This issue causing much unhappiness is that, one, we are too far from the light (Pure Land) and the other is that the Pure Land isn’t so pure (aka our minds run amok). There’s a stage in practice, or perhaps a journey, where emotions, feelings and states are less and less the result of outer contact i.e. a reaction or trigger based on something the senses perceived, to a state based on a willed, chosen inner object, scenario or world, and ultimately resting alone in the sublime abiding of pure states.
The observed world needs to be disavowed. It is the dead past, any way you look at it. It’s perceived by the senses as photons on the retina and pressure on the nerves and vibrations of the ear hammer and recreated in the imagination to reflect something it, the mind, is imagining ‘out there’. All of existence, for most people, is based on this imagination-created out there with scant regard to the imagination-created ‘in-here’ and of course IT’S ALL IMAGINATION, out there really is in here. OUT THERE IS IN HERE. When you practice any form of Nembutsu you are withdrawing attention from the dead dream to the alive now, and you can always be playing with reality, whatever you are doing.
You can be trapped in some awful place, say waiting for a late bus, and an inner-you is relaxing in a beautiful garden, and you can practice being very aware of both worlds. Locate the garden world and project it; give it cubic reality. You are on the harsh plastic chair of a fast food restaurant surrounded by cheap fat smells … 10%, and 90% is on a garden lounger, smelling flowers and hearing birdsong not piped music. The cheap cola you are sipping is actually a perfect glass of ice tea. The way you are feeling needs to be from the real world, the imaginary one, not the dead world your eyes can see. It feels like a game but it is reality. Push it out and give it cubic reality, the cold glass is to your left and the birdsong is coming from that bush to your right.
SEE WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE. You’re always in double vision. You see with your physical eyes and you see with your spiritual eyes, at the same time and you put all the credence and validity on your physical eyes when they are showing you a past, dead world. Resee what you want. Rehear what you want. If someone is telling you bad news, hear good news with your inner ear and feel accordingly. Filter the false and dead and lying world you are dreaming to be the world you need it to be. Dwell in the state that you choose to dwell in.
You are always ‘feeding the light’ or ‘creating your land’, so create a Pure Land. When you see something bad, a friend in poverty, a perception of them is created, from outside to inside as your mind recreates what it thinks it sees and now the poverty is on the inside, WHEN YOU ALLOW IT.
Why do you allow this dead lie to recreate itself within you when the land within is yours? See them with your spiritual eyes as rich, healthy, happy and successful, and this is what they are in your light, and YOUR LIGHT IS ALWAYS SHINING OUT. You need to revise every negative thing that the senses want to report. They can report it but you don’t allow the recreation of pain or sadness when you have a WILL, when you are the master of your inner world, it is you, your divine will that is creating your Pure Land in every moment.