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?”

Seeing people in trouble,

we should not ignore them,

thinking it’s their karma, their own doing. 

Throughout our innumerable lifetimes, not knowing about or not truly understanding cause and effect, we have thought and acted without considering what could happen afterwards. We were ignorant then. And we still are.

We were, and remain, like children, acting impulsively without any thought of consequences. Just as we empathize with the child who hurts herself falling out of a tree, we feel compassion for people who bring suffering upon themselves through their own actions. They were ignorant. Just like us.

To understand that suffering is brought about by one’s actions allows us to improve our behavior. It also helps us to deepen our compassion through the giving of fearlessness and of what we have. To dismiss suffering as the person’s own fault is to be judgmental, not compassionate. No matter how powerful or old the other person is, they are actually children when it comes to realizing the pervasiveness of causality.

Just like us.