Event : Amitabha Dream Yoga by His Holiness The Sakya Trizin
Date : Feb 19 Saturday
Time : 8pm- 10pm
Venue : Sakya Tenphel Ling
Address : 5, Pasir Ris Drive 4, Singapore 519455
Website : http://www.sakyatenphelling.org/
Map :
http://www.streetdirectory.com/asia_travel/travel/travel_id_7526/travel_site_82910/
A Buddha Pure Land is a manifestation of the timeless awareness of enlightened beings. From the perspective of ultimate reality, all enlightened beings are unified in the great expanse and there are no distinctions in the state of timeless awareness. Conventionally, Buddhas create pure lands where beings can go to become enlightened with more ease. Amitabha’s Buddha Land in the west is known as Sukhavati (Sanskrit.) and Dewachen (Tibetan) and manifests from discriminative wisdom, the transformed state of attachment or desire. Because Buddha Amitabha made great aspirations that ordinary sentient beings with negative karmas and afflictive emotions could be born in the Western Pure Land, it is easier to be reborn in Dewachen than in other Buddha-lands. Otherwise it is not possible for an ordinary being who still has negative karma and afflictive emotions to be born in a Buddha land.
every karma one create is like a stone thrown into the water and will sink to the bottom.
The idea of being 'saved' is generally considered new in Buddhism. But King Milinda (Menandros, a Greek ruler in Sagara, about 115 BC) questioned a learned priest Nagasena, saying that it was unreasonable that a man of bad conduct could be saved if he believed in a Buddha on the eve of his death. Nagasena replied: "A stone, however small, will sink into the water, but even a stone weighing hundreds of tons if put on a ship will float."
http://www.taichido.com/chi/newbud/pure1.htm
The Questions of King Milinda Sutra contains the following parable:
We can see from this passage that thanks to "other-power," the Pure Land method can benefit the practitioner, however heavy his karma may be. The huge block of stone represents the weight of heavy karma, the boat symbolizes the power of Amitabha Buddha's Vows. Therefore, the cultivator should not think that residual greed, anger and delusion will prevent him from achieving rebirth in the Pure Land. This example should also resolve doubts concerning past heavy karma, as in doubt number one above.
A minute grain of sand, dropped on the surface of the water, will sink immediately. On the other hand, a block of stone, however large and heavy, can easily be moved from place to place by boat. The same is true of the Pure Land practitioner. However light his karma may be, if he is not rescued by Amitabha Buddha, he must revolve in the cycle of Birth and Death. With the help of Amitabha Buddha, his karma, however heavy, will not prevent his rebirth in the Pure Land.
http://www.ymba.org/BWF/bwf101.htm
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