There are various stories about the origin of the Pureland style of practice. Some say that originally the practice was a purely mental exercise and that only later did the verbal nembutsu become the preferred form, but I think this is wrong. My own impression is that the origin of the style of practice, the nembutsu style of practice, goes right back to the time of Buddha himself, of Shakyamuni Buddha, or at least to the time immediately after his death.
When the Buddha died, his body was cremated and the relics, the ashes, were divided and put into stupas. These are reliquaries, monuments in different parts of India. And these reliquaries, these stupas, became places of pilgrimage. People who revered the great sage would go to these places; and the way of worshipping, the way of showing respect, was to circumambulate the stupa and to do so while chanting the name of the person in the stupa, in this case Buddha.
I think it was a very ancient practice, it probably predates Buddhism by a long way. This was how people showed their respect to a great saint, a great sage, and the Buddha clearly was a hugely popular sage in his own time. So, many, many people would go there and they would chant the name of the Buddha. They would call on the Buddha and they would wish for the Buddha’s spirit to stay in world for a long time. Even though the Buddha’s body may have died, his influence, his spirit should live on and should extend over all worlds. This would be the longing of those who had been affected by him. He had changed the lives of so many people; and they were all full of gratitude and, of course, full of grief when he departed.
So, I think this is the origin, and this means that what we might call walking meditation or walking and chanting is a fundamental practice of Buddhism and has been there from the very beginning. The bhikkhus were used to walking. They walked from place to place, and the whole spirit of Buddhist life is one of walking barefoot in the world, defenseless, open, openhearted, going from place to place spreading the Dharma; and so, the symbolism of walking to the shrine of the sage, walking around the shrine of the sage, this all makes perfect sense to the people of that time and it still makes sense today.
Pureland Buddhism is not a Buddhism of particularly sitting still on a cushion. It’s a Buddhism of being on one’s feet, on the march.
My first encounter with a Pureland Buddhist temple was in New York. I was walking down Riverside and there was a statue of a figure, and I thought: “That looks Buddhist!” and so, I went in and, sure enough, it was a Pureland Buddhist temple; and the figure outside was a figure of Shinran. Shonin – the great teacher of Pureland, disciple of Honen, propagator of the teaching in Japan, and it’s a statue of him on his feet walking across the countryside.
Pureland Buddhism is an active form of Buddhism. It’s an in-the-world form of Buddhism. It’s a Buddhism of spreading the Dharma in the midst of this world’s conditions.
So, we go forth, we walk, we say the nembutsu. This is the style of Pureland Buddhism.
Thank you very much
Namo Amida Bu
Dharmavidya
David
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