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DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE
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- MEANING OF PURE LAND
- MEDICINE MASTER
By Nhat Quan
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---o0o---
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The word Pure
Land is also called Buddha Land, which is a clean and peaceful
land. Accordingly, the pure land is often understood on the
following two levels:
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- In the usual
sense:
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Pure Land is
understood as an external environment with a certain
geographical location. For example, in ten Ganga-nadi-valuka
Buddha realms away from the Saha world, there is a world
called Eastern Bliss, the leader of that realm is Medicine
Buddha, and that realm is pure and peaceful.
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According to the spirit
of self-nature:
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Pure Land is
understood as a state of inner purity and joy. In this sense,
Pure Land is also considered a state of One Mind Undisturbed.
It means living in the Saha world but not being polluted by
the world.
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As the Mahayana
Buddhist tradition tells you, each Pure Land is the country of
a Buddha, and since there are countless Buddhas, there are
countless Pure Lands. However, you hear the Venerables remind
you the most that Amitabha Buddha's Pure Land is in the West,
ten thousand billion Buddha lands away from the Saha world.
The Pure Land of the Medicine Buddha in the East is ten
thousand billion Buddha lands away from the Saha world.
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As you know,
Buddhists often pray to live healthy and peaceful lives. If
you die, you will be reborn in the pure land.
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Gone: dead,
lost.
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Born: alive,
still alive.
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Gone and born is
simply rebirth in the pure land, and can often be understood
on two levels as above:
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- In the usual
sense:
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Rebirth in the
pure land is understood as a person who is reborn in the pure
land, that is, you rebirth to a clean and happy external world
after death.
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According to the spirit
of self-nature::
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Rebirth in the
pure land is understood as an inner state in the present life,
when you let go of attachment, the purity and happiness that
is the pure land naturally manifests. Therefore, this pure
land is called: the Pure Land of Present Time.
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Superbirth is
synonymous with Rebirth. Accordingly, the Pure Land of
Transcendence is also the Pure Land of Rebirth, which means
the escape from being passive in the cycle of birth and death.
This also implies that you have the inner transformation from
Consciousness to Wisdom, which is exactly the perfect pure
land, or Nirvana.
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Thus, if you
want to practice the Pure Land method, you must have:
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- Faith, Prayer,
Action,
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Depending on you
and your intelligence, it has compatible meanings, in which
Action plays a central role.
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In the usual
sense:
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1- Trust.
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- You believe in
the Medicine Buddha, the Physician of Physicians, with the
ability to heal physical and mental illnesses. And Pure Land
Medicine Master is a good, ideal realm. After leaving the body
of your parents, you want to be born in this Pure Land
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- You believe in
Medicine Buddha's 12 prayers for the safety of sentient
beings, and he will guide you to Medicine Buddha's Pure Land
or any Pure Land in the ten directions you want.
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- You believe in
the real Law of Cause and Effect and your ability to implement
it.
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2- Prayer.
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If you have a
sincere desire to be reborn in Medicine Master's Pure Land,
you must get rid of all the impurities of attachment and
resentment of the earthly world, and at the same time be
determined to study and do good deeds... and live a happy and
peaceful life.
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3- Actions.
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You practice
reciting the Buddha's name, which is reciting (remembering)
the Buddha's name:
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- Namo Medicine
Master Lapis lazuli Buddha,
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You should try
to keep your mind from wandering, in the following 3 ways:
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- Reciting
Buddha's name (also known as chanting Buddha's name):
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You recite the
name Medicine Buddha out loud, or you can recite it silently,
or you can gently move your lips anywhere, anytime, and in
every position of walking, standing, lying down, or sitting.
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- Contemplation
of Buddha statues:
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What this means
is that you chant the name Medicine Buddha while contemplating
the image of Medicine Buddha.
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- Contemplation
of Buddha's name:
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As you chant the
name of Medicine Buddha, in your mind, you think of the 32
good signs and 80 beauties of Medicine Buddha, radiating light
to cure diseases for sentient beings.
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Reciting
Buddha's name in the above 3 forms is called:
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- Reciting the
Buddha's name samadhi
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When you are in
the Samadhi of reciting Buddha's name, your supernormal
abilities when reciting Buddha's name have the effect of each
sentence:
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- Reciting the
Buddha's name can eliminate eighty million eons of serious
sins of birth and death, and gain eighty million eons of
wonderful merit.
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- When you die,
you have not yet decided where to be reborn, but knowing the
name Medicine Master, eight great Bodhisattvas will
immediately guide you to wherever you want to go.
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Or:
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- Reciting
Buddha's name once will bring immeasurable blessings. If you
bow to Buddha once, you can eliminate countless sins.
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- According to
the spirit of
self-nature::
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You are objects
with identity and reason. The practice method is less
dependent on religious forms, rituals, etc. And broader
behaviors, such as:
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1- Believe according
to the spirit of self-nature:
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It is the belief
and understanding that the Pure Land of Medicine Master is the
Pure Land that exists within your mind. It is a pure world
formed from a deep sense of equality and good fate:
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- Impermanence,
Selflessness in all things,
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In other words,
Duoc Su's pure land is the pure world formed from the
enlightenment of the truth of Dependent Origination in all
things. This truth is often transmitted by Northern Buddhism
as Emptiness, Buddha nature, and in Pure Land Buddhism is
specifically called Medicine Master's self-nature.
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The effect of
enlightenment on the truth of Dependent Origination is the
root cause of eliminating afflictions, such as eliminating:
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- Greed, anger,
ignorance.
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Indeed, in the
Anguttara Sutra 4, p. 264-265. Once, the Buddha preached to
Anathapindika about the merits of offerings. Buddha said:
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- Making
offerings to Buddha and Sangha has great merit. But there is
greater than merit in making offerings to Buddha and Sangha is
building a monastery for monks to live in and study.
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- Having greater
merit than building a monastery is taking the Three Refuges:
Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
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- Having greater
merit than receiving the three refuges is keeping the five
precepts.
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- Greater merit
than keeping the five precepts is keeping in mind Kindness,
Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity even for a moment.
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- But there is
the greatest merit of all, which is to deeply contemplate the
principles of Dependent Origination, Impermanence, and
Selflessness of all things.
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To show the
realism and vitality of the Pure Land of Medicine Master, with
the four symbols of Kindness, Compassion, Wisdom, and
Equality, it has been shown in this world, through the images
of two Bodhisattvas: That is Sunlight Bodhisattva and
Moonlight Bodhisattva.
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* Sunlight
Bodhisattva
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Sunlight is the
light that passes every day in the sky, bringing life to all
living things. Without sunlight, humans, plants, and animals
cannot survive.
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* Moonlight
Bodhisattva
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If there is a
time when the bright sunlight nourishes all life, then the
light of the moon comforts and quietly nourishes people,
plants, and all things in peaceful sleep.
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Four icons:
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- Kindness,
Compassion, Wisdom, and Equality.
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Because you have
kindness and compassion, you love all sentient beings
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In kindness and
compassion, there is always wisdom, so love is not blind.
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Because of you
have wisdom, one loves everyone equally regardless of near or
far, familiar or unfamiliar... From there, it leads to a pure
inner mind of an enlightened and liberated person. This
implies always being pure from the disturbances and impurities
of the world and not being separated from the world with the
noble vows of Kindness, compassion, Wisdom, and equality.
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2- Pray
according to your nature.
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According to the
spirit of self-nature, you always direct your mind to the
content of True Form is Formless, which is the realization of
the truth that Impermanence is the phenomenon, and
Selflessness is the nature of all things.
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You should
Remember:
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- Formlessness
does not mean that all things have no form, but rather the
realization that the form of all things does not exist.
Similar to Anatta, it does not mean that there is no self, but
that the self does not exist. From this understanding of the
True Form, Kindness, Compassion, and Wisdom emerged as
emotional and rational substances that are not entangled in
life. Kindness, Compassion, and Wisdom are specified as
follows:
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- Kindness: This
is to vow to save sentient beings, achieve noble happiness,
and admire the noble happiness of sentient beings.
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- Compassion:
Vow to save sentient beings, overcome lowly suffering, and
sympathize with the lowly suffering of sentient beings.
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- Intelligence:
Creativity or selective tolerance of viewpoints and behaviors
for all actions, by the principles: Benefit yourself and
others, don't benefit yourself at the expense of others, don't
benefit others at the expense of yourself, don't harm both
yourself and others.
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3- Conduct
according to self-nature:
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You understand
that the Medicine Master is as follows:
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- Medicine
Master means Body's Longevity, meaning that the body's life is
the same as the Dharma nature of realizing the truth of the
Buddha, which has true value beyond all space.
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- Medicine
Master also means Peaceful Mind, which implies the Buddha's
wisdom and realization of the truth, which has timeless value.
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- Medicine
Master also means Unobstructed Equality. When you practice
reciting Buddha's true form, that is reciting self-nature,
specifically reciting impermanence, non-self, the objective
truth of dependent origination in all things.
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Reciting the
Buddha's name as just mentioned is called:
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- Reciting
Buddha's Paramitas.
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That is,
Reciting the Buddha's Wisdom. It can also be seen that
Reciting Buddha's Wisdom still contains Concentration, which
is the Right Concentration. Buddhism in this form represents
philosophy, with the characteristics of the Pure Land realized
by the material nature of the Social Medicine Master.
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For that when
speaking
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- Reborn in the
Pure Land of Medicine Master:
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That is Rebirth
in the Pure Land in reality, or Rebirth in the present Pure
Land. This can be understood as every moment in life, every
time you lose your inner attachment to:
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- Greed, anger,
ignorance
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From penetrating
the truth of Dependent Origination, which is impermanence and
non-self, inner peace will immediately be revealed, and at the
same time dedicated to doing social charity work to save
suffering and bring peace to sentient beings.
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Thus, practicing
and cultivating Faith, Prayer, and Action contains emotions
and reason, as a process of human development from birth,
connecting with distinctions, i.e., emotions, and then
learning to understand, i.e., emotions are the reason.
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In the symbolic
pure land stage, Buddhism is like a religion, and like other
religions, because this is the symbol that the majority of
humanity tends to always:
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- Love the
beautiful, hate the ugly...
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Whether things
are beautiful, good, or bad, they are fragile things that
exist. These emotional people need to be guided to improve
their objective awareness and gradually step into the pure
land of reality. When entering the real pure land, you will
use your wisdom to gradually unravel the previously fabricated
beliefs that you have temporarily borrowed to advance to a
more transcendent Pure Land, which is the realm of liberation
completely.
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In short,
talking about the meaning of Pure Land Medicine Master,
Buddhism is both a religion and a human philosophy and this is
also the point where Buddhism is different from other
religions. Because most other religions only use reason in
every way to consolidate and tighten colorful religious
beliefs, instead of purging them, to bring people to the shore
of true freedom.
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Both religious
and philosophical viewpoints of Buddhist teachings have
skillfully complemented each other to form a Realistic Pure
Land viewpoint. And there people can realize and enjoy truly
boundless happiness.
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The issue of
Pure Land and Buddha's name is fundamental and has been
mentioned in the Pali Sutras of Southern Buddhism as well as
Northern Buddhism. Praying for rebirth does not mean waiting
for anyone's guidance, but it must be your self-reliance right
now, and here in this life, you enjoy happiness immediately.
---o0o---
If you have any recommendations,
please e-mail to:
chuaduocsu@duocsu.org
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