DHARMA IN EVERYDAY LIFE

By Nhat Quan

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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:

- In the usual sense:

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.

- According to the spirit of self-nature:

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.

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.

As you know, Buddhists often pray to live healthy and peaceful lives. If you die, you will be reborn in the pure land.

Gone: dead, lost.

Born: alive, still alive.

Gone and born is simply rebirth in the pure land, and can often be understood on two levels as above:

- In the usual sense:

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.

- According to the spirit of self-nature::

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.

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.

Thus, if you want to practice the Pure Land method, you must have:

- Faith, Prayer, Action,

Depending on you and your intelligence, it has compatible meanings, in which Action plays a central role.

In the usual sense:

1- Trust.

- 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

- 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.

- You believe in the real Law of Cause and Effect and your ability to implement it.

2- Prayer.

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.

3- Actions.

You practice reciting the Buddha's name, which is reciting (remembering) the Buddha's name:

- Namo Medicine Master Lapis lazuli Buddha,

You should try to keep your mind from wandering, in the following 3 ways:

- Reciting Buddha's name (also known as chanting Buddha's name):

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.

- Contemplation of Buddha statues:

What this means is that you chant the name Medicine Buddha while contemplating the image of Medicine Buddha.

- Contemplation of Buddha's name:

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.

Reciting Buddha's name in the above 3 forms is called:

- Reciting the Buddha's name samadhi

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:

- 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.

- 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.

Or:

- Reciting Buddha's name once will bring immeasurable blessings. If you bow to Buddha once, you can eliminate countless sins.

- According to the spirit of self-nature::

You are objects with identity and reason. The practice method is less dependent on religious forms, rituals, etc. And broader behaviors, such as:

1- Believe according to the spirit of self-nature:

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:

- Impermanence, Selflessness in all things,

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.

The effect of enlightenment on the truth of Dependent Origination is the root cause of eliminating afflictions, such as eliminating:

- Greed, anger, ignorance.

Indeed, in the Anguttara Sutra 4, p. 264-265. Once, the Buddha preached to Anathapindika about the merits of offerings. Buddha said:

- 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.

- Having greater merit than building a monastery is taking the Three Refuges: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

- Having greater merit than receiving the three refuges is keeping the five precepts.

- Greater merit than keeping the five precepts is keeping in mind Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity even for a moment.

- But there is the greatest merit of all, which is to deeply contemplate the principles of Dependent Origination, Impermanence, and Selflessness of all things.

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.

* Sunlight Bodhisattva

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.

* Moonlight Bodhisattva

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.

Four icons:

- Kindness, Compassion, Wisdom, and Equality.

Because you have kindness and compassion, you love all sentient beings

In kindness and compassion, there is always wisdom, so love is not blind.

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.

2- Pray according to your nature.

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.

You should Remember:

- 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:

- Kindness: This is to vow to save sentient beings, achieve noble happiness, and admire the noble happiness of sentient beings.

- Compassion: Vow to save sentient beings, overcome lowly suffering, and sympathize with the lowly suffering of sentient beings.

- 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.

3- Conduct according to self-nature:

You understand that the Medicine Master is as follows:

- 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.

- Medicine Master also means Peaceful Mind, which implies the Buddha's wisdom and realization of the truth, which has timeless value.

- 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.

Reciting the Buddha's name as just mentioned is called:

- Reciting Buddha's Paramitas.

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.

For that when speaking

- Reborn in the Pure Land of Medicine Master:

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:

- Greed, anger, ignorance

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.

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.

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:

- Love the beautiful, hate the ugly...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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