A Pure Land, in Mahayana Buddhism, is the celestial realm or pure abode of a Buddha or Bodhisattva. The term "pure land" is particular to the Chinese (Ch. 净土, jìngtǔ) and related East Asian traditions; in Sanskrit the equivalent concept is called the "Buddha field" (Skt. buddha-kṣetra). The various traditions that focus on Pure Lands have been given the nomenclature Pure Land Buddhism. Pure lands are also evident in the literature and traditions of Taoism and Bön.
The notion of 'pure lands' was inherited from other Dharmic Traditions already evident in the Dharma. The notion of a pure land may have evolved from the Uttarakuru, a divine continent in ancient Dharmic cosmology. The pure realms are all accessible through experiential meditation and trance sadhana.
Read more about Pure Land: Discussion, Five Pure Abodes, The Source, Śuddhāvāsa Worlds, Sukhavati, Other Well-known Pure Lands, Field of Merit, Mandala
Famous quotes containing the words pure and/or land:
“Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake,
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season’s youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep ‘neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“Beluthahatchee is a country where all unpleasant doings and sayings are forgotten, a land of forgiveness and forgetfulness. When a woman accusingly reminds her man of something in the past, he replies, ‘I thought that was in Beluthahatchee.’ Or a person may say to another, to dismiss some matter, “Oh, that’s in Beluthahatchee.’”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)