Now let’s see what Shakyamuni told us about Amida Buddha and His Pure Land.
In section 4 of the Larger Sutra He first enumerates many Buddhas of the past eons
of time who appeared in samsara to teach the Dharma: “in
the distant past – innumerable, incalculable and inconceivable kalpas ago…”[1]. Doing so, He showed to us that human history, as we
know it, is only a very small fraction of the endless and inconceivable time of
the universe and that the various world systems and beings living in them had
existed before the appearance of this earth. So He mentioned 52 great Buddhas
who appeared in samsara, taught the Dharma and entered Nirvana before the story
of Amida actually happened. After these 52 Buddhas, another great Buddha named
Lokesvararaja appeared, still in a distant, and impossible to explain, time and
place: