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General Buddhism => General Buddhism => Topic started by: Damian.D on May 15, 2011, 06:57:08 PM
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I have a question.
I have been told that when a practitioner becomes attained they can ascend to a pureland such as tushita, or kecara where they spend their days and nights hearing the buddhas expound the Dharma and everything is great.
1. Wouldn't you be a Buddha, and not require any more teaching?
2. If you were a Buddha, wouldn't you stay in Samsara for the sake of all sentient beings?
3. If you did make to such places, what karma would create the cause for you to return? And if so, how does karma still exist in these paradises as you need to be free of your karma to ascend there?
4. Is there such thing as a Buddha who still has some karma left to ripen in such pure lands?
Some weird thoughts early in the morning.
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I have a question.
I have been told that when a practitioner becomes attained they can ascend to a pureland such as tushita, or kecara where they spend their days and nights hearing the buddhas expound the Dharma and everything is great.
1. Wouldn't you be a Buddha, and not require any more teaching?
2. If you were a Buddha, wouldn't you stay in Samsara for the sake of all sentient beings?
3. If you did make to such places, what karma would create the cause for you to return? And if so, how does karma still exist in these paradises as you need to be free of your karma to ascend there?
4. Is there such thing as a Buddha who still has some karma left to ripen in such pure lands?
Some weird thoughts early in the morning.
1. You do not need to be a Buddha to ascend to a Buddha field.
2. If you were a Buddha you can have thousands upon tens of thousands of emanations. So you can be in hundreds of places at the same time.
3. Once you ascend to a pure land, you can by will take rebirth in samsara to benefit others as and when you like according to your attainments. Karma still exists, but not the same as in a desire realm because you would be in a pure realm and you do not necessarily be a Buddha since you are there.
Your practice in a pure land would be accelerated.
4. There is no Buddha that has karma left to ripen. A Buddha is fully awakened and all karmas finished.
I hope this helps.
TK
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What a great sharing!
Thanks Damian for asking the question and TK for answering.
I know some of these questions may seem rather basic and elementary to the higher practitioners, but I have always appreciated them. It helps put into perspective why each of us are pursuing a Dharma path in the first place.
To become a Buddha and to reach Pure Lands are two different things - thanks for the clear explanation, TK.
Hence, to become a Buddha is the ultimate goal because as a Buddha, we can do so much more and be at many places at the same time.
Personally, I like the idea that all karma is finished.
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I have been told that when a practitioner becomes attained they can ascend to a pureland such as tushita, or kecara where they spend their days and nights hearing the buddhas expound the Dharma and everything is great.
I find this exercise revealing:
A.
I can identify 2 main qualities of a pure land:
- Buddhas are teaching all the time
- All conducive conditions are there for my Dharma practice
B.
Do I find these 2 qualities now, right where I am?
C.
If answer is no, then perhaps it is best to create causes for me to experience a pure land.
How? By engaging in the activities I would do in a pure land. That's just logical.
D.
If answer is yes, then it is likely that I have made prayers in the past so as to experience what I experience here and now.
(Aren't Buddhas teaching all the time? They are only a you-tube click away!)
Thus two questions (that are actually the same):
1.
Is it possible that I am in a pure land already, but I can't see it because I thought that in a pure land I would not sweat anymore, nor go to toilet, nor feel hungry now and then, nor catch a cold in winter, nor have to brush my teeth, nor be in a traffic jam, nor get a parking fine, nor need a mobile phone, nor have to pay credit card bills and rentals, or because I don't see people floating on pink lotus flowers and daikinis in the sky, and colorful flowers blooming under the steps of lamas, because the floor is not yet soft lapis lazuli with gold inlay vajras...
2.
Is it possible that a pure land is not a place, but a state of mind created through merits?
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Appreciates the questions and answers very much.
is Buddha field and Pure Land the same?
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Pure Land is a state where there is no true suffering.
Buddhas have attained the state free from sufferings. From this definition, I would think Buddha field is similar to Pure Land.
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Pure Lands feature only in Mahayana Buddhism. I take it to mean that a Mahayana Buddhist, in keeping with their aspirations, would wish to be born in a lotus in a Pure Land, attain Enlightenment and return to Samsara to benefit other beings
With Bodhicitta motivation and aspirations, one would wish to be born in a pure land without the strong distractions of the desire realms of samsara. One can then engage in listening to the Dharma and practicing the Dharma with a pure mind and single-minded focus.
But the Pure Land must not be seen as an eternal place where one resides in a state of perpetual bliss, not heeding nor caring for the mother sentient beings in their misery and suffering in samsara. One has made vows, as Mahayana Buddhists, to return to samsara to benefit all mother beings and one has to honor one’s vows.
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Appreciates the questions and answers very much.
is Buddha field and Pure Land the same?
I don't know.
My take on this would be that a Buddha field is synonymous to either a merit field or a pure land.
Or is Buddha field something else?
PURE LAND
The pure land results from my actions, it is a karmic result.
Buddhas lead others to it by making them create the karmic causes to experience pure lands.
MERIT FIELD
The merit field is not, though the access I have to it results from my actions.
By the power of the actions I engage into from the merit field's ground, I boost my journey to a Buddha's Pure Land.
BUDDHA FIELD
?
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I agree with Kurava that Pure Land is similar to Buddha Field.
The Field of Merit is the ‘field’ of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and Enlightened Beings whom we have invited/invoked (in prayer) to come before us from their divine abodes. It is based on this merit field (that we have invoked) that we accumulate our merits and perform our purification of our negativities. According to the Lamrim, our Spiritual Guide (when we see him as a Buddha) is a supreme field of merit.
As the Lamrim says, we need to continually accumulate tremendous amounts of merits and perform tremendous amounts of purification (based on the merit field we have invoked) in order to clear our mind’s obscurations. Only then can we aspire to attain any realization.
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I have a question.
I have been told that when a practitioner becomes attained they can ascend to a pureland such as tushita, or kecara where they spend their days and nights hearing the buddhas expound the Dharma and everything is great.
1. Wouldn't you be a Buddha, and not require any more teaching?
2. If you were a Buddha, wouldn't you stay in Samsara for the sake of all sentient beings?
3. If you did make to such places, what karma would create the cause for you to return? And if so, how does karma still exist in these paradises as you need to be free of your karma to ascend there?
4. Is there such thing as a Buddha who still has some karma left to ripen in such pure lands?
Some weird thoughts early in the morning.
1. You do not need to be a Buddha to ascend to a Buddha field.
2. If you were a Buddha you can have thousands upon tens of thousands of emanations. So you can be in hundreds of places at the same time.
3. Once you ascend to a pure land, you can by will take rebirth in samsara to benefit others as and when you like according to your attainments. Karma still exists, but not the same as in a desire realm because you would be in a pure realm and you do not necessarily be a Buddha since you are there.
Your practice in a pure land would be accelerated.
4. There is no Buddha that has karma left to ripen. A Buddha is fully awakened and all karmas finished.
I hope this helps.
TK
This helps clarify things.
In my early buddhist days, I was confused by the difference between buddhas, arahats, bodhisattvas etc and when I first came across vajrayana buddhism and the concept of pure lands, that only added to the confusion. So thank you TK et al for your clear and concise answer. I only wish I had stumbled across this forum earlier, it would have helped so much during the buddhist self study courses. This is a great resource. Thank you to all who participate.
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I have a question.
I have been told that when a practitioner becomes attained they can ascend to a pureland such as tushita, or kecara where they spend their days and nights hearing the buddhas expound the Dharma and everything is great.
1. Wouldn't you be a Buddha, and not require any more teaching?
2. If you were a Buddha, wouldn't you stay in Samsara for the sake of all sentient beings?
3. If you did make to such places, what karma would create the cause for you to return? And if so, how does karma still exist in these paradises as you need to be free of your karma to ascend there?
4. Is there such thing as a Buddha who still has some karma left to ripen in such pure lands?
Some weird thoughts early in the morning.
1. You do not need to be a Buddha to ascend to a Buddha field.
2. If you were a Buddha you can have thousands upon tens of thousands of emanations. So you can be in hundreds of places at the same time.
3. Once you ascend to a pure land, you can by will take rebirth in samsara to benefit others as and when you like according to your attainments. Karma still exists, but not the same as in a desire realm because you would be in a pure realm and you do not necessarily be a Buddha since you are there.
Your practice in a pure land would be accelerated.
4. There is no Buddha that has karma left to ripen. A Buddha is fully awakened and all karmas finished.
I hope this helps.
TK
These clear answers help a lot... Thank you TK, I think the main part i was confused about was the existence of Karma in pure lands.
So it is still possible to have karma in a pure land, and would having karma in purelands it be magnified as the opposite to the accelerated results of practice in a pure land?
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I have a question.
I have been told that when a practitioner becomes attained they can ascend to a pureland such as tushita, or kecara where they spend their days and nights hearing the buddhas expound the Dharma and everything is great.
1. Wouldn't you be a Buddha, and not require any more teaching?
2. If you were a Buddha, wouldn't you stay in Samsara for the sake of all sentient beings?
3. If you did make to such places, what karma would create the cause for you to return? And if so, how does karma still exist in these paradises as you need to be free of your karma to ascend there?
4. Is there such thing as a Buddha who still has some karma left to ripen in such pure lands?
Some weird thoughts early in the morning.
1. You do not need to be a Buddha to ascend to a Buddha field.
2. If you were a Buddha you can have thousands upon tens of thousands of emanations. So you can be in hundreds of places at the same time.
3. Once you ascend to a pure land, you can by will take rebirth in samsara to benefit others as and when you like according to your attainments. Karma still exists, but not the same as in a desire realm because you would be in a pure realm and you do not necessarily be a Buddha since you are there.
Your practice in a pure land would be accelerated.
4. There is no Buddha that has karma left to ripen. A Buddha is fully awakened and all karmas finished.
I hope this helps.
TK
Wow! Thank Tk for this amazingly clear explanation. That means, when we enter a pure land/pure realm/buddha field, we are almost assured to become a Buddha because it accelerates our practice. Hence, we can emanate throughout the universe on the basis of our compassion that we generate there. No wonder, in Mahayana, the recommend practices / powas etc to attain such pure lands.
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1. You do not need to be a Buddha to ascend to a Buddha field.
2. If you were a Buddha you can have thousands upon tens of thousands of emanations. So you can be in hundreds of places at the same time.
3. Once you ascend to a pure land, you can by will take rebirth in samsara to benefit others as and when you like according to your attainments. Karma still exists, but not the same as in a desire realm because you would be in a pure realm and you do not necessarily be a Buddha since you are there.
Your practice in a pure land would be accelerated.
4. There is no Buddha that has karma left to ripen. A Buddha is fully awakened and all karmas finished.
I hope this helps.
TK
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Thank you TK for the clear explanation. It sheds some light for me now on why Chinese Mahayana practice is always towards achieving the direction of going to pureland.
In past I have been told that in this degenerate day and age, it is more realistic to work towards ascending pureland as once we are there, we will have all the favourable conditions for our Dharma practice as opposed to conditions in samsara. As we are in pureland, we will not experience the sufferings we experience in samsara such as birth, aging, old age and death and other samsaric sufferings that comes with taking rebirth in samsara. We will receive teaching directly from the Buddhas of that pureland and we will have sangha with high attainments to support us in our practice. What you said in your answer in No 2 that our practice in pureland will be accelerated tallies with what I have heard earlier.
I have always wondered if we can go to pureland if we have not achieve enlightenment. Your answer in No 1 above answers my question that we need not become a Buddha to ascend Buddha field.
This also ties in with the Guru Yoga of Lama Tsongkapa where if we remember the thread of cloud that connect our consciousness to Maitreya Buddha in Tushita pureland at the time of death, we can be reborn in Tushita pureland.
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Thank you all. This is a refreshing post...
This forum is really so helpful. There is a huge fountain of information, knowledge and so much sharing and discussion for everyone to learn.
So...in view of the answer that we need not be a Buddha to be in a pure land and continue our practice, hence we still have karma. We are still not entirely out of our deluded mind. So does this mean we can still commit negative actions in a pure land and if so what happens? Similar to what DD is asking, being in a pure realm accelerates our practice, then it should also magnify our negative actions ...and what will happen then, will we be thrown out from the pure land back to samsara? Take a lower rebirth? Or is it quicker and easier to purify one's negative karma in the pure land?
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Pure land is definitely a place that we all aspire to go after this life.............
How do we ensure a ticket to this pureland while we are in samsara?
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Pure land is definitely a place that we all aspire to go after this life.............
How do we ensure a ticket to this pureland while we are in samsara?
My thoughts on this:
Simple, create the merit for it.
How?
If you have a Guru, look no further and follow ALL your guru's instructions with faith and following the "9 attitudes". This is the most powerful practice.
If you don't have a Guru, make aspirational prayers to find a Guru, to recognize your guru, and to have unshakable faith in your Guru and abide by the "9 attitudes".
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Sometimes when we get too mentally wary of samsara and we just cannot recover or pick ourselves up from the sufferings of Samsara, the pure land is a place to help us recuperate. It is like a hospital of sorts in a spiritual sense. If I am not mistaken, this is what the Buddha implied, when he taught the Amithaba sutra to King Bimbisara who was tortured by Ajatashu till he was almost dead, and had gone through much physical suffering and even more mental suffering to have been killed by the son he loved so much.
But having said that, many Buddhists seem to have the impression that pure lands are like a Buddhist spiritual resort where there will be no suffering and everyone will be happy there for a long time and they pray to be reborn there as a respite from their sufferings in samsara….based on the example that the Buddha has given in the Amithaba sutra. Somehow they think it is like the Buddhist version of Bali or something.
In reality, pure lands allow a practitioner to prepare themselves for the next incarnation on benefitting others, or repairing damaging faults, or emotional scars that remain in the mind that they could not repair in time when they are alive. Repairing them in a pure land helps prevent the same problems from reoccurring again in their next incarnation. Most masters will stop by a pure land before taking on the next incarnation…as in the case of Chongyam Trungpa.
Going to a pure land just because we want to run away from samsara the wrong way is the wrong reason to go there and with this motivation in mind, it is pretty logical that we will never reach the pure lands. If there is a reason to go there, it is to find ways to train more intensely to benefit all beings.
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To answer Hope Rainbow's question, terms like "pure land", "paradise", "heaven" and "Buddhafield" are synonymous. "Merit field" can be defined as "the object of one's offering, devotion, etc., through which one can accumulate merit and wisdom. The term usually refers to refuge deities, one's guru in the guru yoga etc.
Pure lands are really fascinating. There are millions of them. Some books give their approximate locations, for example in the Amitabha Sutra, the Buddha said that the pure land of "Ultimate Bliss" (Sukhavati) is more than a hundred thousand million Buddha lands to the west of the saha world.
From my reading, I discovered that there are also different types of pure lands: the distinctive pure lands of the Mahayana School (eg. Sukhavati), the pure land of the Three Vehicles, the pure land of the Five Vehicles (eg. Tushita Pure Land) and the pure land on Earth.
The last heaven is really interesting because it is what we can aspire to immediately. It is said in the Vimalakirti Sutra, that although Vimalakirti lived in the saha world, his state of mind was that of the Pure Land. Both heaven and hell are in one's mind. As we are still in samsara at this moment, the way we can be close to the Buddha is to work to transform the saha world into a pure land on Earth. Once Sariputra asked the Buddha, "The Buddha lands of the ten directions are all very pure. Why is our saha world so corrupt and filthy?" The Buddha replied, " You cannot comprehend the world in which I live." With this, the Buddha pressed the earth with his toe. Immediately, the world became brilliant, pure and magnificent. The Buddha then continued, "This is the world in which I live."
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It is the wish of many Buddhist practitioners to ascend a pureland of a Buddha. There are many advantages of going to the pureland as clearly shared by many of you above. To attain any pureland, we must generate the right causes for it. Attaining a pureland is a means to gain Buddhahood. It is one of the most skilful ways because when we attain a pureland, we are completely out of the bounds of samsara though we still have karma to be purified. It is impossible for our spiritual practice to degenerate in a pureland. Due to the excellent and favourable conditions in a pureland, our attainment of enlightenment is accelerated. We will be under the guidance and care of the Buddha of that pureland we have taken rebirth in. It is like a guaranteed passport to Enlightenment once we attain a pureland.
Hence in degenerate times where spiritual practice is difficult, many Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Masters advocate the practice of reciting Buddha Amitabha’s name. In the Pure Land School, one aspires to be reborn in the Pure Land of Bliss or the Western Pure Land of Buddha Amitabha. There are 9 grades of rebirths in Pure of Land of Bliss. And the lowest of all is to be reborn in a lotus which has not yet blossomed. The highest grade is the level where the practitioner is considered a highly developed bodhisattva on the verge of becoming a Buddha e.g. the tenth ground bodhisattva.
The above is an example of a pureland. And there are countless purelands in existence.
When one’s mind is completely pure and free from any obscuration of karmic imprints, one attains a pureland of our own. It is when we accomplish Buddhahood, we attain our own pureland.