Manifesting the Land of Bliss

Welcome everybody, nice to see you. We're a small group in person, but it's the summertime and I know a few people are away at Buddhafield Festival and other places. Um, hello if you're watching on YouTube later, do leave us a hello in the comments so we know who you are. That would be lovely. So I set the title for this talk a long time ago. And when it came to thinking about what to say, I wasn't really sure what I'd intended when I created the title Manifesting the Land of Bliss. But it occurred to me it was clearly something about creating pure lands, and it occurred to me, well, I remembered the seventh vow in the Larger Pure Land Sutra. So Dharmakara Bodhisattva makes all these vows: I will only become a Buddha if I complete X, Y, and Z. And then Dharmakāra becomes Amida. So all of these things have been— all of these vows have been completed in order to create Amida's pure land. And the seventh vow is: if when I attain Buddhahood there should be in my land, in my pure land, a hell, a realm of hungry ghosts, or a realm of animals, may I not attain perfect enlightenment. So what we hear is, in Amida's Pure Land, there's no hells, there's no realms of hungry ghosts, there's no animal realm. This refers to the lower three realms of samsara on the wheel of life, supposedly negative places to be reborn. Although I, I know some, uh, animals that I wouldn't mind getting reborn as. Sometimes they're thought of as real places out there in the universe. There is really a place with cauldrons full of boiling oil that you can get— demons surrounding you that you can get dunked in and poked with sharp sticks. And there is really a place where the hungry ghosts have small mouths and insatiable appetites and where all the animals are— well, I guess the animals maybe are in this realm, but are full of lust and greed and, um, completely mindless. They don't have any mindfulness in the way that's possible for humans according to tradition. And also you can take them, as we know, as reflections of states of mind that we fall into— anger, greed, that kind of thing, hatefulness. So when Amida is saying In my pure land, there's no— when Dharmakara and Amida are saying, in my pure land, there's no hell realms, there's no hungry ghosts, there's no animals. We can look at it both from a kind of inside and outside point of view. When I'm in Amida's pure land, I won't fall into those states of mind. I won't fall into greed, hate, delusion, mindlessness, lustfulness. But we can also take it as I'm surrounded by a world in which there is no suffering. And both of those things are important. So if you want to manifest pure lands like Dharmakara did, um, maybe we start to get interested in, well, how can we build a place inside and outside that doesn't have any suffering, that doesn't have any hell realms in it? And we know there's hell realms in this world, and presumably if you're like me, in your own experience as well, there are hell realms. So what can we do? How can we manifest a land of bliss, a place with no hell realms inside or outside? Well, we were also given the 18th vow, right? The gift of Nembutsu. If we recite the name of Amitabha Buddha with faith, we'll be welcomed into the Pure Land. There's two ways of looking at this, you know. You can see it as something in a future lifetime that I'm going to be reborn into a place where there's no suffering. But you can also see it as something that happens in the moment that you say Nembutsu. Uh, one of our Jodo Shinshu friends Enrique is fond of saying some— I can't remember exactly how he puts it— like, uh, it collapses into the present moment. All of those things that, that happen across lifetimes can happen in the present moment. You say the Nembutsu and the Pure Land appears. Pretty simple. End of talk. Thanks for coming. When we say the Nembutsu, we're gifted Amida's presence, and my experience is that can spill into the world. It's not always the same experience. Sometimes it's like little bubbles just inside. Maybe it doesn't quite make it out into the world, but something about my experience changes. And sometimes it's like a big fountain, and the wisdom and compassion flows out, and it's very easy to manifest a pure land in this just little, very local area around me. So it's— we can see there's this kind of mystical element to it. It's something like a grace, this idea of manifesting a pure land is not something we work out. Oh, the pure land's supposed to have jewels, trees in, so let me go down to the jewelers and get some opals and topaz and make some trees. Or even, the pure land is not supposed to have any suffering, so let's work out a plan for eliminating suffering. Although I think there is some value in that, which we'll come to later. But I really want to begin it from this place of When we receive the gift of awakening from Amida, the Pure Land begins to appear, like when Taishichi walks and lotus flowers appear at his feet. This week I went, um, back to a book that I really like by Reverend Koshin— I think is, uh, Schomburg. His name is Reverend Koshin Schomburg. He was a disciple of Jūkenitsu, a Zen priest. And she had a time of illness, um, where she experienced a lot of visions that she kind of, she used her meditation to approach and was really taken on a healing journey spiritually while she was in this place of physical illness. And she wrote a little book about it. And her disciple, Reverend Koshin Schomburg, wrote a big book, which is a commentary on that little one. Very confusingly, both books have the name, the same name, um, which I've forgotten, something to do with the lotus blossom. But he speaks about the spiritual path as moving through, and this is the Zen context, right? The five kenshos. This is what Jiyu Ken used to teach. And he has this analogy of You start— it's a pretty common Buddhist analogy, right? You're starting on this shore, you want to get to the other shore. First of all, you need to notice a guiding star, or you need to have some sense of the other shore. So there's something that happens, somehow you become aware it's not just my selfish nature that's present, there's something else going on in the universe, there is a guide somewhere. And you step into the water, or you get on your boat and go into the water. You move towards the other shore, and sometimes it's, uh, it's very stormy, and sometimes the waters are calm. And when the waters are stormy, you know, in the Zen training, that's when you really need the precepts. But you come to calm water again.. And towards the end of this journey, one of the things that he describes happening is the kind of vision that Jill Kennett was having when she was very ill. And he says, it's not always something you see in your mind's eye. Sometimes it's a kind of knowing that appears, or an unraveling of something, or a healing of some wound that arrives. And the feeling isn't that you kind of I've worked out what the answer to this puzzle is. I've worked out how to end my suffering or the suffering around me. But this gift sort of appears, oh, this is the next thing that I should be doing. This is the way to unravel this knot. And, um, I think there's something very true about that in my experience, particularly when we were running the temple and living in the temple, many times I would go and sit in front of the shrine and say, like, look, Buddha, I don't know how to handle this situation, or I do know how to handle the situation, I'm not brave enough. And I just say the Nembutsu, and sometimes it would unravel in that moment, but often a little bit later there would be some shift in the community or in my internal system, and I'd be like, okay, 'Now I can make this response. Now I can say.' You know, the classic example is when someone couldn't manage to put the bins out for bin day, and I just needed to give the feedback, 'We need to take this job off you.' It's not really a hell realm, right? But we were getting sacks of rubbish stacking up outside the temple. And through the practice of saying the Nembutsu, something in me shifted enough that I was able to approach this person and say, come on, let's sit down. How are we going to handle this? Um, and we did handle it. So there's a kind of magic. I think there's a kind of magic in the Nembutsu, and this is reflected in the larger Pure Land Sutra. When, um, before Dharmakara becomes Amida, he has these many lifetimes where he's toiling, perfecting, um, perfecting all the different virtues. And it says, whenever he was born, an immeasurable store of treasure spontaneously appeared as he wished. And to me, that speaks to when you live a life that is guided by faith in the Buddhas, things sort of line up. You know, when you really live by your vow, when you live by the bodhisattva vow, somehow the treasure that you need to fulfill the work appears. So you're gifted the tools that you need. Um, it sounds a bit strange, and it's not really sort of in, in, in the— in Buddhism it's not talked about much, but it is my experience over and over again that the more I entrust myself to the Buddha and the more my intention is to help all beings as much as possible want, the more the things that I need to do that appear in front of me. I did wonder when I was thinking about this if there's some relationship between how much faith I have, or how, uh, how big my shinjin is, my entrusting, and how powerful this magic is, the magic of things changing inside me or things appearing around me. And there seems to be some correlation between it, like the more I'm consumed by greed, hate, and delusion, the more I'm in my kind of compulsive habits, um, the less I'm able to spot the different possibilities for taking action. The more upset I am with somebody, the less I can see the thing that will actually help in the situation, the more likely I am to make the situation work. So I think, you know, there's some relationship between how full of faith I'm feeling, or how full of fear or greed or hate and delusion I'm feeling, and how much this magic of nimbutsu works. But I also know that regardless of how I'm feeling, if I call— regardless of the depth of greed, hate, or delusion that I'm in, if I call on the Buddha, if I remember the Buddha, something changes. So it's also not entirely dependent on my state of mind, um, because there is something that can completely cut through that. You know, if you look at teachers in medieval Japan, Honin was very clear, uh, that the Nembutsu includes the three minds, that, that, like, uh, and talks about this, this idea that you, you say the Nembutsu with the right intention, with the intention of being born in the Pure Land. And Shinran really emphasized this, like, uh, the intention as well, even that the intention is a gift. But it is that longing more than the speaking almost in Shinran's teaching. And then you have some teachers who say it's in the words themselves, that it is like a magic spell. So I think it's Ippon who's giving out his, his Nembutsu tickets, and someone says, well, I don't believe this is going to work. Shall I take one anyway? Like, would it still work if I don't believe it? And Ippon doesn't know the answer, but he's like, In the moment, he says, yes, take— say the Nembutsu, take a ticket. I always imagine these like little raffle tickets. Take your ticket to the Pure Land. And from that moment on, his sense was, oh, actually it doesn't depend on the attitude of the practitioner because the Buddha is present. Speaking the words conjures the Buddha. And I think there's something in that as well. Okay, the other day I was doing a therapy session sitting here with my client on Zoom, and we were doing a really tender piece of work. And outside somewhere, somebody was using a petrol strimmer, and it was really noisy. And then, uh, I don't know if there's a new family that's moved in somewhere, but occasionally there's a dog that howls, "Oh!" And then the two other dogs that live nearby join in and start yapping. And it's hot, right? We were in the middle of one of the heat waves that we've had, so I I wanted to have my windows open. It was, um, and I'm noticing the kind of the tension with this noise building up in my body. And I really want to be present for my client. And I know that my attention has been taken away because I'm starting to get annoyed by these noises. And, um, I can almost hear my dad's voice, you know, getting, uh, telling off the owners of the dogs and complaining in the way that he used to when I was little. And it, like, it's not a big hell realm, right? There's much worse things in the, the world. I wouldn't even give it that label, apart from, um, I was thinking about it when I was preparing for this talk. And as I spotted the resentment building, I started to say the Nembutsu, and I had this moment of seeing the, the noise just for a moment as like, oh, well, this is just the movement of the universe in this moment. It's like the world is dancing and this is the noise it's making, and it's un— like, I can experience that as unpleasant, but maybe I don't have to. And it just softened a little bit, and I was able to stay with my client who was really going through quite a deep process, and their process in some ways was quite— it was tender, but it was also, uh, there was some tightness in it. And after a moment, uh, they experienced some quiet in their own process, and they said, oh, I feel quiet. And the strimmer outside stopped when they said the word quiet. The strimmer outside stopped, and the dogs stopped barking. I was like, oh, okay, there you go. So there was still, like, I wasn't completely— I was still a bit annoyed with the person using the streamer, and I was still a bit annoyed with the dogs because it wasn't the most pleasant of sounds, but there was a softening, and, and it did change me. So we can do that softening on the inside, but it's also true, right, that some conditions outside are more favorable than others. Like, you know, maybe that, maybe that noise was involved in the process somehow, but some part of me wanted it to be quiet and, and believed in the moment that it would have been more favorable conditions if it was quiet. And it's certainly true that in the world, uh, some things create more suffering and some things create less suffering. So, so I want to think about a little bit about how we engage in the world beyond just holding the magic of Nembutsu, which is really important to hold. I always think of, um, Yun Man's— everybody will know this story that's listened to me speak about this kind of thing before— when a monk asks the, uh, the Chinese Buddhist master Yun Man, what are the teachings of a whole lifetime? And Yun Man replies, an appropriate response. And I love that because it's sort of— it doesn't say, here's the list, this is how you go out and be a good Buddhist in the world. It says, what are the conditions in front of you? How can you respond compassionately to these conditions? And those conditions are going to be different through your lifetime. You're going to be different through different places in the world. So what's an appropriate response? Which is great, but sometimes we do need a little bit more help. Than that, right? To know what an appropriate response is. From a Buddhist point of view, we can look to the suttas, to the Vinaya. In some ways, you know, the Vinayas describe, uh, the creation of a Pure Land on Earth, but it's a monastic Pure Land 2,500 years ago. So there's, there's maybe some good stuff there, but a lot of it isn't relevant to, you know, running a temple in Malvern in the 21st century, or Still, it can be good. There can be some clues in there. And we might think of the advice that the Buddha gave to the Vijayans, who were a— they were a collection of nation states, and some of the leaders from some of those states came to the Buddha for advice, for political advice really, even though he was a spiritual leader. Though I guess he was the son of a political leader. And he gave them these rules to follow, or he didn't even give them rules to follow. He said, if you do this, your countries will flourish. If you don't do it, they'll tend to fade away. Hold frequent assemblies, meet frequently, like listen to people, listen to each other, meet in harmony and disperse in harmony and stay in harmony as much as possible. Which, you know, it's the Buddha, so I don't think he's talking about spiritual bypassing, but really trying to create as much harmony as possible in your communities. Um, hold on to established traditions, don't add anything new into the mix until you've really thought about it. Honor and respect your elders, don't forcibly abduct women and girls. Great advice, whatever the century. Um, respect the shrines, the nature shrines, the local shrines, the local gods and goddesses, and take care of ones who have defeated the passions, which may be just referred to Buddhist monks but may be referred to all kinds of spiritual ascetics. And not all of those are like, are maybe useful advice, but it gives us something to think about. And when I think of the way that we set the temple, up. Hopefully some of that spirit is in what we've created. Respecting the religious tradition, you know, respecting local shrines is like respecting the religious traditions of the communities around you. Um, listen to each other, listen to people particularly who've got lots of experience. That's all pretty good advice. So we can think of you know, we can go out and see how other people have created pure lands or the advice other people have given and think, would that apply to this situation? And when Satya and I set the temple up, we read a lot about other spiritual communities and how they'd gone wrong. And I'd lived in other spiritual communities, and of course we tried not to make those mistakes, and I'm sure we made different mistakes. And maybe we'll write a book and somebody else will avoid those mistakes and make their own. And you know, this is how learning happens, right? I was also thinking about the Pure Land Sutra. You know, there's lots of, not just advice, but there's lots of other clues in the Buddhist texts. Obviously there's the list of values like the parameters and so on, but the Pure Land, like, what does— if we want to make a pure land, the Pure Land Sutra is the place to look. And what does it tell us about itself? It tells us it's a place where it's easy to become enlightened. So we want to create conditions where it's easy for people to become enlightened. And like, obviously a Buddhist temple, that is the purpose of it, but that's not the only shape a Pure Land on Earth can take. Um, any form of community that creates space for compassion to grow, for clear seeing to grow, you can think of as a Pure Land. And what are the conditions that enable those things? Um, That's an important question to ask when you're entering into any project. Am I setting this up in a way that's going to lead to more discord, or to creating, uh, allowing for more compassion and understanding to flow? And there's a couple of, there's a couple of things in the larger Pure Land Sutra specifically that I wanted to highlight. One, I think, um, is something Jeff Wilson highlights, which is the different colored lotuses— a red lotus, blue lotus as large as chariot wheels, white lotus, yellow lotus— each shining forth their own color. And Jeff Wilson takes this as a sign of welcoming diversity, which for me is really important value. And it's nice to hear somebody else finding that in the Larger Pure Land Sutra. All different sorts of living beings, all different sorts of energies are welcome, and they all find a way of shining, of contributing, of giving forth their own light. And the other, the other thing I remembered was that when beings are born into the Pure Land, they're all born with bodies of gold, which doesn't speak to diversity but speaks to equality, that everyone is worthy. You know, a gold body is something that's very valuable. So every living being is valued equally by the Buddha in the Pure Land. So this is, you know, this is just something that's personal to me. You can find other values in there, but welcoming diversity, valuing equality, valuing everybody equally— those are some of the things to keep an eye on when we're engaged in creating pure lands, which doesn't have to be a project— I'm creating a pure land— but when I'm living my life, am I, am I welcoming difference, or am I excluding something? Am I trying to be compassionate to all living beings, or just the few that I like and not the ones that I don't like? So thinking a little bit about when the inner and the outer meet, you know, when we're full of faith, when we're— when we have this kind of shinjin, or even this kind of complete, uh, when we're in this complete state of grace from the Buddha, it may be that naturally we just know what to do moment to moment, like the pure land, the Amida appearing in our hearts, the pure land is appearing around us. We don't need to look to too many clues because we're just completely full of grace. But I'm not full of grace all of the time, not in that way. Um, so it's really helpful for me to have clues. I have blind spots, I fall into compulsive behaviors, um, I get annoyed at people. So it's helpful to have these clues in the sutras, and not just in the sutras, right? You know, thinking about, uh, diversity and equality. There's loads of resources on, um, looking at our, uh, systemic oppression in the world, how we internalize oppression. All of that stuff is really good for uncovering blind spots, to, to looking for clues. Where are the places that block compassion? Where are the places in me that allow compassion to flourish? How can I How can I, uh, create structures around me that allow compassion to flourish? And there are clues in the sutras and in the wisdom, uh, of teachers from other traditions. So an appropriate response for me is sometimes it's natural and sometimes it, like, it includes a bit of calculating. And sometimes, and perhaps importantly, you know, like the advice that the Buddha gave to the to the Vajrayānas includes listening to other people, particularly elders, um, so that we figure it out between us. How are we going to handle this if we're not sure? And it's different every time, it's different in every circumstance. As I said, the rules of the Vinaya, well, they're still kept in some places by some monks and nuns, but I don't believe they're suitable for spiritual communities everywhere, and they're certainly not suitable for like, uh, creating pure lands that aren't Buddhist temples or Buddhist communities. But we all live in the world and want to manifest the kind of spirit of the pure land, so we have to figure out what our appropriate response is. And that's a mixture of the inside of the— it's, it's holding on to the magic of the Nembutsu, and it's also discerning It's listening to clues. It's listening to the Buddha. One of Satya's friends says, uh, the Buddha is my boss. That's a lovely phrase. It's listening to each other, and it's, it's knowing that when we've got an answer for this moment, the answer for the next moment might be different. And probably, like, you know, right at the beginning I talked about the wisdom of collapsing that story of rebirth into the Pure Land, which takes place a lot across lifetimes, into the present moment. Amida flourishes here and now. But it's also really helpful, I think, to keep in mind that this is a process that happens across lifetimes, because I don't think I'm going to create a perfect Pure Land., around me. But the more I trust the Buddha, there is a movement in that direction over time. And maybe one day, maybe in the next lifetime, somewhere, a pure land will appear where we can all be enlightened together. Namaste. So I'll pause there, and if there's any, uh, questions, I'm happy to answer questions or comment. Uh, let's— I'll tell you what, let's see if there's any specific questions for me, and if there are, I can take them, and if not, that's fine. And then we can pause the recording if you want to have time for a a more general conversation. I have a question. If my audio— is my audio better this time? Sounds good. Okay, so thing I've been reflecting on lately, very timely talk, thank you very much. Um, so is it our responsibility to create a Pure Land, or is— I mean, the Pure Land already exists, so are we, you know, are we responsible for creating it, or it's, you know, it's, it exists, it's going to exist, it has existed already, so How do we hold that tension? Well, as with all these things, I think you— they're both really useful ways of looking at it. We don't— it's like, um, you know, when we take the Bodhisattva vow, part of what we're stepping into is a path of longing for awakening of all beings, and there is a kind of sense of taking responsibility in that. And that can be a really helpful model to step into and think about, in the way that Dharmakara did, that we'd so take in his life as an example. That's a really useful way of looking at the spiritual path. What you're asking is, or reminding us, is, well, the Pure Land already exists, so we don't have to create it. So how do we make sense of that. And, uh, there can be a real joy in knowing that, and that's a really useful place to land in the spiritual path as well. Oh, I'm, I'm kind of freed from responsibility. The Pure Land's already created. I'm just entrusting the Buddha. And then And then somehow I think a bit more of the Pure Land appears, right? That's the magic of it. Yeah, it's not— it, it may be it's helpful when you're thinking of a project to occasionally have the mode of 'Oh, I'm thinking about creating this,' but to know that it's present and all I'm really doing is allowing myself to remember it can bring a sense of lightness and joyfulness. Um, for me, I think anyway. Um, and, and I, and I think there's a value in both, right? If we fall too far into thinking, if we pick the, the snake up the wrong way and and we think, oh, the pure land's already made, I don't have to do anything, we can fall into complacency. If we think, oh, I'm going to be a dharmakara bodhisattva, we can fall into kind of working from this place of something that's a bit tight and fraught and feeling the weight of things. And yeah, so I think it was Ajahn Chah who said, if the student's going too far to the left, I tell them to go right, and if the student's going too far to the right, I tell them to go left. So depends who you're talking to, what advice they need. Do not go to the elves for advice, Ananda, because they will say both yes and no, as Tolkien put it. Well, maybe we'll stop the recording there. Thanks. If you've been listening, uh, after the fact, do check out the website brightearth.org for, uh, upcoming events and how to get in touch. And, um, no moment to win.