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
Famous quotes containing the words pure, land and/or buddhism:
“The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man’s thoughts.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“To-day ... when material prosperity and well earned ease and luxury are assured facts from a national standpoint, woman’s work and woman’s influence are needed as never before; needed to bring a heart power into this money getting, dollar-worshipping civilization; needed to bring a moral force into the utilitarian motives and interests of the time; needed to stand for God and Home and Native Land versus gain and greed and grasping selfishness.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“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)