AMIDA DHARMA - Fascicle 10. The benefits in this life of those who have faith in Amida Buddha

Click here to return to the Table of Contents

1. The disciple who has faith in Amida is protected and sustained by various spirits, gods and unseen powers who are themselves followers of the Buddha-Dharma

2.The disciple who has faith in Amida is protected by all Buddhas. They accompany him day and night like his own shadow.

3.The disciple who has faith in Amida is protected by the Light of this Buddha’s heart. No demon, spirit or evil god can harm him.

Also, those who have faith in Amida will never lose it.

We are stable and constant in our faith due to Amida’s influence on us, His protection and the protection of all Buddhas. Amida’s Power is always working inside our minds and keeping us on the right Path to His Pure Land. A person who has genuine faith in Amida will never fall back to non-Buddhist paths, never embrace wrong views or doubt Amida’s salvation. On the contrary, he will, due to Amida’s protection and the protection of all Buddhas, be constant in his profound understanding that self-power is useless in attaining supreme Enlightenment, and so he will never waver from true and real faith (shinjin) in Amida.

4.The disciple who has faith in Amida receives the karmic merits of this Buddha in this very life before birth in Amida’s Pure Land. The transfer of merits (good karma) from Amida to the faithful has two aspects: it makes him enter the stage of those assured of birth in the Pure Land where he will attain supreme Enlightenment, and come back to this world, completely free and unaffected by worldly conditions, to guide all beings to the same emancipation he has attained in Amida’s Pure Land.

5.To better understand the merit transference from Amida Buddha to us, we can compare it with a blood transfusion, or an organ transplant. When a sick person receives healthy blood or a healthy vital organ he can continue to live, even if until then he was supposed to die. Thus, the blood or the organ he received becomes part of his own body and will function as if it has always been there.In the same way, we, who deserve to be born in the lower realms if we are left at the mercy of our unenlightened karma, by entrusting ourselves to Amida Buddha we receive His karmic merits which imbue our mindstream and leads us securely to His Pure Land. Even if we continue to have delusions and blind passions until we die and we are actually born in the Pure Land, we become united with Amida Buddha from this very life (we enter the stage of non-retrogression), as His own “blood” or enlightened karma circulates now through our veins.

6. When faith enters our heart we receive the pure karmic energy of Amida Buddha. In that instant, our evil karma is cut or sterilized and cannot plant its seed into another life. No matter what we did in the past or will do in the future due to our illusions and attachments, our evil becomes as good as non-existent once we receive faith and say the Nembutsu of faith. Being ordinary people of grave karmic evil brings us into the attention of Amida’s undiscriminating Compassion.

7.Also, due to the influence of Amida we can transform an unpleasant experience into an opportunity to understand life as it is and the Dharma.  It doesn’t mean that we will no longer have problems, experience lack of material things, or have various difficulties, but that we can understand these unfortunate events as being the effects of our karma, using them to become more aware that this is samsara, the world of suffering, from which we must escape once and for all through birth in the Pure Land. Bad events in our lives can thus be transformed through the light of the Dharma into useful ones – useful for our understanding.

8.Those who have faith inAmida are praised by all Buddhas. Shakyamuni calls them His true companions, wonderful people or white lotus flowers.

9. Those who have faith are happy that their emancipation from the repeated births and deaths does not depend on them, but on Amida, which means this freedom is certain because there is nobody more trustful than Amida.

10. Those who have faith are aware of how hard it is to attain freedom from samsara and how great is the debt of gratitude they owe to Amida who saves them as they are. This is why they have genuine gratitude like somebody who is saved from a certain death.

11.By receiving faith (shinjin) we become part of the salvation work of Amida Buddha, a link in His chain of Great Compassion. As people of faith, we can naturally influence others towards faith if they are open enough, or at least we can help them make a little connection with Amida. Every person, human or non-human, who knows somebody who has genuine faith in Amida can make a little step further towards Amida.

Not all those who have faith become teachers or priests, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be living examples of faithful devotees. Also, people of faith can do various activities in the benefit of Amida Dharma by sharing texts related to Amida, supporting true teachers and temples. Any of the actions above are a natural manifestation of the need to repay the benevolence of Amida Buddha and they are also ways in which even ordinary people like us can practice great compassion in this life.

12. By receiving faith (shinjin) and saying the Name of Amida we enter, in this life, in the stage of those assured of birth in the Pure Land, where we’ll actually be born after death, and where we’ll immediately attain Buddhahood (Nirvana/supreme Enlightenment). This is also called the stage of non-retrogression.