‘Among all living things mountains and rivers, grasses and trees, even the sounds of blowing winds and rising waves — there is nothing that is not the nembutsu.’
Ippen
Pure Land Buddhism
Morning meditation — The difficulty starts with interpretations.
‘The difficulty starts with interpretations of Amida’s power. Some believe you have to repeatedly say the nembutsu; others believe you only have to say it once.
Ippen said you only have to say it once, but with a pure heart!’
Ippen
Morning meditation — For the First Time.
‘Here for the first time this struck my heart, and realising the nature of birth-and-death, I grasped the essence of the Buddha-dharma.’
Ippen
Ippen’s Pure Land
Pure Land Buddhism is one of the major schools in the East, yet has hardly made a dent here. I remember once hearing it being described as too ‘Christian’ for Westerners, yet almost all of the other schools encompass the notion of a Pure Land in some way or other. Even in Theravada the three Refuges can easily be interpreted in a Pure Land way. The very essence of it is that one is taking refuge…
Land of the Disappearing Buddha
This is an old film about Buddhism in Japan, but well worth watching.
Buddhism now 