This paper follows on from Before and After the Awakening of Faith
In this essay I have undertaken to answer a number of questions posed by respondents to my previous writing. It would be nice to clarify the general Buddhist position on some issues and the outlook of Pureland in particular and to show how the latter is related to the former. To set these answers in context, I include a short preamble on epistemology.
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with questions like: What do we mean when we say that we know something? What do we mean when we say something is true? How should we assess the validity of a statement? What is knowledge?
These kinds of questions are important in relation to our understanding of Buddhism because there can be very different senses in which we claim that something is true. Much spiritual teaching is given in the form of myth, story or theory and none of these are modes of discourse that claim absolute truth, certainly not in any literal sense. We need to know what sort of knowledge Buddhist teachings are.
In what follows, it will be useful to keep in mind a distinction. This is the distinction between absolute truth and upaya. The word upaya means skilful means. Scientific knowledge, for instance, is entirely upaya. Scientific theories are useful and they are judged by their usefulness. Whether they are true in an absolute sense, nobody knows, but most scientists will assume that they are not. Since they are not absolute, they are not final. They can always be improved upon or replaced by better ones. Science, therefore, is a creative activity. The scientist is constantly striving to find better upaya with which to understand the phenomena of the physical world.
Some religions claim to offer not upaya, but absolute truth. The truth of the holy book is declared to be a final revelation. It cannot be improved upon. In such a religion, the activity is not creative in the same sense as it is in science. The aim is to understand more deeply what has already been revealed. It can feel more satisfying in some ways to encounter absolute truth than to be involved in the irreducible uncertainty of science. So one question in the background of this essay is: to what extent is Buddhism like science and to what extent is it like revelation?
There is a second distinction that is also important. This concerns subject matter. The subject matter of science is the physical world, primarily. It is true that science has attempted to venture into areas like psychology with mixed results, but the prime object of science is matter and energetic forces, which are considered to be physical. The object of religion, on the other hand, is spiritual. Discerning the spiritual dimension of life is the first step. It is very close in meaning to meaning, and this is one reason why epistemology is so relevant to spirituality. Thus, if we are looking at a volume of Shakespeare, we can say that the plays convey a lot about the human spirit. Although the plays are physically written on paper with ink, knowing more and more about the properties of paper and ink will tell us nothing useful about the plays. Similarly, knowing more and more about his brain chemistry will tell us nothing useful about why Shakespeare wrote them. The spirit of things is a different subject from that which science is concerned with. Metaphysics is different from physics and one cannot necessarily directly transfer methods or assertions from one to the other without creating nonsense.
Modern people tend to get into difficulties with what appear to be assertions in Buddhism that they feel reluctance to give assent to. However, one of the things that modern people are generally blind to is the fact that "modernism" is itself a mythology or metaphysic. One frequently hears modernists assert that their position is based upon not believing anything that is not provable, but, in this, lies hidden a profound self-deception. For instance, it is just as unprovable that there is no life after death as that there is life after death, but a modernist does not say: "I do not believe that there is no life after death, because the idea that there is no life after death is unprovable". When we make an assumption about what we will believe in the circumstance that we are not positively persuaded to some other viewpoint, we are making what may be called a zero assumption. Every philosophy is grounded in a set of zero assumptions and modernism is no different from any other in this respect. We could say that there is a relativity between zero assumptions: there is no ultimate way to choose between them. Once a particular culture becomes dominant, the zero assumptions of that culture become the zero assumptions of society. There was a time when the zero assumptions of Christianity were the zero assumptions of Europe. People thought that it was natural to believe in God unless convincing argument could be brought that God did not exist. They knew that some people had theories about there not being a God, but just smiled knowingly, thinking, "But you can't prove it." The zero assumption was "God exists". In modernism, one zero assumption is "God does not exist" in other words, the onus of truth is now upon those who wish to assert that God does exist. However, since we are in a realm of knowledge where absolute proof is not available, we have to conclude that all zero assumptions are as good as each other as far as absolute truth is concerned. A broad issue for this essay is, "How does Buddhism address this situation?"
In passing, it is worth noting that consideration of the relativity of zero assumptions can unveil to us the facts that, firstly, most of us have already based our life upon a heap of assertions that are simply unprovable dogmas. We have not taken them to be such, but have regarded them as "the way it is". We only get any leverage on this situation when we encounter somebody we respect who holds to a different set of zero assumptions or even spend some time in a society that has a different dominant culture so that what is taken for granted is different. The second point is that this may lead us to realise that dogmas or zero assumptions are a necessary part of ANY metaphysic and the third point is that none of us is living without at least an implicit metaphysic. It is only when we have been completely seduced by a dominating culture that we can believe ourselves to be living without metaphysics, or living free from dogma but this is simply because our metaphysic has become invisible to us having become our zero assumption.
So let us turn to Buddhism and initially consider some modernist responses to it. It is certainly possible to separate the questions Is assertion X Buddhist? and Is assertion X true? and if one finds a large number of instances in which one concludes the answers are yes and no respectively, then one would have to conclude that one is not a Buddhist. Many modern people do in fact come close to this conclusion, but then hesitate, because, although they find great difficulty in coming to terms with, say, the &147;eternal life of the Tathagatha chapter of the Lotus Sutra, to take one core doctrine of the Mahayana, or, say, the description of the night of Buddha's enlightenment as being two thirds concerned with his own and other people's past lives, to take a key element of Theravada, they still feel that that man Gotama was on to something and they don't want to lose what he had. There have grown up various methods of getting round the difficulty, ways that may satisfy some people some of the time but do not seem entirely convincing. One of the most widely used methods is a logic that runs like this:
- What we think nowadays is true
- Therefore, it must correspond with what Buddha taught
- Therefore blatant evidence in the texts or teachings of Buddhist masters that he thought otherwise must be a result of distortions and cultural accretions clouding his original wisdom.
That this kind of logic can lead us wildly astray must be obvious, but the effort to square contemporary thought, especially modern, secular, liberal, atheistic humanism, with Buddhism, is currently a substantial industry. I suggest, however, that the device just outlined, which could consign two thirds of the Buddhist texts to the fire, must be ill-founded.
If what the texts say departs from what is regarded as common sense, or simply from what one person thinks is common sense, or leads to clear logical contradictions, then we should certainly consider
- Whether what we take to be common sense may simply be our own cultural bias.
- Whether the text does mean what it prima facie seems to mean is there a subtlety in the meaning, or uncertainty in the translation?
- In what context does the text stand?
- What order or level of significance does the text intend for the teaching it offers?
These questions may lead us to new understanding that may open up new vistas of meaning and rescue us from thinking something is so just because it is what one has habitually thought to be so. Point 4 is important because there are any number of statements in the texts which, if taken out of context, appear to be mutually contradictory. However, Buddhism recognises that there are teachings of greater and lesser scope so that teachings given at one level or from one viewpoint within Buddhism may not hold at another level or viewpoint
A fifth point is the question that we have already begun to explore about absolute truth and upaya. Teachings are not given in Buddhism in order to assert a metaphysical or ontological position for its own sake. Such ontology and metaphysics as there is in Buddhism exists to assist practice rather than the other way about. All Buddhist teachings are, therefore, practical advice, even when they are couched as assertions about the structure of time, the mind, the universe or the life process. This will come out more clearly as I answer particular points that readers have raised. So now let us turn to the questions.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
1. What do we mean by saved and salvation?
In the Mahayana tradition, we vow to save all sentient beings. This is the core activity of a bodhisattva. It is what Buddhas do. Buddhism is centrally concerned with emancipating oneself and others from delusion.
In both Mahayana and Theravada, there are four degrees of salvation. The first is to become a stream enterer. A stream enterer is somebody who has faith to a degree sufficient that (i) greed, hate and delusion has noticeably lessened and (ii) attachment to superstition, magic and gross wrong view has been abandoned.
The second degree of salvation is to become a once returner. This is a person who has faith and clarity of purpose sufficient to ensure that although they continue to make some mistakes in ethics and understanding as a result of the momentum of old habit energy, they learn from them rapidly and have no entrenched resistance to accepting the Dharma. A once-returner is somebody who is ripe to become enlightened in their next rebirth.
The third degree of salvation is to be a non-returner. This is a person who has a strong and settled faith, who will not regress and is bound to enter the Pure Abodes.
The fourth degree of salvation is to be an arhat. This is a person who has defeated greed, hate and delusion and is enlightened. Such a person is bound for nirvana directly.
To these four, the Mahayana adds the bodhisattva path. A bodhisattva may have reached any of the above four levels, but vows that whatever level he or she attains, they will not enter nirvana and will return from the Pure Abodes in order to help other sentient beings.
Pureland, in effect, asserts that it is almost impossible, certainly extremely rare, for contemporary people to become arhats and therefore sets as the goal of the spiritual life a state of non-regression that is essentially the same as that of the non-returner. This is called the state of assurance, or settled faith.
All the way through the Nikayas, which are the main scriptures of the Theravada and are also recognised as scripture by the Mahayana, there is a distinction between three classes of followers of Buddha: viz., (i) those who have faith, (ii) those who have faith and wisdom, and (iii) those who have faith, wisdom and samadhi. The second category go to nirvana. The third category go to nirvana, but also gain some spiritual powers, and the first category go to the Pure Abodes en route to nirvana. From this we can see that the essential element in all forms of Buddhism is faith. Wisdom and samadhi also add extra spiritual benefits, but salvation is by faith and not without it. Wisdom and samadhi alone will not do it. The core of what it means to be enlightened is to be found in the mind of faith.
2. What is the status of myth?
I have used the term myth to refer to the narratives by which the Buddha conveyed some of his key principles. Thus, in the Larger Pure Land Sutra, Gotama Buddha tells a story to Ananda. This is the story of Dharmakara leaving his kingdom and eventually becoming Buddha, making great vows to assist all who call upon his name and establishing a Pure Land in the West. I think it is reasonable to call this story a myth. Myth is to religion what theory is to science. It is a means of conveying an important truth about the subject matter; the subject matter in the case of religion being the spiritual life.
If a scientific theory is a good one, then the physical world functions as it would if the theory were true. In the same way, the spiritual life functions AS IF the myth were true. If you call upon Amida for help with utter faith and sincerity, what will happen is exactly what would happen if the myth were true. So, you might ask, does that mean that the myth IS true? That, of course, is a question that we cannot answer absolutely. However, we can reflect that the level of proof that this question appears to be asking for is a much higher level of validity than we generally ask of a scientific theory. Generally speaking, a scientific theory is accepted if it works. Nobody in the philosophy of science as far as I know asserts that scientific theories are absolute truth. They are, in a sense, the currently held myth. There used to be a myth about the flat earth. It worked. Nowadays people think it was mistaken, but it still works for many everyday purposes. That light is made up of particles called photons is a myth that actually only works some of the time. At other times it is better to use a different myth, namely that light is a wave motion. You might get into all kinds of twists (many people have) asking waves in what? or who is waving? without getting any further forward. Nonetheless, the idea that light is a wave has been extremely productive. The Buddha's teachings are like this. They are not absolute truth. They are upaya. As it says in the Lotus Sutra: I make the bodhisattvas as well as the shravakas board this jewelled vehicle, and lead them directly to the terrace of enlightenment. For this reason there is no other vehicle but the upaya of the Buddhas..
Consider a different Buddhist myth from the ones we have been looking at. There is a myth that there is a celestial bodhisattva called Quan Shi Yin. She hears all the cries of the world and she can change her form so as to appear in whatsoever form will be helpful to a person. This myth works. If you act AS IF it is literally true, then you will have a continual reflection upon the possibility that each person you meet might be Quan Yin in one of her transformations. If you treat every person you meet AS IF they are Quan Yin, you will indeed be helped your life will improve in many ways as a direct result. Whereas if you hold to a cynical position about this myth, you will not reap this reward and will not understand what the Buddha is offering you, except, possibly, in an aridly intellectual way that will yield no fruit in your actual lived life.
But, of course, if we live AS IF something is so, then, to all intents and purposes, it is so in our case. The scientist who uses the theory of photons or light waves knows this may, in principle, not be absolute truth, but that is not a consideration of much relevance day to day in the lab. So Buddhists stand in a middle position. They do not hold that their myths are absolute truth in the same way as revelation religions do, yet nor do they abandon their myths and say they are not true. They are true enough to guide the spiritual life which is inevitably and eternally shrouded in unknowing. Unknowingness, however, is an extremely difficult position to hold for any length of time. There are very few if any true agnostics. In practice we all live our lives in conformity to some set of myths. Since we must have a myth, it is a good idea to have a good one. The Buddha was saying to Ananda that if you live your life in conformity with the myth that there is a source of goodness, truth and beauty called Amida outside of your self, such an orientation of life will serve you well.
Boxes, Chairs and Thrones
If a belief works it will tend to persist and become confirmed. What do I mean by saying "if it works"? If somebody, let us call him John, believes there is a chair there and he sits down and there is a chair there it works. If there is no chair there, something else happens John falls on the floor. These, however, are not the only two possible situations. John might sit down believing there is a chair there when, in fact, there is a box. This will still work. If John's field of sensory input were considerably restricted so that he had no other angle from which to investigate what was actually there, then John could now continue in his belief in there being a chair there. If somebody tells him there is no chair there, he might just smile, inwardly knowing they are wrong, or he might become indignant, but he will probably not immediately let go of his knowledge that there is a chair there, since it springs from his own experience. We can see from this example that a belief may work, even though it does not necessarily correspond with what is ontologically the case. It is quite possible that belief in the meridians used in acupunture are knowledge of this kind. It is quite possible that all psychiatric diagnoses are of this kind. Actually, it is possible that our whole worldview is of this kind. This bears reflection.
We can extend the boxes and chairs analogy further. Suppose John believes that he is about to sit upon a magnificent throne, but there is only a box there. Will not John actually sit on the box with greater dignity and style than he would if he were tuned in to the real situation? If John has an over-arching purpose of acting in life with dignity and style, will not the belief that there is a throne there serve him better, in fact, than the actuality that there is only a box? Again, if John actually is a king, born and bred to it, through and through a monarch, and he comes to sit, and there is there only a box to sit upon, will not that box, in some sense, become a throne when King John goes to sit upon it? What is a box or a throne anyway? If the myth gets about that that box is King John's throne, who will say that it is not a throne?
We can, perhaps, conclude that things are neither necessarily quite what nor as they seem and what or how they are is substantially a function of the mythology that we are living in relation to them. The zero assumptions of a particular metaphysic will tend to become the actual physic of the items that are used by the community that adheres to that metavalue set. We could, philosophically, say that ontology is at least sometimes subordinate to epistemology. What we know affects what things are.
Now let us bring the box-throne analogy back to Buddhism. Even if John lives in a box-world, he might nonetheless be better advised to believe that he lives in a throne-world. And if John lives in a world in which it is impossible to determine whether it is a box-world or a throne-world, what should a wise man tell him to believe and act upon? It is possible that Buddhism is guilty of training us to act as though we are in a throne world when it fact it is all boxes, but it is also just as possible that modernism may be guilty of persuading us that it is all boxes when in fact we are surrounded by thrones. In the last analysis that is available to mortals, it may just be a choice. This takes us to the next question.
3. Is all well or is all not well?
The Pureland response to this is that both are true. This is the bitter-sweet quality of life. The lion springs upon the gazelle. It is beautiful and terrible all at once. All is well and all is not well may be a bit like light is particles and light is waves. Each is a myth or theory that works in its appropriate context. There may well be an absolute truth beyond both that we cannot see from here, but what we can see from here suggests that these are two dimensions of one reality. It is, however, much more use to have both those dimensions (just as it is better to have the two theories of light than to have some sort of hazy compromise between them. The latter leaves us with a flat meaningless world. It is a truer representation of the spiritual life to say that existence is both terrible and wonderful than to say that it is mediocre. On this basis, some Buddhists say that samsara and nirvana, or samsara and Pure Land are simply two ways of viewing this world. If this is the only way that you understand Pure Land, however, a good deal of what the Buddha is trying to convey by that teaching could be missed.
4. Is Buddha immortal?
According to all Mahayana Schools to my knowledge, the answer is yes, and in Theravada it is not discussable, but the implication of that leans toward yes rather than no, since the Buddha entered nirvana which, the Theravadins say, is the only thing not subject to impermanence. However, what has to be understood here is that there are three bodies of Buddha: nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya and dharmakaya. A person is not, primarily, just a flesh and blood item (see my Where were you last year? poem in Zen Therapy(. The flesh and blood item is the domain of science, but not particularly of religion. A person's true body is the meaning of their life: their faith and their narrative, or, as we say in Buddhism, their karmic continuum. The faith or vow body (sambhogakaya ) of the Buddha began with Gotama's enlightenment and continues indefinitely. It did not die with his physical body or we would not be here asking these questions and practising Buddhism today. The truth body (dharmakaya) of the Buddha has always existed and always will do so whether teachers appear in manifest bodies (nirmanakaya) in this world or not. That is the basic Mahayana metaphysic of Buddhas. You can regard it as a myth in the sense discussed above if you like.
As Siddhartha Gotama, the founder was a mortal man. As the Buddha-tathagatha he was immortal. The two co-existed. We can see this distinction at work in the sutra that describes the Buddha's enlightenment. Soon after he is enlightened, the Buddha, as Siddhartha, says, If I were to teach the Dharma, others would not understand me, and that would be wearying and troublesome for me Considering thus, my mind inclined to inaction.. So, although just enlightened, Siddhartha thinks that teaching Dharma would be wearisome. Then the god Sahampati appears before him and persuades him to teach. Recounting this he reports, Then I listened to the Brahma's pleading, and surveying the world with the eye of a Buddha I saw beings with little dust in their eyes and he decided to teach. We can see here two personalities. One a Buddha and one Sid. By becoming enlightened Buddha learnt how to live from the immortal aspect.
5. Can anything be completely other?
Yes. Everything is. Even the things we think are self are actually other. This was the import of Buddha's second sermon on the theme Thou art not that. The self is elusive and cannot be grasped.
6. Is there agency at the root of dependent origination?
If this question means Is there a divine intelligence guiding it? then the answer is no. This does not mean going back ultimately to blind chaotic forces. The idea of early blind chaotic forces is a myth belonging to modernism and some other creeds, but it is not Buddhist. Buddha's doctrine of dependent origination implies orderliness all the way back without beginning.
7. Is salvation dependent upon sustained awareness?
Sustained practice is valuable, but it is not quite correct to say that salvation is dependent upon it. We have sustained attention for what has already become important for us so it is really more the other way about. Sustained practice is an expression of faith, rather than a means to attain it.
Also, of course, sustained does not mean unceasing. It is impossible for us to maintain unrelenting consciousness. We are not made that way. The Buddha was asked if he was continuously in higher consciousness and he said, no, just he could go there at will.
In Pureland, faith and practice are two sides of one coin. Practice means nembutsu. Nembutsu means awareness of the Tathagata. So Pureland practice is a matter of having continual (not continuous) awareness of the Tathagatha's presence. This is not really so different from what Dogen says in his classic work, <I>Fukanzazengi</I>, when he says, zazen is an awesome presence. Siddhartha was Buddha inasmuch as the Tathagata could be present for him in everything he did. You can call that sustained awareness, or awareness at will, but it was the expression of enlightenment, not the precursor to it.
8. Does practice or faith matter more?
This was a much-debated issue in Japanese Pureland in the thirteenth century because Honen stressed the inseparability of practice and faith, but his six chief disciples were different in the emphasis they placed on one or the other. Four out of the six believed that faith was primary and practice was subordinate. None believed that practice was primary and faith subordinate. The other two, of whom the more important was Bencho, believed, like Honen himself, that faith and practice were inseparable. Faith without practice or practice without faith are equally empty ideas. I agree with Bencho.
9. Is the eightfold path a result of faith or a means to an end?
For Buddha, at least, it was a result. In <I>The Feeling Buddha</I>, I also argue for it being an outcome. See next answer.
10. Are people who follow the eightfold path inevitably recipients of Amida's grace?
No. Amida's grace is not the only salvation in Buddhism. It is acknowledged by all the Pureland Masters that practising the Eightfold Path by one's own effort unaided is theoretically possible. They simply assert that hardly any real person is actually capable of it.
Honen, basing himself on Shan Tao, taught that all Buddhist practices can be divided into three groups. These are:
The rightly established practice
The auxilliary practices and
The multitudinous practices
Let us consider an analogy. Consider a postman. The vital thing in being a postman is to deliver the mail. If he does that he is a postman. That is his rightly established practice. There will be auxiliary practices that help, like wearing a postman's uniform, driving the post van and visiting the sorting office. There will also be a multitude of practices that may make him a better postman, such as being polite, being cheerful, keeping to time, being tidy and so on. We can see from this that a person could have perfected some of the multitudinous practices and even the auxiliary ones, but if he or she did not do the one thing that mattered, namely deliver the letters, they would still not be a postman.
In Pureland, the rightly established practice is nembutsu. If the Tathagata is present in everything you do, that's it. The auxiliary practices are other forms of devotion to Amida such as making offerings, visualisation and so on. They help, but if the Tathagata is present without them, that's fine and if you perfect them but the Tathagata is not present, it won't do. Similar consideration applies to the multitudinous practices, which are all the other things that make up the eightfold path.
We can understand from the postman analogy that if a person wants to be a good postman, he will give first priority to the rightly established practice, but this will also lead him to develop what is important about the other practices in a natural way. A good postman wants to be polite. A person who lives in the presence of the Tathagata practises the eightfold path.
11. Is it necessary to reach the point of having nowhere else to go?
When one looks at the stories of the great masters, one very commonly finds that there was some severe life crisis in the background. Nagarjuna turned to Dharma when his friends were killed, Honen when his father was assassinated and so on. There are two kinds of crises. There is the kind like those just described that are thrust upon us by circumstance and there is the kind that comes as a result of trying to follow a self-power path with all your main and might and eventually having to admit defeat.
12. Does the Buddha's wet wood analogy mean that it is impossible for people who still have desire to reach enlightenment or does it mean that it is just a long hard job?
The context of this analogy is that it is given by the Buddha as the rationale that he gave to himself for embarking upon the practice of asceticism prior to his enlightenment, a practice that he subsequently concluded was futile. Making a long hard job of it might bring one to the kind of crisis mentioned in point 11, which is what happened to Siddhartha. He tried the self-power approach and found that it did not work. It was, however, not until he did find that out from his own experience that he really believed it. His enlightenment consisted in discovering that self-power did not work. We only really seek refuge when we give up on self and realise that we are foolish beings. It is only foolish beings that attain any of the degrees of salvation. It is a very basic part of Pureland that it is not a long hard slog. Pureland is what Nagarjuna called the easy path. But, of course, you can have a long hard slog if you want to.
13. Does I believe in Amida and I believe in God mean the same thing?
Not usually. There certainly is likely to be some commonality between the experience of followers of different religions and they may well often express similar meanings by using the words drawn from their own contexts. On the other hand, the term God implies many things to at least some Christians that the term Amida does not imply to a Buddhist. Amida did not create us, has no power over us and does not judge us.
14. Does Amida accepts me mean I accept me?
No. I can be accepted by Amida while still being unacceptant of myself and I can be pleased with myself and not turn to Amida, so there is no necessary correspondence. The attempt to reduce everything to self is one of the main things that Buddhism rejects. Those who want to psychologise Buddhism by grounding everything in projection from inside the self are not being true to what Buddha taught. We perhaps need to see that the idea of a space inside the self or inside the mind from which things can be projected is just as metaphysical an idea as the idea of a god in heaven. It is a modern myth based on a kind of cinema model of the mind. It works up to a point, but it is a flat earth theory as far as spiritual life is concerned.
15. Can you clear up some of the confusion around karma, determinism and predestination?
Predestination is not exactly the same thing as determinism. Determinism means that if certain factors are in place certain outcomes are completely inevitable. Predestination means that there is a pre-ordained destination even though the paths to it might be various. Thus, the idea that we must all arrive in heaven eventually is an example of predestination, but not necessarily of determinism. The atma doctrine of Hinduism implies predestination since the atma must eventually find its way back to Brahma. Buddha denied the atma doctrine.
Karma, in the Buddhist interpretation, means that all wilful action sets up spiritual conditions that either constrain or bias future choices. They do not eliminate the element of choice, but they restrict it. If I have lost my temper many times and something that I habitually find annoying occurs, I am likely to lose my temper again. It may be very difficult for me not to do so. We cannot, however, say that I have completely lost the freedom not to do so. In practice, I am unlikely to operate that residual freedom, however, without help. If I have been helped by being inspired by meeting an arhat earlier that day, perhaps I will exercise untypical restraint this time. Buddhist theory suggests that we never lose our freedom, but subjectively we actually have a lot less self-control than we like to think, and it generally takes something outside of ourselves to inspire us to change. Hence we need refuge and Other Power. The Buddhist assessment is that most people will not respond positively because they have such a weight of past karmic accumulation (alaya).
It depends what you mean. The literalist Pureland position is that the Pure Land is a realm rather like this one, only much better, in a land far away millions of miles to the west wherein Amida's Dharma prevails, a bit like that idea of an enlightened society on another planet. So, in that approach, the Pure Land is inside this world system, it is not another dimension. In many ways, a simplistic idea of that kind is much easier to deal with. If one takes it as a myth in the sense discussed above, it makes quite a good one and works pretty well. We can practise by having an awareness of Amida in the west. Wherever we are, we can be aware of the Western direction and this can help us to have a sense of the Tathagata's presence. Of course, literally, West from Earth in UK is the opposite direction to West from New Zealand, but that's not really what Buddhism is about. Dharma is a matter of faith and practice, not cosmology.
Of course, one can adopt a more mystical approach and either identify the Pure Land with planet earth, as was done in at least one branch of Tendai Buddhism, or with a state of mind, as was done by those Zen Schools that adopted the Pure Land. Orthodox Pureland people tend to regard these last two approaches as superstitions, which gives Westerners a jolt. Western Buddhism is, on the whole, a lot more mystical than Eastern Buddhism.
When English people ask about this world and other world they commonly have in mind the Christian distinction in which the other world lies somehow in another dimension of reality. Buddhism does not really have that sort of idea.
A teacher like Honen stressed the fact that the Pureland was a long way away to emphasise the alienation that is so deeply buried in each of us. He did not hold to the Buddha nature idea of original enlightenment that is so popular. He agreed rather with Shakyamuni that people are deeply deluded and far from enlightenment. He thought that it was far more realistic and less complacent for us to think of ourselves as far removed from the goal than to cultivate a kind of spiritual smugness. In this respect, he is close to existentialism, which also emphasises the alienation and anguish that each of us carries. The myth of the Pure Land far away to the West gives a very concrete framework within which we can come to terms with our true nature rather than draw a comforting blanket over it.
17. Is the Pure Land somewhere you go after you die?
Yes. If we stay with Honen, he thought the job would not be done until one's life is complete. Therefore the goal lies ahead of this life. Modern people may, of course, not believe that life continues after death, but that is not really the point, any more than trying to find out whether the Pure Land is West of New Zealand or West of UK matters. What is necessary is to live one's life AS IF it will lead to a corresponding rebirth. It is very difficult to make sense of any actual school of Buddhism without the idea of rebirth. Buddhism is about living a life in the presence of the Tathagata up to your last breath and having the strong intention to go on doing so even after that.
18. Can Buddhism be true if rebirth is a fiction?
Yes, but one would have to retain it as a useful fiction. There are, of course, all sorts of useful fictions in everyday life. Countries, for instance, are useful fictions. France and Germany and so on only exist as long as people agree collectively to act as if they do. Money is the same. A five pound note is, as paper and ink, probably worth about a penny, but we agree to the fiction that it is five pounds. It is even called a fiduciary issue, i.e. one based on faith. If rebirth is a fiction, then Buddhism would need something else to orient the mind toward the longer term. Religion is the shift in perspective that occurs when we identify ourselves with belonging to eternity instead of belonging to ephemerality. What Buddha realised, or you could say chose, was to belong to eternity. That was what made him identify with the Tathagatha.
The idea of a personal eternity, however, is really a teaching of lesser scope. It is preferable to the nihilistic idea that we are just epiphenomena of material forces randomly existing without purpose or continuity in a universe itself just a futile play of chance. The myth of personal continuity can get us beyond that and give us, for instance, the bodhisattva ideal of dedicating all future lives to the welfare of all and creating a Pure Land. On the other hand, the eternal life of the Tathagatha is not a personal life. The Tathagatha is identified with the universal destiny rather than a personal one. The idea of personal rebirth, therefore, is a provisional myth. It is a step on the way; a raft with which to get launched in the direction of the great crossing. Living as if it is so, will move us forward. Even the Dharma, however, should not become an object of attachment, since once we have taken one step, we will assuredly be offered another one. We are always going beyond.
When the Diamond Sutra says that the Tathagata cannot be seen by means of attributes, it is pointing toward something that is sublime and universal but quite different from what people generally think of as the object of religious attention. The ideal Buddhist is not concerned with personal survival, but such an ideal is extremely difficult to hold to in practice and when ordinary people attempt to do so they generally fall back into mundane materialism rather than leaping forward into sublime transcendence. A practical religion, therefore, has to offer a metaphysical framework that directs people to the eternal dimension of things step by step. To criticise the steps on a path for not themselves being the destination is merely to handicap oneself unnecessarily.
CONCLUSION
Pureland is not the only path in Buddhism. Its claim is, however, to be the easiest, the most certain and the most inclusive. It is a matter of adopting the rightly established practice, which is to know that one does not know, that one is a foolish being, and, knowing that, to live in the presence of Tathagata, the eternal spirit of Buddhahood, just as Shakyamuni did. To help us do so Buddhism provides a mythic framework that we can use to structure our practice and orient our mind. We need not get hung up about what is literal and what is not. None of us know. We can trust, however, that if we let ourselves be oriented by the Buddhist map we will be going in the right direction, even if that map does contain areas that say Here be dragons that we feel a bit doubtful about. We may later find that there was more truth in the dragons than we realised. There are many auxiliary and multitudinous practices, but if we do not do the one important one we will not be on the Pureland path and if we ARE on that path, then the multitudinous practices will fall into place naturally.
To go back to epistemology, therefore, all Buddha's teachings are practical advice and they are skilful means. It is completely unbuddhist to get hung up about which direction the Pure Land really lies or exactly what is it that gets reborn. Those are questions like asking who is waving the light. Ultimately Buddhism claims to be able to enable us to live without any zero assumptions at all. That, however, is an ideal far from the reach of ordinary folk. If mundane truth is unelevating and absolute truth is unattainable, what is needed is middle way truth, represented by a Sambhogakaya Buddha, that is concrete enough to be actually practised, yet not so rigidly held as to become itself an obstacle. The Dharma is a raft to carry us. It is the ship that Nagarjuna said we should entrust ourselves to. All Dharma is upaya. It is the job of religion to clothe higher truth in forms that we can relate to in this very body. If you want to follow the Pureland Way, just turn your attention to the West and call Amida with a simple mind. Nothing else is necessary, but the framework of Buddhist teachings may provide you with a very useful support and auxiliary recourse.
Namo Amida Bu
Dh.D.J.Brazier
November, 2003