Treasures of Buddhism by Frithjof Schuon

Author:Frithjof Schuon [Schuon, Frithjof]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936597598
Publisher: World Wisdom
Published: 2018-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Amidism, which was taught in China by Tan-Luan, Tao-Cho, and Shan-Tao, then in Japan by Honen and Shinran, appears in some respects as a merciful synthesis of the six pāramitās: “universal Enlightenment” is latent in everything since each thing, being “void”, “is none other than the Void”; now this Enlightenment can encompass and as it were sweep the individual upwards through the merciful upāya that is the remembrance of Amitabha as actualized by the formula Namo’mitābhaya Buddhāya. Given that spiritual realization exists “prior” to man, the latter, who possesses no more reality of his own than foam does in relation to water, “falls” into his pre-existing Nirvāna, which takes the initiative, so to speak, in its capacity as Bodhi, “Enlightenment”. Under these conditions—strange as it may seem—it is Nirvāna “in act” that takes on the role of the pāramitās; this is what tradition calls the “power of the Other”, in contrast with the “power of Self”, which is the spiritual principle of ordinary Buddhism, as also for those esoterisms that are independent of the cult of Amitabha, such as Zen or Shingon.

This celestial gift of pāramitās that are fulfilled in advance—or this salvific grace bestowed thanks to their prior realization by Amitabha, who himself is the projection of both the universal Buddha and the historical Buddha—is included in the Buddha’s “Original Vow”, which in reality is a cosmic or divine act upon which the whole doctrine of the “Pure Land” is erected.4 Participation by devotees in the pāramitās is then reduced essentially to faith, of which three aspects, or three “mental states”, can be distinguished: “truthful thought” or a “sincere spirit”; “profoundly believing thought”; the “desire to be reborn in the Pure Land”.5

However, the pāramitās are not contained in these mental attitudes alone; they are above all inherent in the “remembrance of the Buddha” (buddhānusmriti) itself;6 this is to say that this perpetual remembrance is at once renunciation or purity, virility or persevering activity, patience or peace, generosity or fervor, contemplation or discernment, wisdom or union. Indeed, to abide in this remembrance alone, or in the act that anchors it in duration by reducing time to an eternal instant, does not go without renunciation of the world and of oneself; this allows us, by the same token, to understand what role the pāramitā of virility plays here: if renunciation (shīla) is a participation in Eternity, virility (vīrya), for its part, will be situated under the sign of the Eternal Present, like the lightning bolt or the “third Eye”. As for patience (kshānti), it consists, within this context of “remembrance”, in abiding calmly in the Center, in the grace of Amitabha, whereas charity (dāna) is on the contrary a projecting of one’s ego into the distance, or the extending of one’s will beyond the individual shell: if patience is based on our awareness of possessing everything in grace, charity will be our awareness of living in all things, and of extending our spiritual activity to the whole of creation. The remembrance

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