The hidden land

 

“Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet? From Sukhavati to the Field of Great Bliss” is a short scholarly article by Matthew T Kapstein, published in “Approaching the Land of Bliss. Religious Praxis in the Cult of Amitabha”, edited by Richard K Payne and Kenneth K Tanaka. The collection is from 2004.

Amitabha Buddha is a bodhisattva or cosmic buddha worshipped almost as a god in Mahayana Buddhism. In contrast to Siddharta Gautama (the original Buddha and founder of Buddhism), Amitabha is not a historical figure, although he is said to have been a human being in some prior world or eon. Today, Amitabha is said to preside over a paradise-world known as Sukhavati or the Pure Land in the West, sometimes interpreted as an actual location, sometimes esoterically as the pure mind of the Buddhist practitioner. In Japan, Pure Land Buddhism is a sectarian phenomenon, with several competing denominations. In the rest of the East Asia world, Pure Land practices are part of a broader Mahayanist matrix. Kapstein´s study centers on Tibet, usually not associated with Pure Land Buddhism - at least not among Westerners, who are presumably more into the Dalai Lama, Dzogchen and what not.

It turns out that Amitabha and Sukhavati are fairly important for popular Tibetan piety, something the author realized already in 1973, when he was trekking in a Nepalese valley inhabited by ethnic Tibetans. The poor monks and laypeople talked about their hope of rebirth in Sukhavati essentially all the time. A bizarre detail is that the poor and God-forsaken valley was considered a “hidden land”, something akin to Shamballa, by *other* Tibetans! But apparently only those with “pure vision” can see this…

The rest of the article is a deep dive into various Tibetan literary remains to find evidence for the Amitabha cult and Sukhavati beliefs. Amitabha was often worshipped as part of a “trinity” also including Avalokiteshvara and Padmasambhava. Indeed, the two latter were sometimes seen as manifestations of the former. One intriguing belief was that the dead person´s soul would traverse a number of other paradise-worlds before reaching the Pure Land. Thus, in Indra´s heaven, he would be instructed in the Dharma, the Vedic god Indra in this version being a Buddhist! Upon finally reaching Sukhavati, the deceased is warned against its delights, since these might impede him from reaching nirvana. There are also beliefs according to which Sukhavati can be reached by anyone, including the stupid common people, while other pure lands are for advanced practitioners only. This vision of the afterlife contrasts sharply with the one found in “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, where the soul is admonished not to enter any of the worlds that appear in the afterlife state, since none of them leads to liberation.

One thing that may surprise the informed reader is that Pure Land practices were prominent in Tantrism. There are Tantric prayers, rituals and visualization techniques centered on Amitabha and rebirth in Sukhavati. These are usually associated with the traditions known as Nyingma and Kagyu. One important practice was “transference”, a secret technique whereby the soul of a dying Tantric practitioner could be forcefully ejected from the body and sent into a pure land, where enlightenment would be swiftly attained. Soon, public rituals appeared whereby the soul of an already deceased person (I assume this was *not* a Tantrika) could supposedly be sent to some pure land. In general, the Tantric masters seem to have promoted devotion to Amitabha and the goal of rebirth in Sukhavati among both monks and the laity. The “treasure texts” (termas), new Tantric revelations mysteriously found in caves, contained Amitabha-centered rituals. Apparently, there is even a connection between alchemical longevity rituals and the cult of Amitabha, but the author doesn´t elaborate on this point.

Tibetan Pure Land practices have been studied by Japanese scholars, but hardly ever by English-speaking ones, presumably because of the somewhat idiosyncratic Western takes on Tibetan Buddhism. This may explain why this material looks so “obscure”, almost a kind of hidden land, when in fact it describes what is apparently a wide-spread religious praxis among Tibetans.