Buddha-Nature and the Pure Land

Since my goal in this life is not only to prepare for the Pure Land after death, but to affirm faith that Amida is Buddha, and that the Pure Land exists as both a psychological state of mind and as a spiritual place in the heartmind, for the Name-that-calls establishes faith that the Pure Land exists in the afterlife.

It would be spiritual delusion to pretend that a soul goes to the Pure Land.

Rather, in one sense, the spiritual essence, Buddha-nature, returns to the Absolute.

Actually, no returning occurs at all. For the physical body merely dies. Self-as-ego dies with the body. Yet the bodhisattva reborn in the Pure Land represents the karmic destiny of Buddha-nature which is erroneously mistaken for a soul.

For Buddha-nature is no-self.

Think of it this way: all my recitations of Nembutsu are like offerings to the bodhisattva representing my sincere desire to be reborn in the Pure Land. The more I recite and study the Pure Land sutras and commentaries, the greater is this bodhisattva's existence in the Pure Land.

If I were not to recite the Nembutsu, I would still be reborn near the Pure Land as a result of my desire to be reborn there.