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Portable Pure Land: Bringing Mindful Presence to Everyday Life
Instead of a portable telephone, a portable Pure Land can be carried everywhere, allowing for peace at railway stations, airports, and markets. This requires the energy of mindfulness and concentration; without them, the Pure Land disappears. Daily activities such as cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, and washing clothes serve as opportunities to generate this energy. By slowing down, the kitchen becomes a meditation hall and eating becomes a time of practice. The Pure Land is not a place to go after death but is available in the here and now, residing in the heart and mind.
Practitioners are visualized as a burning candle, offering light, heat, and fragrance through thought, speech, and physical action. Mindfulness distinguishes right thinking—characterized by impermanence and no self—from unwholesome thinking rooted in anger or jealousy. It ensures speech manifests understanding and compassion rather than violence, and that physical actions protect life. By offering right thought, right speech, and right physical action, the Pure Land is created in the present moment.
To maintain wholesome thoughts, one can use mindful breathing to invite them back like a dear friend, or use the method of changing the peg or “changing the CD” to replace unwholesome thoughts. Regarding the present moment, it is a reality to be touched rather than a concept to be grasped. Good and bad inter-are like the flower and the garbage; the mud is necessary to produce the lotus. Rather than getting lost in speculation or dualistic choices, the focus should remain on concrete methods to transform suffering and renew the teaching for the younger generation.
