Someplace Better
Summer is the time for vacations and getting away. Weekends can also be such a time. We long for those breaks in our busy lives and work routines, even family routines. Escape, that’s what some are looking for.
I myself am guilty of longing for someplace different. I do not like hot weather, not one bit. I do like cold rainy weather though, and these long hot summer days really start to take their toll on me. I long to be able to live in a place where it gets much colder, where there is plenty of snow, and even much more rain.
Another place where this idea of escape comes out is when people die. I have often heard, especially when I am working in the hospital, that someone has gone on to a ‘better place.”
Regardless of your personal views about a next life or the existence of heaven what we learn in the Lotus Sutra and in other of the Buddha’s teachings is that this place we occupy now is actually a wonderful beautiful and peaceful place. This place we are in is capable of being the Buddha’s Pure Land, depending upon our mind condition.
“The perverted people think: ‘This world is in a great fire. The end of the kalpa of destruction is coming.’” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter XVI)
I think it is partly our learned nature to think that there must be someplace better than where we are, especially when we are facing some difficulty. I wonder though, if the cave man thought like that? Is it partly due to an increase in awareness of options? I don’t know for sure, but it is interesting to consider.
At any rate, getting back to the sutra, it says that because of the way we think, the way we view our world, misunderstanding, can taint our experiences. The perverted people here, is not speaking about what we may immediately consider perversions, it is referring to not seeing things as they really are.
“The good men or women who hear of my longevity of which I told you, and understand it by firm faith, will be able to see that I am expounding the Dharma on Mt. Grdhrakuta, surrounded by great Bodhisattvas and Sravakas. They also will be able to see that the ground of this Saha-World is made of lapis lazuli, that the ground is even, that the eight roads are marked off by ropes of jambunada gold, that the jewelled trees are standing in lines, and that the magnificent buildings are made of treasures.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter XVII)
What the Buddha says here and elsewhere in the Lotus Sutra, is that when we have faith in and believe in the truth of the Lotus Sutra, we can begin to see other possibilities in our lives.
The Buddha teaches in Chapter 16 that his life is really eternal, that he neither appears nor does he disappear. That also says that the Buddha within our lives is not something that is not there one moment and then there another moment. The condition or potential for our own enlightenment is always existing, always present. So too is the manifestation of the Buddha Land, the perfect place to be.
There is no other place to go to that will fundamentally, at its core, be better than the place we are currently occupying. All of the difficulties we face that are at the core of our lives, at the core of our nature will always be wherever we are. Our prejudices, our inclinations, our beliefs do not change because we live some other place.
When we make the fundamental changes at the core of our lives, when we can manifest the Buddha at the core of our lives then this place we live in will be transformed and we will see the manifestation of the Buddha’s Pure Land in our lives.
If where you are is not the Pure Land of the Buddha, the consider that perhaps the Buddha isn’t there. If you perceive your land to be other than the Buddha’s Pure Land then you are not viewing it with the Buddha’s pure eyes.
“When he obtains this truth, his eyes will be purified. With his purified eyes, he will be able to see seven billion and two hundred thousand million nayuta Buddhas or Tathagatas, that is, as many Buddhas as there are sands in the River Ganges. At that time those Buddhas will praise him, saying simultaneously from afar, ‘Excellent, excellent, good man!” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter XXIII)
