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:
“We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“The first day that we landed upon that fatal shore
The planters they came round us full twenty score or more,
They rank’d us up like horses, and sold us out of hand
Then yok’d us unto ploughs, my boys, to plow Van
Dieman’s Land.”
—Unknown. Van Dieman’s Land (l. 9–12)