Beyond Simplicity

Aaron Proffitt is an associate professor of Japanese studies at SUNY Albany. In his new book, Esoteric Pure Land Buddhism, he plumbs the depths of Japanese Pure Land thought. Dating mentions of Buddhist pure lands to the earliest written scriptures, he points to the school’s central role in the development of Buddhism.

Proffitt, who is also cofounder of the Albany Buddhist Sangha, offers personal insights into faith, practice, and the importance of community in Buddhist life: “The truth is that the potluck, having a beer with the minister, eating some chicken teriyaki—that’s Buddhism. That’s sangha! It’s not just what happens on the cushion.”

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In your recent book, I was taken by how integral the Pure Land is to Buddhism and, more so, to Mahayana Buddhism. It was clear that Western Buddhism has yet to reckon with that fact. What are a few common misunderstandings about Pure Land Buddhism? One of the main misconceptions is that some consider it “Buddhism for dummies,” as though it’s a simplistic or intellectually inferior practice. I’ve encountered this in a variety of ways. A few years ago, a colleague dismissively asked why I wasted time with this Pure Land stuff. Another time, a Zen seminary student in Kyoto asked the same question. But one of his senior classmates sitting with us disagreed and reminded him that all the great Chan and Zen monks were well-schooled in the Pure Land. I’ve even encountered this attitude among more notable scholars, some indifferent or openly antagonistic toward Pure Land teachings.

Another misconception is that Pure Land traditions are a strange, fringe form of Chinese Buddhism, but they are actually fundamental to Mahayana Buddhist cosmology. Mahayana literature assumes the existence of what I call the Mahayana multiverse, with diverse buddha realms into which you can go and experience firsthand the teachings of a buddha. There’s a fascinating tension—are these realms literal places, experiences you have in meditation, or expressions of the dynamic activity of enlightenment? 

Many Western Buddhists don’t know how central Pure Land thought and practices are to Mahayana Buddhism. You’ll see it in architecture and art—the giant buddha statues, the cave paintings, the gold-covered altars at temples—each is a window into the Pure Land. When I talk to people about this, they sometimes get confused because they already know such symbols and practices, but they don’t understand that the source lies with Pure Land thought. It’s woven throughout Mahayana traditions.

How did we arrive at these biases and misconceptions? Mainly through the colonial lens that 19th- and 20th-century Western scholars used when constructing their idealized version of Buddhism. They found living traditions, including Pure Land teachings, lacking. It wasn’t “real” Buddhism. This wasn’t a simple misunderstanding; it was a deliberate framing driven by colonialism, missionary work, and even plain old racism. Most of today’s popular literature on Buddhism is filtered through that lens.

These scholars created a simplistic version of Buddhism that catered to a particular demographic. As scholar Donald S. Lopez puts it, there’s a difference between the Buddha of the Lotus Sutra and the Buddha of Eugène Burnouf, the 19th-century French philologist and Indologist. Many prefer Burnouf’s Buddha because that vision of Buddhism aligns with a rational, philosophical perspective and ignores devotional practices. This is often referred to as the upper-middle way, which fits neatly into the interests of Western upper-middle-class society. This perspective can be a problem when people encounter Buddhism’s living traditions.

Japanese academic discourse has also shaped our misconceptions. After 1600, Japanese Buddhism became very sectarian, and a top-down approach from the government enforced a strict division between different schools of Buddhism. Tendai is distinct from Shingon, Pure Land is different from Zen, and so on. However, in Japan and the rest of East Asia, different forms of Buddhism overlap in practice and scriptures, with traditions borrowing from each other. This sectarian thinking had a significant impact on Western Buddhist scholarship. It reminds me of people who don’t like their food to touch—the peas go here, carrots over here, the potatoes over there. Many scholars tend to be people who don’t like their food touching. But life is messier than that; everything gets mixed up.

In Buddhism, belief seems less critical: practice, community, and ritual matter more.

What are pure lands? There is a general Buddhist assumption that a buddha purifies their sphere of influence, called a visuddhabuddhaksetra in Sanskrit, meaning pure buddha field. We get the English translation pure land through a Chinese translation of this term. 

Buddhist relics and texts are believed to manifest this purifying power, and people can tap into it. People carry Buddhist talismans or get Buddhist tattoos for protection, good luck, or good karma, or to make merit, and these draw on the purifying power of a buddha’s vast field of merit built up through countless lifetimes. 

At some point in the early Buddhist world, before the sutras were written down, some Buddhists began to believe that there were other living buddhas. Mahayana texts assume that Shakyamuni taught this, though scholars are skeptical. We can’t prove this. But, within the early Buddhist community, some people believed in other buddhas in other worlds, like a multiverse, and you can have access to them through meditation and rituals—whether it’s Akshobya, Amitabha, or others. However, just because the sutras describe these other lands does not mean that all Buddhists view them the same way.

So the idea of pure lands predates Mahayana Buddhism. That’s right. The earliest sutras that were labeled “Mahayana” already assume this understanding. Pure lands and other buddhas aren’t introduced as something new—they are assumed to exist. Whenever that development happened, it was off-camera, as it were, and by the time the sutras are written down, it’s firmly established.  As the Mahayana developed, different thinkers explored whether pure lands were literal places or represented how the mind constructs reality, or both! If I say the name of Amitabha, the focus for the most popular Pure Land traditions, will I be reborn in his pure land? Or is a pure land symbolic of this world truly understood, with Amitabha representing our buddhanature? Some texts hold both views in productive tension. Modern interpretations usually take one of two positions: Either it’s just symbolic, or it’s entirely literal. But both views detract from the diversity of Pure Land teachings and practices.

Do our everyday sensibilities have difficulty holding the symbolic and literal together? It does seem that way. We see this tension between literal and symbolic interpretations in the earliest Pure Land texts—an ability to really play with what we think we know about reality. Chinese gongans, or koans in Japanese, are doing the same thing. The point is not to explain enlightenment but to force you to confront something about your mind, about reality. Pure Land teachings are trying to do that, too, in a slightly different way by transforming the relationship between the path and attainment of awakening.

If these teachings are pervasive within the Mahayana, why are they treated as niche? I recently read an article by a Christian minister who said that people who pursue ministry frequently do so because they want to ask tough questions about their traditions and dig deep into them. But, as he pointed out, many people who come to church want the opposite. They want confirmation of what they already believe and think. I’ve encountered the same thing with my students. You can see this among some Western Buddhist convert communities. They approach Buddhism with preconceived notions of what they are supposed to get out of it, but the teachings have much that challenges those assumptions. I heard a Buddhist priest once say that instead of adapting Buddhism to the West, we should think about adapting the West to Buddhism. This applies to practice too—rather than asking how Buddhism fits our lifestyle, we should ask how it challenges our understanding. One reason Pure Land teachings get pushed aside is that they fundamentally challenge our preconceived ideas.

A lot of people come to Buddhism looking for a secular health-and-wellness technique or an exotic experience. So when they show up at a Pure Land temple and see a bunch of grandmas, a potluck, and kids running around, they expect something far removed from ordinary life, something transcendent. But the truth is that the potluck, having a beer with the minister, eating some chicken teriyaki—that’s Buddhism. That’s sangha! It’s not just what happens on the meditation cushion.

Pure Land sutras can also be strange or difficult to grasp because they don’t fit Western expectations. These sutras have particular ways of approaching life, death, suffering, and existence. When I teach about Pure Land sutras or the Lotus Sutra, students often find the readings to be a bit wild and weird. By week three or four, they’ve become familiar with the weirdness, but most people don’t have the opportunity to study in-depth like that. So when it initially feels unfamiliar or uncomfortable, they push it aside and move on to something else.

Is it pushed aside because it appears similar to Christian ideas of heaven? At first glance, pure lands might seem familiar to Westerners—in a negative way—resembling Christian ideas of an eternal heaven. But it’s more complex. Amitabha’s pure land is not an eternal heaven. It’s another world where people can pursue the bodhisattva path more effectively. Some see it as a place to go after death, while others believe you can access it in this life. Others see it as a meditation object, helping transform the mind to perceive purity in this world. There is a lot of diversity!

Pure Land practices also confront death directly, offering an opportunity to face impermanence, nonself, and dukkha. In our culture, many people don’t experience death until later in life, and Pure Land practices create space for conversations around death, mourning, and the very human desire for an afterlife. I’m part of the Albany Buddhist Sangha, a Pure Land community associated with the New York Buddhist Church. We get calls for funerals and deathbed counseling, services that many people need but Western dharma centers often aren’t providing. These services are central to most Buddhists. Pure Land teachings are not just about one practice but a diverse set of tools for the various stages of life, including how we deal with death.

Since Pure Land traditions represent a whole different attitude, could this make it hard for Westerners to relate to them? Possibly. Part of the issue is that Buddhist traditions are presented as something you can pluck out and study without engaging in human relationships. Pure Land communities often focus on family, the temple community, the annual cycle of events and rituals, and so forth. It’s not something you can come in, take, and leave with. You have to show up for the events and be willing to think about your relationship with others. In my case, you must be willing for a grandma to scold you when eating too many deviled eggs at the potluck. These relationships and interactions help us think about how we fit into the community and challenge our sense of self. The Buddha’s path is a shared journey about relationships and community. Pure Land communities are not about advertising a particular meditation practice but about being part of a shared experience. That’s a disconnect for Westerners expecting an isolated technique they can take away and practice alone.

I was one of those people looking for something different. When I went to Korea, lived in a temple as a novice, and experienced the hustle and bustle of temple life, it changed my understanding of sangha. Right? You might call what I first experienced “Barnes and Noble Buddhism.” I read Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac; I was on that vibe. Then I went to Boulder, Colorado, where Buddhism was a lot of tofu, green tea, and rigorous meditation, and I wasn’t quite feeling that. Then I went to Japan, and it was families, potlucks, fried chicken, drinking beer, and smoking cigarettes with the priests. I thought, OK, this is a Buddhism that could work for someone like me. I come from the rural South and like my barbecue and hanging out.

Besides the temple feasts, faith is important in Pure Land Buddhism. As someone who teaches college students and practitioners, what challenges does this pose to Western presumptions? The good old F word. I’m from Tennessee: I went to Bible study camp and was a greeter at church. I often assume people have some religious background, but many students know little about religion. Churched or unchurched, as it were, they have a limited understanding of faith. 

Pure Land intellectuals are constantly debating what to do with this word. The first Pure Land Buddhist ministers in Hawaii and California, in the late 1800s, had to figure out how to talk about this in English. The Japanese words shin and shinjin are often translated as faith, but many people think of faith as a creedal assent or a doctrinal proposition you must accept—that’s a limited way to see it. In Buddhism, belief seems less critical: practice, community, and ritual matter more. Faith grows through experience with teachings and community. I prefer confidence—a natural response to a source of truth rather than believing a doctrinal proposition.

Some ritual texts say to do such-and-such practice, have a visionary experience, and gain confidence because you’ve seen it. That’s different from saying, “Here’s a doctrine—believe it or not.” The emphasis on ritual and practice distinguishes Buddhist faith from other ideas. But two hundred years ago, these were the words available to describe Buddhism in the West. I joke that we are King James Buddhists because we borrowed language from that bible to talk about Buddhism, which might have worked then but can feel alienating now, especially for those who are not churched. 

Enlightenment is something we seek and something that seeks us, something that arises within us.

But Amitabha’s power to deliver you to a pure land when you die can’t be verified. It seems like a similar type of faith. This is part of the diversity of the Mayahana world. Many early texts mention practices to cultivate visionary experiences. These confirmatory encounters have long been part of the tradition, as are stories about visions that confirm people’s beliefs. But, yes, many people place their trust in Amitabha’s power without any such experience.

Religions are constantly evolving and internally diverse. Just as within Christianity, there are different interpretations—some focus on Jesus as the Son of God and atonement, while others, like Christian Universalists, focus on final reconciliation. There’s similar diversity within Mahayana Buddhism. Some emphasize a worldly encounter that confirms their postmortem rebirth, while others place their faith in a bodhisattva’s power.

There’s also a lot of variety in the texts. Sutras describe beings reborn in Amitabha’s pure land as experiencing jeweled trees, ponds, and magical birds, all transmitting the dharma. These miraculous things teach about emptiness and the nonarising of phenomena—it’s an expression of nirvana. In some Mahayana traditions, Amitabha is not simply an inert concept of ultimate reality but a dynamic, engaging force that reaches out to beings. Enlightenment is something we seek and something that seeks us, something that arises within us. It’s this dynamic quality of enlightenment that Pure Land Buddhism emphasizes. Ultimate reality, or the dharmakaya, is actively involved in our awakening, showing that awakening is an engaged, lived experience rather than an abstract belief.

What does Amitabha’s pure land mean to you? I like the idea of formless nirvana taking form as a compassionate means. Many people think of pure lands as something other, as distant or beyond this world. And there’s certainly value in seeing it as separate rather than immanent. For example, people experiencing suffering in Gaza might not feel that a pure land is present in this world. But there is also unity, bridging the gap between the enlightened and the unenlightened. How people negotiate that transition—from unenlightened to enlightened—is fascinating. Is it all on us? Is it all on Buddha? Or is it a dynamic interplay? Chanting the name of Amitabha can be thought of as a willed act—putting our hands together, chanting the word, and believing we can be reborn in a pure land now or in the next life. But speech depends on breath, which naturally arises and is mostly beyond our control. That’s part of what Amitabha’s power is about: understanding that what we perceive as self depends on things beyond self. It’s about recognizing that we rely on other-power beyond our self-power. 

When my kids were little, I taught them about offering items on the altar. We’d pick the best orange at the grocery store, place it on the altar, and talk about all the people whose work went into having that orange. Someone planted the seed, someone picked the fruit, another person put it in a box, and so on. There are all these causes and conditions behind it. The orange becomes a reference point for understanding this web of causes and conditions. Other-power is similar. It’s all the different factors that have to align for us to encounter the dharma: the teachers we’ve relied upon, even those we don’t know. It all points to looking beyond the self.

Is the orange on the altar the Pure Land? All of the infinite causes and conditions that bring it there are like the causes and conditions that bring us to awaking. So, yes. I knew a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist in Japan who owned an orange farm. Jodo Shinshu is the largest Buddhist school in Japan and a Pure Land tradition. Once I got close to his family, he would send crates of oranges to our house. I didn’t have to buy oranges for the rest of the year! I had a strong sense of gratitude and connection. This reliance on others has been a key insight Pure Land Buddhism has given me. I focus less on my practice and more on becoming aware of my relationships with others. The Pure Land, as the place where enlightenment happens, ties into this—it’s about understanding dependence on others, which is another way of expressing no-self. It’s not me doing the practice; instead, I’m participating in a practice that is always in motion.