Textual evidence suggests that Ch’an teachers regularly propagated nien-fo practices during the T’ang and Sung dynasties. At the same time, numerous passages in Ch’an documents caution against a crudely literal or simple-minded approach to Pure Land teachings. The Pure Land, we are told ad nauseam, is the original purity of one’s own mind that must be sought here and now. To understand this is to realize the goal of nien-fo—to “see the Buddha” (chien-fo 見佛). Chanting the Buddha’s name is but one method of coming to understand the emptiness of phenomenal reality.
This doctrine should not be viewed as a Ch’an innovation—as a novel attempt to demythologize “traditional” Pure Land cosmology or as a rear-guard effort to impose Yogacara and Madhyamika principles on a resistant body of popular Pure Land myths and practices. On the contrary, this understanding of the Pure Land is maintained in a plethora of Indian Mahayana texts, antedating more “literal” approaches to the subject.
Although the Chinese term ching-t’u or Pure Land has no clear Sanskrit equivalent, it is closely associated with the Indian notion of a buddhaksetra or “buddha-field.” According to the Mahavastu, a buddha-field is that realm where “a tathagata, a holy one, fully and perfectly enlightened, is to be found, lives, exists and teaches the Law, for the benefit and happiness of the great body of beings, men and gods.” Bodhisattva practice is then construed as culminating in the creation of a purified “buddha-field” through the elimination of defilements, both in oneself and in others. A buddha-field is the phenomenal manifestation of a bodhisattva’s accumulated merit and wisdom, placing that merit in the service of others. Although sources enumerate three classes of buddha-fields—pure, impure, and mixed—a number of Mahayana sutras insist that all such differences are illusory; the Pañcavimsatishasrika, the “atasahasrika, the Lotus, and the Lankavatara, to mention just a few, teach the ultimate purity of this very world. The first chapter of the Vimalakirti is perhaps the clearest articulation of this venerable Buddhist tenet: “The bodhisattva who wishes to purify his buddhaksetra should, first of all, skillfully adorn his own mind. And why? Because to the extent that the mind of a bodhisattva is pure is his buddhaksetra purified.”
This is from On Pure Land Buddhism and Chan/Pure Land Syncretism In Medieval China by Robert H. Sharf for University of Michigan.
Fascinating information, consider giving a read to the full PDF hosted on the Buddhist Studies section of Berkeley's website: http://ift.tt/2cKwieZ
*Edited for formatting errors.
Plus:
心地覺心 - "Enlightened Mind", the 地 means "field", 心 is heart/soul/mind and 覺 means "wake up, to feel/think, to sense, to be aware".
Submitted July 04, 2017 at 08:13AM by Dillon123 http://ift.tt/2ukf8wB
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