Pure Land Buddhism (simplified Chinese: 净土宗; traditional Chinese: 淨土宗; pinyin: Jìngtǔzōng; Japanese: 浄土仏教, Jōdo bukkyō; Korean: 정토종, jeongtojong; Vietnamese: Tịnh Độ Tông), also referred to as Amidism in English, is a broad branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism and currently one of the most popular traditions of Buddhism in East Asia. Pure Land is a branch of Buddhism focused on Amitābha Buddha. The term is used to describe both the Pure Land soteriology of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which may be better understood as Pure Land traditions, and the separate Pure Land sects that developed in Japan; in other countries and times, it formed part of the basis of Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions.
Pure Land oriented practices and concepts are found within basic Mahāyāna Buddhist cosmology, and form an important component of the Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Tibet. In Japan, however, Pure Land Buddhism also became an independent school in its own right as can be seen in the Jōdo-shū and Jōdo Shinshū schools.
Read more about Pure Land Buddhism: Early History, The Pure Land, Meditation, Going To The Pure Land, Pure Land Concepts in Tibet
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“But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,
Thou pure impiety and impious purity!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 28:12.
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)