyamuni Buddha himself said that this sutra was very hard for people to believe.
Personally, I trust that ancient and modern patriarchs and masters who came from various schools including the Pure Land, Zen, and Tibetan schools, knew what they were practicing. But I do not expect everyone to share my views or level of trust. But I would hope that others would respect my views and chosen method of practice just as I respect theirs.
In my lifetime, I have been unbelievably fortunate to have my good roots, which extend over many lifetimes, and conditions bring about my encounter with Pure Land Buddhism and Amitabha Buddha. When I am chanting, I experience what for me is a sense of correctness and joy that I find at no other time in my life. There is an unshakeable sense of confidence that when I am chanting, I am doing the most important thing in my life. In those moments, I am doing what I am meant to do.
For me, my Pure Land practice is perfect. It teaches me to live morally, to serve others and put their best interests ahead of my personal interests, to not harm any living being, and to seek rebirth so that I may return to help all the beings I have vowed to help over my uncountable lifetimes. For me, as for many, this is a perfect teaching.
Do I expect others to practice Pure Land as I do?
No.
Do I hope everyone will respect others’ decision as to what to practice?
Yes.
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