MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
John Paraskevopoulos
Thirst
When we consider the world around us and the way we lead our lives, we see that there is much restlessness behind the multitude of desires and distractions that take up so much of our all-too-brief existence on this planet. Despite the great abundance of material goods in our society and the comfort they provide we somehow feel that all is not well with us. And despite our capacity to satisfy many physical desires through ever-burgeoning means, we often feel empty and emotionally dissatisfied even after we consider ourselves satiated with ease and pleasure. It is as if true happiness, true joy and true fulfilment somehow elude us despite our best efforts to secure it. Why is this so ? Could it be that we are looking in the wrong place ? Are we entrusting ourselves in the wrong set of values ?
The Buddha gave many sermons on the
unsatisfactoriness
or duhkha of life and endeavoured to explain the reason behind this. He considered that craving or desire lied at the root of our existence as human beings and that it was only in the release from this craving that one could attain true liberation from sorrow. In this world, we crave many things; fame, wealth, health, power, pleasure etc. The problem is that we pursue things that are unable to give us what we are really looking for. It is like constantly being thirsty and yet finding that everything one drinks (which we thought would give us relief) only makes us thirstier. In his famous Fire Sermon, the Buddha described the world as being aflame with the fires of anger, greed and stupidity also known as the
three poisons
. These harmful passions are what we take to quench our existential fire only to discover that these fires are fuelled and intensified, not extinguished. Thus our sufferings, anxieties and miseries continue unabated as we stumble from poison to poison without any idea of where the antidote might be found.
The world is studded with uncertainties. We do not know what misfortune may befall us like a thunder bolt or whether we will even live to see the end of this day. All goods are relative and finite and cannot satisfy our deepest aspirations. What is this aspiration ? What is the true goal of our life ? The answer of the Buddha was: enlightenment the complete eradication of our defiled passions and the perfection of our human nature. In other words, becoming beings of the highest wisdom and compassion or attaining Nirvana.
Nirvana, popularly described as the
Pure Land
, is the eternal realm of utmost peace and bliss our true
home
which is not of this world. Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light and Eternal Life, which is the personal dimension of the reality we call Nirvana, is that on which we depend to carry us safely from this stormy and turbid ocean of birth-and-death or samsara, to the blessed shores of the Pure Land where we will unfailingly attain enlightenment and become Buddhas ourselves.
By entrusting ourselves completely to the power of Amida Buddha, who is the ultimate reality, we are enabled to reach our destination something we are unable to accomplish with our own limited and deeply flawed natures. Although Shin Buddhism teaches that the Pure Land cannot be reached until the moment of death, the realization here and now that our imperfect selves are unconditionally embraced by the Buddha's light and that we will, without fail, enter his boundless ocean of wisdom and compassion, fills us with constant joy. We are freed, once and for all, from the fiery shackles of this world and are granted a vision of a greater reality bereft of the three poisons and the manifold sufferings that follow in their trail. Indeed, it is only the soothing draught of Amida's water of liberation that can truly satisfy our deepest thirst and dispel all our illusory cravings.