If Amitabha Buddha were to appear before you 

and say he was here 

to escort you to the Pure Land right now, 

what would your very first thought be? 

When I first started practicing Pure Land Buddhism in Dallas, Texas, I was sitting in the dining hall one Sunday afternoon with several other people. A long-time practitioner looked at us and asked the above question. We all started to think.

And therein lay the problem.

In our thinking, we had hesitated.

Clearly, and sadly, we weren’t ready. If we were, our first reaction would have been an instantaneous “Yes!” No other thought should have arisen other than the thought to go immediately.

What if it isn’t the right time? But it is. Knowing that the time is right, Amitabha Buddha will come for us.

So I ask Pure Land practitioners reading this, “If Amitabha Buddha were to appear before you and say he was here to escort you to the Pure Land right now, what would your very first thought be?”

“Why is the Pure Land divided into four lands?” 

One day, a student asked the Buddha what his land was like. The Buddha touched the ground, and the student instantly saw the Buddha’s pure land, a land so very different from what the student had seen just moments ago.

Most reasonable, since the Buddha observed everything with an enlightened mind, and the student with a deluded one. And so, due to their respective states of mind, they perceived the world in different ways.

Frankly, in our world, we too all live in “different lands.” Ignorant people might live in a land that could be called “Ceaseless Craving” or “Recurring Anger.” But one who is awakening could be living in a land that might be called “Gracious Compassion.”

In the Western Pure Land, beings are also in different lands. As their meditative concentration advances, ignorance gradually drops away, awakening increases, and, in time, they advance from the Land Where Sages and Ordinary Beings Dwell Together all the way to the Land of Eternally Quiescent Light. 

With every breath we take . . . (Click image for video)

Adorn yourself not with the gems of this world . . . (Click image for video)