Creation of a Pure Land

The inspiration for this post came from a short exchange over at Echoes of the Name where a friend spoke of his practice as "orientated towards Amida’s pureland, while trying to make our own world come to reflect that land as much as possible". His words were just part of a short greeting and so I have no idea precisely what he meant by this, however it did get me thinking about my own - Jodo Shinshu based - understanding of 'creating a Pure Land'.

My feeling is that the Pure Land is not something over and above this world, cannot be treated as a model, and does not come into being in a straight-forward causal manner. Indeed if I were to mistakenly suppose an absolute duality between this world and the Pure Land, and seek to bring the former into line with the latter, the Pure Land that I would have in mind would be nothing more than a projection of my own desire and would be liable to cause me to wreak havoc and harm within my actual life-world. In contrast the real Pure Land is not something that I can make, model or create but something that appears when the boundaries of self and other are overcome in spiritual encounter. Rev. Kenryo Kanamatsu expresses this beautifully in his book Naturalness:

"True spirituality is calmly balanced in strength, in the correlation or rather identity of within and without. It is in the world of relativity and duality, and at the same time above it. The spiritual world is at once of duality and of unity, of distinction and of non-distinction, and for this reason Karma is no-Karma (akarma) as well as Karma itself.

... true striving in our daily life consists not in the neglect of action but in the effort to attune it closer and closer to the Eternal Harmony. That is to say, the self is to dedicate itself to the Universal Spirit through all its activities ... Joy reigns when all work becomes the path to the union with Amida; when our self offering grows more and more intense. Then there is freedom. Then there is naturalness in our everyday work. We become no more troubled with Karma, for we identify ourselves with it. We never fall into causality, because we are already it. Indeed suffering is no doubt suffering, but we have absorbed it in our spiritual consciousness where all such things as take place on the plane of sense and understanding find their proper meaning in harmony with the eternal scheme of the Universe. Joy expresses itself through the law of causality. The saving beam of Amida's smile of compasion is seen shining through the night of gloom. The world with all its sufferings, shortcomings, and dualities, becomes one with the spiritual world. Then in this world comes the Pure Land of Amida. This is the meaning of Sukhavati-vyuha - the embellishment (vyuha) of the Pure Land (Sukhavati)." (World Wisdom 2002, p.117-119)

At certain times I've had the good fortune to find myself within that field of embellishment due to the work of other people. However I feel that it's very important for me to appreciate that the source of that great living or great practice (daigyo), that I witness in the lives of Dharma-friends, is not a self-willed remodelling of this world according to a vision of the next but rather an utterly sincere and devotional engagement with this-world, flowing out from an awakened gratitude on the part of each individual toward their own karmic reality (past good, jp. shukuzen).