This is the Pure Land

[Ciel]

Reading tentatively the first few posts on this thread with sensitivity.

Watching progression ........ as the ego of despair devours it's self in it's own egoic existence of pure nihilism.

It encourages me to take bucket and mop to clean windows.

Clean clear light floods the room, dancing Elan Vital, singing air streams of vibrancy and colour painting over monotones in illumination of splendour.

Embracing Life I Live.

- c -

[Tariki]

Originally Posted by Ciel

It encourages me to take bucket and mop to clean windows.

Sorry, I just can't resist!

The body is the Bodhi-tree
The mind is like a clear mirror standing.
Take care to wipe it all the time,
Allow no grain of dust to cling to it.

...............and the winner is......

The Bodhi is not like a tree,
The clear mirror is nowhere standing.
Fundamentally not one thing exists:
Where then is a grain of dust to cling?

(As one poor window cleaner to another, of course!)

[Ciel]

Originally Posted by Tariki

Sorry, I just can't resist!



...............and the winner is......

Then Tariki, you understand.............

There are no winners.

There are no losers.

There is - thank God - the choice of perception.

Embracing Life I Live in Joy.

Living mindless for too long

I now nurture appreciation

In the passion of existence

Where both the silence

And the exuberant exultation

Are as one.

- c -

[Tariki]

Originally Posted by Ciel

I now nurture appreciation

In the passion of existence

Where both the silence

And the exuberant exultation

Are as one.

- c -

Ciel,

It does seem easy to by-pass the shadow, not to recognise the darkness and the "passions". In Pure Land the defiled "I" is revealed by the working of Infinite Compassion. The defiled I is an essential part of oneself, "both the Pure I and the defiled I are necessary for a person to attain wholeness. When both are brought to full awareness, we have an awakened authentic human being" (Unno)

Just a little more on "self-power" and "other-power", more to illuminate my own mind, which often appears as a very tangled web of conflict. The reliance on "Other Power" (Tariki) does not mean that no effort is required to progress on the path of awakening. Again from Unno........

Self-cultivation is the driving force in a persons attempt to live the highest ethical life..................it is at the core of the quest for authenticity as a human being. In all such strivings inevitably one is made aware of human finitude, of our reality as a karmic being - limited, imperfect, mortal. This experiential process is at the heart of Shin (Pure Land) Buddhism

The point is that such "strivings" are made in the total dojo (training ground) of lay life, as lived and experienced each moment, each day. Once again I see no particular reason why any form of genuine insight should be restricted to those spending "time on the cushion".

Therefore self-power, contrasted with Other Power, should not be thought of as negating self-reliance. But as Unno again states, it is in the realm of the religious quest that self-power becomes a problem.

Self-power becomes manifest whenever one is conscious of "doing good". Unaware of the hidden, ego-centered agenda, a person becomes self-righteous, passing judgements on others as good or bad.

Again, one can become prideful in the ability to know oneself, including the claim to fully recognise the limitation, imperfection, and fallibility of oneself through the power of rational self-reflection alone.

Self-power is the effort.......or endeavour, to make yourself worthy through amending the confusion in your acts, words and thoughts, confident of your own powers and guided by your own calculation. (Shinran)

Other-Power should not be understood as a relative term used in simple contrast with "self" to denote a different origin of practice, for Other Power refers to Great Compassion that transcends the duality of self and other.......Other Power works constantly to bring every sentient being to the realization of True Entrusting (shinjin/faith), but those who cling to their own efforts and virtues - possessed of the self-attachment termed the "mind of self-power" - block its working. Where the mind of self-power is made to disappear, however, the realization of True Entrusting that is Other Power comes about. The disappearance of the mind of self-power and the realization of trust/faith/shinjin that is Other Power.............are aspects of a single religious awakening. In the realization of Shinjin the practicer becomes free of the mind of self-power, and this very freedom from self-attachment and calculation is Other Power. In Shinran's words, "Other Power means to be free of any form of calculation," it "means that no working is true working." (drawn from a Glossary of Shin Buddhist Terms, volume 2 of the Collected works of Shinran)

..........what is, is the graceful acceptance only.......

[Tariki]

A few more reflections.................

I have long pondered the words associated with the Theravada path, "Buddha's can only point the way, each has to walk the path themselves". Words that call for self-reliance, and often contrasted with the "easy" Pure Land path. But to ask, in the light of anicca (no-self) - the central pillar of the dharma - just who it is that is doing the walking seems a very pertinent question. This is not just playing around with words. For me it is to begin to recognise that in many respects the "religious quest" often becomes - in practice and experience - the realization that we are striving to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Such striving can only result in exhaustion! D T Suzuki has said well...........Other-Power is all important, but this truth is known only by those who have striven by means of self-power to attempt the impossible.

And it was Theravadin who observed that "at the moment of emancipation, effort falls away, having reached the end of its scope". Knowing the "scope" of self-power.........and reaching its "end".

"Grace, if thou repent, thou shalt not lack. Yet who shall give ye that grace to begin?" (John Donne)

[Ciel]

Tariki,

You see it is all so wordy.

Strange purity.

So complex.

When the very thing it expounds.......

Is simplicity in authenticity.


After washing floors

I dance in the enlightenment of clean clear space.

- c -