Pure Lands, or buddhakṣetra, are realms of purity created by Buddhas. They serve as environments conducive to spiritual practice, allowing beings to cultivate the path towards enlightenment. The primary aim of being reborn in a Pure Land is to receive teachings and guidance from a living Buddha, ultimately leading to the realization of Buddhahood. This can be taken two ways, to aspire while living to attain the state after death, or that this Pure Land is a existing state of a perfect Buddha, and by controlling your imagination (which is actually a place) you are making your own imPure Land pure, and so it becomes the same.
Entry into these Pure Lands is generally based on one’s spiritual merit and intentions. For instance, Amitābha’s Pure Land is particularly accessible, as it allows anyone who sincerely invokes his name and has established roots of virtue to be reborn there. This inclusivity has made Pure Land practices popular among lay practitioners, as they often require less intensive meditation compared to other Buddhist paths. Again, it can mean after death of the physical body, or in each passing moment, when your imagination is controlled and your inner-talk ceases to recite a name representing the limitless light of your own awakening, then your inner-experience is the Pure Land now.
Beyond Sukhāvatī, there are numerous other Pure Lands associated with different Buddhas, such as the Pure Land of Akaniṣṭha and Tushita. Each Pure Land offers unique conditions and teachings, catering to various levels of spiritual attainment. This can be taken to mean that, within your own imagination and mind (Impure and Pure Land) there are various dwellings (states), and they can be compassion focused, or healing and so they are states and places, which is the same thing.
I’ve seen it stated elsewhere that Pure Lands can be understood both as literal celestial realms and as metaphorical states of mind. In some interpretations, the purity of the land reflects the purity of the mind of its inhabitants. Thus, a Pure Land is not solely a physical place but can also represent a mental state achieved through spiritual practice. Different Traditions such as various interpret Pure Lands differently. For example, in Tibetan Buddhism, Pure Lands like Shambala are viewed as realms that transcend ordinary existence, offering profound spiritual opportunities. In contrast, schools such as Jodo Shinshu emphasize faith in Amitābha as the key to rebirth in his Pure Land, focusing on the simplicity of devotion over complex practices.
So, the various Buddhas have their own realm. There is a higher part of you which is a Buddha. Therefore, do you have a realm also? But surely if you did have a whole realm and dominion under your control you would have noticed by now, as it is you’re stuck here on planet earth without the spaceships yet developed to get you off this spinning rock.
Just think how wonderful it would be if you were in charge of a realm where you could instantly create whatever you want, good, bad, poverty, abundance — and the conditions for awakening.
But the fact is that you are. I think the blind here is the language. When you think of the word Pure Land you’re looking for somewhere physical, that the physical senses can see. But you have spiritual senses. What if you are already a Buddha and the Pure Land is your human imagination? Please don’t recoil at this suggestion, especially if your ‘Pure Land’ isn’t always so pure!
When being discussed, the various Pure Lands of the different Buddhas is sometimes translated as a ‘field’, as in a force field, like magnetism or something. The word “field” comes from the Old English ‘feld’, which referred to an open land area, such as a plain or pasture, that was cleared of trees and used for cultivation or grazing. So if this is the case, then THE MIND IS A PLACE. It can mean a physical space, like a farmer’s field full of cows grazing and it’s not the village pub because that’s next door in a different space. The field is a specific area of influence, i.e. the land that the farmer technically owns.
Then there is the abstract use of the word, like psychology and biology and genetics are all within the scientific ‘field’ of knowledge. I can ask you what is your ‘field’ of interest or influence or understanding? The things in your understanding (field) are not necessarily in mine. Maybe your field of understanding is biology, and it’s not mine, but I study it, and now we have the same understandings and knowledge, and we are IN THE SAME FIELD.
When we have different knowledge, we are in different fields, and when we have all the same knowledge and understandings, then we are in the same fields. The contents of our minds (around this subject) will be the same. So it is mind, but we are considering it as a realm, a space, which might seem a little abstract, but it’s actually your direct experience if you think about it. If I ask you to visualise a rose, most people can do that and it is often, this vague, wispy rose, existing on a ‘mental screen’ that exists around the eyes somewhere. But the fact that it tends to be created just there is pure habit. Consciousness locates around the eyes because for most people, this is the strongest sense, and so there is a feeling of existing in this location.
But I can ask you to imagine a rose on the table before you, or twenty meters away over the road and you can imagine it there. So in that way, imagination isn’t fully embodied, it’s a field. You can imagine and create mental pictures in any location that corresponds to the physical world. So imagination is like a subjective ghostly realm that intersperses the reality that you perceive.
It isn’t as easy to see, but the other senses are also not tied to your physical embodiment. I can imagine a sound of someone whispering to me and it’s close to my ear, but I can also imagine someone calling to me from across the road. It feels both inner and outer to me, I’m hearing the calling within, and also without, but remember IT’S ALL ON THE INSIDE. If there was actually someone calling to me from the other side of the road or a red rose on the table before me, then my senses would perceive it at the sense doors, the cells on my visual retina would receive light and the little hammer in my ear would vibrate and both would send electrical signals to my brain reporting what (they say) is ‘out there’ (which may or may not be) and then the brain RECREATES THIS, and it adds a total and complete illusion that it is ‘out there’. As it recreates ‘reality’ in my mind, it adds a concept of space, how far away things are, in relation to myself. IT CREATES REALITY AS A FIELD.
There is other evidence that THE MIND IS A PLACE, and that is when you dream. You are in a dream world. It’s a place you exist within just like this one, entirely created by mind (which is, actually, just like the physical world), but the dream world is a hybrid, things can be instantly created, just like in your waking imagination, but (except in lucid dreams) this isn’t under full control of the will. Things happen and change instantly, but automatically. So in the imagination WILL has full control, in the physical world WILL has no direct control and in dreams it’s a mixture.
The other piece of evidence you may or may not have experience with. Often, when I’m meditating, including trancework, (it’s very common) then I’ll get to a point where I’m sitting there with my eyes closed and my inner-senses start to come alive, I can see and hear into another world, and to start with this is happening sporadically while I am still physically embodied, but eventually, I wake up ‘there’, in another terrestrial reality. I guess I can say I’m awake in the Pure Land. I don’t mean that I’m dreaming. I mean I’m living in another reality just like this one, and sometimes I have full will and it’s malleable and I can create what I want, then other times I kind of lose focus and things are still malleable but are kind of created automatically, like in a dream.
There is this experience, and then there are also just straight up Out of Body Experiences, which many people have at some point, where I’ve been in this physical world (seemingly) but I’m not bound by the physical and can fly around. The things I see here are ‘real’ i.e. I’m in places that actually exist, I’m like a ghost in the physical world, but the ghost (Pure Land?) overlaps or impermeates it somehow and I see things there which are not of the physical world, which awake and living people would not see.
The key to everything is WILL. I suppose we could call it intention. I’m talking about the movement in mind where you choose to create a red rose in the mental field or have a certain thought and it’s instantly created. Ironically, if you look at it, it’s a type of desire. Therefore desire cannot be inherently bad, or you wouldn’t have any agency, there wouldn’t be any ‘you’ really. Even when you move your body, it is the same thing. You have agency over the mind and you have agency over your body. If you want to raise your arm, how do you do that, I mean what is the ‘mental movement’ that creates this? It’s the same as to visualise a red rose, WILL, or intention or wanting. Desire doesn’t cause any problem in the mind because you have dominion, you can instantly create whatever you want. Yes, you might have ‘bad’ thoughts, things come up in consciousness which you do not like and you are averse to… but look at the choice of words ‘come up’, you generally don’t WILL those, they come up spontaneously, and this is based on past conditioning. You’ve used will in the mind to create a course, or stream, of consciousness that is oft repeated, which is the way that streams are actually formed, water continues to flow the way it has before, many times by habit.
Yet the effect of will varies (in terms of time) depending on how far it is from the source (you). Like shining a torch into the darkness, if you shine it down at your feet, it is very bright. If you shine it at the trees twenty meters away, it’s wider and fainter. It you shine it up at the clouds then it has even less power.
If we think of the mind, the imagination, as a field, then the ‘closest’ to you is the visualised, and you will something and it is instantly created. You can project that into the physical world and subjectively it still exists, but the effect is delayed in the world. Will does create the world around us, the physical world we observe, but in a delayed way. If you want a ham sandwich, you have the desire and it is there in your mind, but there is dissatisfaction, because it is a physical need (of hunger) you want to satiate. So the desire makes the mental picture and the same desire moves you off the chair to go and make it and perceive it physically only you have physically made it and can now physically experience it.
It isn’t just that ham sandwich, but all your experience, is the past effect of your will. If you spent a lot of time worrying about bills and money and imagining all the scenarios of bankruptcy and unemployment and scrimping and saving — and it will shine out into the world. Now perhaps that’s some trite New Age ‘law of attraction’ thing to say, but it can also be a challenge. If you reigned the ‘land’ to be ‘pure’ your mind is a disciplined ‘Pure Land’ then would it shine into the reality you perceive? I mean, you could try this as the method is essentially choosing inner peace and happiness and if it all turns out to be BS and you don’t get abundance and prosperity, you’d just have to settle with peace and happiness, doh!
So I’ve just mentioned the law of attraction, and what I’ve explained is perhaps a Buddhist perspective on this New Age philosophy, and the answer can always be, ‘Yes, but that is a lot of grasping.’ You’re creating a mind, a will, which is desiring and grasping and striving to perceive (and possess) certain things and situations and circumstances in the world, and whether that is the case depends on one’s understanding. There is wanting and having and they are not the same. The pain is caused by the illusion that the things in the world are not mental objects, but actually IT’S ALL IMAGINATION. When you will and create abundance in the mind, without grasping, you have it, you have a state, a free emotion of abundance and gratitude and that is the end of it (if the senses are suitably disavowed).
Also, whether this ability causes bondage or freedom depends on how you are deciding to create your ‘Pure Land’, i.e. what you are populating your consciousness with. Your goals and wishes can be selfish and purely materialistic, or they can be focused on giving and others and community, and you can WILL THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF AWAKENING. The Buddhist practices focused on awakening have different methods. And so you could focus on the breath, and merely observe thoughts, and the ultimate nature of reality can be observed in the peace. When you sit on the cushion to do this, you are creating those conditions with your will. You will yourself to walk to the meditation cushion every day, then will to not will thoughts but will concentration to be on the breath and each time it wanders and past conditioning (thoughts and mental contents) comes up. You bring the attention back to the breath and the whole thing is underpinned with the will (in the form of desire and intention) that the practice will cause an ultimate awakening (enlightenment), and hopefully it will.
In essence, all methods are underpinned by the same process, holding will steady on a set creation (the desire for awakening). We can randomly examine any practice to further illustrate this. Take Tibetan prayer wheels for example. They are wheels, either held by hand that can be spun, or they are big things in the shape of a barrel on an axis mounted around the side of temples that people can walk around and spin. On the outside is carved a mantra, often the famous one that translates as ‘Hail to the jewel in the lotus’, which is Nirvanah, so the verse itself is the expression of a desire, a will, to awaken.
The wheel is spun with the intent to awaken, the belief is that by spinning this, awakening will unfold in the mind. Inside the bigger wheels, the same intention (hail to the jewel in the lotus) is written on small pieces of paper, thousands of them, and the belief is that it strengthens the intention, so each spin ‘counts’ for more, and if you spin it enough, then awakening will occur. Now, if it was about the spinning, then you could just create some machine to spin it for you It’s not really about the physical act of spinning, it’s what you are doing while you are spinning it, which is holding the steady intention over a long and repeated period.
This is the basic method of awakening if you think about it. It is underlying. Consider a few practices, perhaps koan meditation for example. A monk meditates on a riddle with no answer, which means holding an intent for a long period of time while trying to find an impossible answer, which arises when it is ready. The long intent is the wish and awakening is the answer.
Or consider Vipasanna. A meditator sits, focuses on their breath to observe, with the underlying intent to comprehend the true nature of reality. Two things are held steady, the concentration of the breath (as an anchor for the observation) and the unconscious intent of the practice. This consideration can be applied to any method of awakening, but I want to extend it to something that is not necessarily spiritual. Remembering a misplaced object.
When something goes missing and it can’t be lost as you didn’t take it anywhere and it can’t be stolen because no one has been around — it can only be misplaced. So you hold the intention to find it while you go through all the draws and cupboards and look around the floor and check your pockets, to no avail. In desperation you even check the fridge. Then you sit down and ‘rack your brains’. So you have a series of mental pictures. Your intention is to remember where you left the missing item. Your will creates mental pictures of the last time you remember having the object and you keep trying to will a picture of where you left it, but it won’t come, and so you let go with the thought, ‘It will come back to me.’ and then go about life. Next, an hour later in the shower it pops into your mind.
The point is that, there is only so much you can consciously do. When looking for something lost, will can create various mental pictures and intent can be held, so the conditions are created in the mind, as a wish or a call even, and the answer comes when it does. It emerges from something that is outside of your conscious control. You create the soil and the seed, but it sprouts when it does, but if those two things are there (intent and time) — then come it will.
Why reality and consciousness is like this depends on the perspective you want to think from. If a scientific materialist was explaining it then it would involve conscious and unconscious areas of the brain firing and communicating, though to me to consider this in a purely materialistic understanding is absurd, considering the nature of imagination. My imagination is another world where I can create anything I want, I also recreate the world ‘out there’ … ‘in here’ via sense organs. It’s a realm and a universe that i live in, how can it purely be neurons and cells and atoms? I can think of it as a Pure Land or a field that interpenetrates this reality and my brain and consciousness permeates and influences and controls. In that sense, the memory of where I left my keys, say, is somehow held in this underlying ‘light’ that makes up the imagination. Obviously, materialism is part of the picture. There can be physical injuries to the brain that mean some memories can’t be accessed, say a specific area of the brain localising short-term memory… but the memories still can’t be purely material, or the missing keys would be inside my skull!
I think this kind of thing is what the Buddha was talking about when he advised people not to dwell on impossible questions. Leave that to the research scientists; we are really doing the ultimate research in our minds, and the Buddha’s approach was always pragmatic.
This, ‘wishing and answer’ is specifically recognised and utilised in various schools of Buddhism. Pure Land Buddhism refers to tariki and jiriki. Jiriki means self-power and tariki means other-power. Schools such as Zen rely exclusively on jiriki, self-power. So they perhaps meditate with a clear mind (soto) or focus on a koan (rinzai) and awakening is the answer, and they consider this self-contained. Whereas other schools, such as Pure Land, consider the answer that comes (awakening) as tariki, other-power, meaning it, the answer, awakening, comes from outside of oneself, Amitābha, or primordial Buddha. Maybe there’s an analogy to Christian praying. Some of them believe any answer comes from an external divinity outside of oneself, yet other people have a slightly more gnostic belief, that there is a higher self that answers, but not an external self.
I think the answer to this dichotomy is, … maybe both? I mean, it’s a nonsensical question when we’re sticking to pragmatism. It’s like saying are Korea and Tanzinea the same place? Yes and no. They’re legally different countries on different teutonic plates, but they are both soil and rock on a a cooled fireball spinning through space.
When you remember where your missing keys are, does the answer come from an electron in your brain, or your personal ‘field’ of light, or are unconscious things stored in a field away from consciousness? When a person creates the conditions in the mind for awakening to arise and it does, then is it a personal Nirvanah that was already within them, or their field of consciousness joining a wider universe like a drop of water falling into the ocean? If the Buddha were here, would he want us to speculate about this or just get on with it?
How do we just ‘get on with it’ and ‘wish’ for Nirvanah? We become a myokonin, which means a person of faith and devotion, and also a ‘bright light’, which is interesting. We need to clear a space in the mind for something to grow. Recall the best known image for awakening in Buddhism, which is the lotus flower, which grows from the mud at the bottom of a pond to flower at the surface, and so the seed must be at the very bottom of the dirt. When we ’empty our light’, or hold our minds blankly, it isn’t long until all the past conditioning we have stored surfaces, thoughts, memories, emotions, feelings, sensation, it isn’t simple to just hold an intent to awake, simply.
Various tools and methods, to steady and hold concentration have been developed. I already mentioned the Tibetan prayer wheels, although the practicalities of this might not be so appealing for people outside of that cultural setting, although the spinning part is a kinesthetic movement associated with an accompanying chant.