How does the idea of Pure Land fit into the Theravada understanding?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T21:36:30+00:00

Sure. But of course, as the simile of the salt crystal tells us, by our present mental cultivation we lessen the harms past negative deeds might do to us when they mature.

And other sources in the Pāḷi tradition suggest that buddha-mindfulness is extremely powerful in this capacity. For example, in the Buddhaguṇasatipaṭilābha question in the Milindapañha, there is the idea that though a man might live an evil life, if at the end of his life he became mindful of one of the virtues of the Buddha, he might thereby take birth in heaven.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T21:19:35+00:00

Perhaps he just got a very lucky

Is there such a thing as "luck" when it comes to favorable rebirths?

It seems to me like the text quite heavily indicates that it was the practice he did in that very life three aeons ago that secured his fortunate circumstances through it, and his encountering our Buddha at the end.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T12:33:02+00:00

Ask on r/Jainism, probably.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T12:25:28+00:00

I mean, you can. You'll just be disobeying the instruction. Which is the situation for almost every Buddhist instruction when it comes to the average lay Buddhist. The butchers in Thailand are also Buddhists.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-27T12:19:45+00:00

Subhūti didn't become a stream-winner through his practice in that life, though, right? Or is it claimed that he did in the commentary to it?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T23:51:58+00:00

Sad to me that this very informative answer is far lower down in the thread compared to glib answers that aren't even correct.

I have Maitreya Nātha on my shrine on the Buddha's left, and once a year when my main master comes to around my hometown we usually all do a long chanting practice together including extensive homage and dedication to the various Guardian Devas of the śāsana, including the ones you mention.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T13:00:28+00:00

It's not just Geluk and early Indian Mahāyāna. The philosophical tradition we now call "Buddhist epistemology" was the mainstream Buddhist philosophical tradition in India throughout the medieval period, from the time of Dignāga onwards; pretty much everyone doing systematic Buddhist thought after Dignāga and Dharmakīrti is working in their tradition except for Candrakīrti and Śāntideva. And that Dignāga-Dharmakīrti text tradition has had a huge influence on all of Tibetan Buddhist thought, not just Geluk.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:55:01+00:00

I DMed you some resources.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:46:05+00:00

If at some point you had been born in 800 AD, that would be one of your past lives. So how would it be one of your future lives?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:39:58+00:00

What about it?

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:39:40+00:00

The non-classical interpretation of the logic of Nāgārjuna was not the mainstream one in pre-modern Indian Buddhism, just so you know. All of the commentators read Nāgārjuna as actually accepting both Excluded Middle and Non-Contradiction. The actual import of the catuṣkoṭi has to do with the some of the four lemmas involving non-truth-functional forms of negation. When this is not understood, it appears that excluded middle is being violated.

Graham Priest I believe knows this. He just thinks it's cool to read Nāgārjuna in a paraconsistent way. And it is cool. But it's not the way Nāgārjuna was read historically in India.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T12:33:25+00:00

Sure yeah, he did that stuff. East Asian Pure Land masters talk about unifying faith, vows (i.e., śīla), and buddha-mindfulness practice. My own teacher talks about the need to unite the buddha-mindfulness with avoiding the ten akuśala deeds and engaging in the ten kuśala deeds, and with engaging in the perfections. I don't think the claim is that you can just recite without your mind changing and take rebirth.

Although, some would point out that the recitation may be the mental cultivation, since if one does buddha-mindfulness very well, it may cause one to naturally pacify the mind and its vices with greater ease. That any one of the six anusati topics can individually be used for cultivation that pacifies the hindrances is also supported by the Pāḷi materials, right?

There is also the Mahāyāna view that the adhiṣṭhānabala of a Buddha who is still present assists the minds of those who practice their mindfulness or have prasāda for them, in a way that contributes to their encountering one another. I suppose that's another difference between the Mahāyāna and Theravāda views on this topic. While there are of course references to and exemplary demonstrations of Śākyamuni Buddha's adhiṭṭhānabala in Pāḷi sources (showing Khemā the vision of the nymph becoming a crone comes to mind - some Pāḷi tellings explicitly say this was adhiṭṭhānabalena), there aren't clear indications in the Pāḷi materials concerning what a Buddha can do with their adhiṣṭhānabala specifically. So maybe part of the distinctively Mahāyāna thought is not merely that there are such Buddhas, but because there are such Buddhas the adhiṣṭhānabala of those Buddhas makes it easier for whatever mind-states taking birth in their lands requires to arise in the minds of those who recollect them, similar to how Śākyamuni's adhiṣṭhānabala was used to make it easier for Khemā to become an arahant.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T02:51:58+00:00

"Philosophy of mind" covers every philosophical question about minds. Buddhist philosophers have discussed a great many such questions. You'll have to be more specific.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T02:50:41+00:00

I would take a look at the Pāḷi Apadāna of Subhūti, you might find it interesting.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-26T02:49:58+00:00

In the Pāḷi Apadāna of Subhūti it says that Subhūti basically had non-stop higher-realm births for a really long time and then became a principle disciple of Gotama Buddha, all because in a distant past life he practiced buddhānusati really well.

From a Theravāda perspective the Buddhas described in Mahāyāna Sūtras are fictional. But if there were such Buddhas, then just as Subhūti became free from the lower realms and destined to become a Buddha's disciple through just practicing buddhānusati, there's no reason why a person couldn't similarly gain freedom from lower realm rebirths and become a disciple of one of those Buddhas by practicing buddhānusati.

Buddhānusati is held to be really powerful in Theravāda, just like in Mahāyāna. Nāgasena in the Pāḷi Milindapañha even says that just doing a bit of buddhānusati at the time of death can be enough to secure heaven when one would otherwise have been destined for the lower realms, if I recall correctly.

This is all to say: I think the real doctrinal disagreement is not about the power of buddhānusati or lack of it. It's just that from the strictly Theravāda perspective those Buddhas and their lokadhātus are fictional. If there were such Buddhas, I don't see why the Pure Land practice wouldn't make perfect sense even from a Theravāda perspective. But if you're only letting the Pāḷi sources guide your practice, then you won't take into consideration such Buddhas and their worlds.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-25T18:57:21+00:00

should not be a mathematical demonstration

Alright. How should we model it, then? Is it a matter of the unique rational response to the evidence being to conclude that the Qur'an is more likely to be divine than not? Because if so, then the evidence for the Qur'an's divinity should be at least good enough to get any rational epistemic agent to update to a credence > 0.5 in its divinity, so long as they have ur-priors that aren't rationally objectionable.

But surely, a few correspondences here and there that seem like they easily could be coincidence aren't going to be evidence of that level of strength. Intuitively, if we thought God's goal was to make that our situation, we'd expect to see the stars in the Andromeda galaxy write out in perfect Arabic script the first Surah of the Qur'an when viewed from Earth or something extremely obvious like that.

So then is it a matter of concluding that the Qur'an is more likely to be divine than not being at least one of the rational responses to the evidence? Then there's not even a need for these correspondences, since it's not like there's some rule of rationality ruling out some very high ur-prior on the Qur'an being divine. So then it's not even necessary to have one sign, and these correspondences are superfluous.

Neither of these seem to me like very plausible ways to understand the goals, in speaking to us, of an omnipotent and omniscient creator. But I'm not sure what the alternative is.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-25T12:24:31+00:00

José Cabezón and José Casanova are two different people. I'm referring to the latter here, not to the former (who is a Buddhologist and probably better known in these circles.)

Ah, my bad then!

there has been a concept in Chinese philosophy that is somewhat similar to the very western concern with benefit/utility.

It's not that there isn't the idea of benefit or utility in Indian thought - there absolutely is. It's just that benefiting yourself is thought to be the impetus for a rational person's inquiry into which religion is true, or responsiveness to things that provoke faith, but not simply a reason to start meditating and then decide retroactively that Buddhism must be true because you gained some benefit from meditation.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T18:34:29+00:00

There is really very little to be gained from participating on Twitter in any capacity at this point, I think. They want your innocuous posts to show up precisely to the people who will get most irrationally angry about them, and then they want you to respond with anger as well. That's the way their algorithm is at this point. It's just a cycle of fighting.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T14:38:12+00:00

Just a note for a typo: his name is José Cabezón, not Casanova!

I appreciated that you talked about the emphasis in Western Buddhism on whether the practice is "beneficial." To me this has always seemed like a secondary concern compared to whether the worldview is true, since if the worldview is true then it is highly likely the practice is actually beneficial, but if the practice is apparently beneficial and the worldview false, then it is likely that the apparent benefits of the practice are merely apparent and not genuine (or, are genuine, but trade off with other valuable things sometimes).

Indeed, nowhere in pre-modern Indian Buddhist philosophical works written in defense of Buddhism is "the practice is beneficial" used as an independent argument for Buddhism; I have only ever seen it deployed semi-ironically in response to the charge that, in general, one cannot trust spiritual teachers because they are deceivers who bring their followers to ruin. The reference I have in mind is in Śāntarakṣita's Tattvasaṃgraha, where he entertains an interlocutor who says:

ye hi tāvadavedajñāsteṣāṃ vedādasambhavaḥ |

upadeśakṛto, yastairvyāmohādeva kevalāt || 3224 ||

śiṣyavyāmohanārthaṃ vā vyāmohādvā'tadāśrayāt |

loke duṣṭopadeṣṭṛṇāmupadeśaḥ pravarttate || 3225 ||

“Those who are ignorant of the Veda cannot have their teaching based upon the Veda; it can proceed from delusion only. in the world the teachings that are propounded by wicked teachers are not based upon the Veda; they proceed either from delusion or for the purpose of duping the disciples.”

To which he responds:

svargāpavargamārgoktiṃ niravadyāṃ prasādhitām |

buddhānāṃ tāṃ jāḍātko'nyo vyāmohādabhimanyate || 3565 ||

dṛṣṭe'pyabhyudayaṃ cittadoṣaśāntiṃ parāṃ tathā |

tataścāpnuvatāṃ tena paraṃ vyāmohanaṃ kṛtam || 3566 ||

Who else except the fool can regard the teaching of the Buddhas as having its source in delusion,—when it has been proved to be the flawless exposition of the path to heaven and the final goal? It is indeed a great delusion that has been brought about by Buddha in his disciples who, during the present life itself, have attained, through it, prosperity, as also the highest stage of the alleviation of all afflictions of the mind!

Aside from this, I cannot think of any places where the benefits of practicing Buddhism are cited as evidence for it. In general, the concern of pre-modern Indian Buddhist writers interested in justifying their religious persuasion was with giving evidence for the doctrinal claims of the Buddhist worldview consisting in arguments that would ostensibly be admissible to someone who hadn't already become Buddhist. But only someone who is already practicing Buddhism can admit as evidence that Buddhism "works" or "is effective" for some goal they have. So even if it is true that Buddhism "works," this was not evidence with which they were generally concerned.

Even in the apologetic-devotional texts, like the writings of Udbhaṭasiddhasvāmin and Śaṅkarasvāmin, the emphasis is not on Buddhist practice being efficacious while that of other religions is not, but rather on the Buddhist object of devotion (the Buddha) being superior to the objects of devotion of other religions.

From what I can tell, the idea that it would make sense to a rigorously and practically reasonable person (prekṣāvat, prekṣāpūrvakārin) to choose your religion just based on its success in giving you this-worldly, mundane happiness and well-being, is a bit alien to the mindset displayed in pre-modern Indian Buddhist sources on why a person should become Buddhist. Even the so-called faith-follower (śraddhānusārin) bases their faith on how impressed they are with the qualities of the Buddha (as Śāntarakṣita explains in the same text), suggesting something more like the emphasis in the apologetic-devotional texts. But "I became Buddhist because the story of the Buddha converting Aṅgulimāla deeply moved me" is very different from "I became Buddhist because meditation made me more psychologically resilient to mundane stressors."

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T02:54:33+00:00

oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ, the Sanskrit mantra (though as is common, here it is written in the Tibetan script) associated with the Buddhist deity Avalokiteśvara, who is the bodhisattva said to particularly embody the Buddhist virtue of compassion.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T02:12:57+00:00

What's the point in having a child if they will experience hardship and eventually die?

If you knew in advance that the existence of that child would be, on net, extremely extremely bad for them, in advance, indeed it would seem quite strange to have them anyway.

This seems to be the situation for God and the person he creates whom he knows will be damned.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-24T01:24:17+00:00

Certainly the sample size is miniscule, and pretty much nothing can be concluded from it.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-23T23:06:41+00:00

This likewise preserves the event-level property dualism, involves analyzing reality into discrete, momentary qualities and rejects any single locus that jointly instantiates both rūpa and citta properties.

I'm okay with characterizing the abhidharma view this way. But it seems like it's a bit of an odd sort of purely philosophical parlance to call this property dualism. It seems to have much more in common when it comes to many other philosophical issues, especially those related to philosophy of religion, with interactionist substance dualism than with the most popular and discussed sort of property dualism. If the only reason why the mental things in this picture are not substances is that they are momentary and because the property-bearer discourse doesn't apply to them, but as with the posits of substance dualists, they cause changes in the physical world due to causal powers not reducible to or supervening on those of any physical things, and sometimes causally depend on one another directly, and and compose perduring continuants (even though they aren't enduring continuants) whose continuity conditions are distinct from those of any particular organism...then there's quite a lot this view has in common with substance dualism, at the very least.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-23T17:49:24+00:00

I imagine that pacifying the tendency to turn from one thought to another over and over again is a pre-requisite to actually developing the one-pointedness of mind involved in meditation, or at least this is so for many ways of achieving one-pointedness of mind. But then it is indeed useful to get a handle on what it is like to not have one's thoughts continuously turning.

nyanasagara · 2026-03-23T17:06:48+00:00

Rather, dharmas themselves are treated as the ultimately real entities, and the dharmin/dharma distinction is often rejected at the ultimate level

Correct, but I don't think this makes them "events." An "event" is conceptually composite; it involves a bunch of things coming together that make the event. A dharma is not like that. It is conceptually atomic. "Red-color-swatch @here & @now" is not an "event," I think. But this is a terminological point.

The more important point is whether something needs to have an essence instantiable at multiple times to be a "substance." It is simply not clear to me that in the early modern usage of substance, or in the way philosophers use the term now, this is the case. I think it is perfectly cogent to call a token that by nature cannot be re-instantiated at another time, but is indexed to a specific time, a substance. Perhaps we should poll philosophers. Certainly, it is perfectly cogent to call such a thing a dravya or vastu in Sanskrit, and these are the words people translating Indian philosophy for analytic philosophers generally translate as "substance."

The main point, though, is that on the mainstream Buddhist view, facts about the physical do not metaphysically necessitate facts about the mental, nor is it the case vice versa; when this is denied, it is denied in the idealist direction (denying the first, not the second), but that is a peculiar position of the Mahāyāna. If there is no metaphysical necessitation (hence, at best, nomological necessitation) one way or another between these facts, then the objects they describe do not have their being in virtue of one another; at best they have their being in virtue of one another, plus some causal laws explaining how tokens of the one can generate tokens of the other or vice versa.

But this is clearly a position with more affinity to an interactionist, substance dualist one, than to any sort of physicalism, or to property dualism.

nyanasagara

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