Immediate Buddhahood for ordinary people, without passing through bardo

"Being mindful of Him (Amida Buddha) always, we board the Vow Power. After death we attain birth in His land, where we meet Him, face to face, with unbounded joy."

Master Shan-tao 

Although it is not so well spread outside Asia, like Tibetan Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu deserves its place among the most advanced Mahayana teachings and practices.  

I know that in Tibetan Buddhism there are methods for attaining complete Buddhahood quicker than in other Mahayana schools. Some practices are hard and dangerous like those of the tantras, but some are easier like the practice of attaining Enlightenment in the bardo or the intermediate state between death and the next birth, in accordance with the Bardo Thodol. Through its methods, Tibetan Buddhism promises, if well practiced, Enlightenment in a few lives or even in the bardo, if one is not capable of attaining it in this very life.

Brutal awareness

Hey, awake yourself to the true reality of your life!

Your body is becoming older and older day by day, no matter you are now twenty, thirty or fourty years old. Some of you are already fifty or sixty. Look at yourself in a mirror! Look at yourself in your old pictures and you will notice the differences. How your body has changed. Your body is becoming uglier and uglier day by day, and will soon resemble more like a corpse than a living body. Look how your hair becomes white, ..... the signs of death are there, in your own body.

Intense Awareness of Impermanence

Meditation on death is encouraged in all forms of Buddhism as a natural method for becoming more serious and devoted to the Dharma. There are many types of death-meditation, but all have the same essence: to become deeply aware of our own mortality and to make this awareness the basis of our life and practice. Death is normal, but our unawareness of it, is not. Everybody accepts that one day will die, but few are indeed conscious about it and use well the time they have. The reason why so many “seekers” of the “right path” remain just seekers all their lives and never become practitioners of one school or another, is not that all the Dharma methods or teachers of our times are bad or not useful to them, but because they think they have all the time in the world to both enjoy a busy life and their search for truth. To become aware of our own death is more than saying, “of course I will die one day” and having smart discussions about life after death.

Here is a passage from “Words of my perfect teacher” by Patrul Rinpoche, that clearly shows how meditation on death can be integrated in our daily life. Everyone of us, no matter we are monks, priests or lay, whether we follow practices based on self power, or we rely on the Other Power (Amida Buddha), can find this text useful to increase our awareness of death and dedication to the Dharma:

“Meditate single-mindedly on death, all the time and in every circumstance. While standing up, sitting or lying down, tell yourself: “This is my last act in this world”, and meditate on it with utter conviction. On your way to wherever you might be going, say to yourself: “Maybe I will die there. There is no certainty that I will ever come back.” When you set out on a journey or pause to rest, ask yourself: “Will I die here?” Wherever you are, you should wonder if this might be where you die. At night, when you lie down, ask yourself whether you might die in bed during the night or whether you can be sure that you are going to get up in the morning. When you rise, ask yourself whether you might die sometime during the day, and reflect that there is no certainty at all that you will be going to bed in the evening.”

Disgusted with samsara

Sometimes the thought of death becomes unbearable. And the more unbearable it becomes, the more I understand the urgency to follow the Dharma and take refuge in Amida.
It has nothing to do with merit or being wise. When one sees that fire burns his room and his entire house, he has no other option than run through the door, or through the window. What else can he do? In the same way, what other option do I have, than trying to escape this miserable house of pain?
Sometimes the events of my life become unbearable and impermanence shows his ugly teeth to me. It's all the same shit, repeated again and again in every life. I am born, I grow, become attached to this or that, I waste my life, become sick, old and finally die just to start it all over again. And between these events, I lose everybody I love.

State of mind in the moment of death

Shinran Shonin said in one of his Letters (Mattosho):

“I, for my own part, attach no significance to the condition, good or bad, of persons in their final moments. People in whom shinjin (faith) is determined do not doubt, and so abide among the truly settled. For this reason, their end also - even for those ignorant and foolish and lacking in wisdom - is a happy one.”

This is for me, one of the most important statements of Shinran Shonin. No matter if I die well, in my bed, or in the street like a homeless person, no matter if I feel good or bad, if I smile and die peacefully with the appearance of a wise person or I cry because of pain or fear, no matter if my death makes a good impression or not, no matter if I die of old age or in my youth, I am accepted exactly as I am and I will be born in the Pure Land because of Amida’s Compassion. This is because, in His Primal Vow, Amida Buddha did not mention a special condition in which I have to die in order to be born in the Pure Land, He just promised that those beings who trust in Him, wish to be born in His land and say His Name will be born there. These three minds – the mind who entrusts in Amida, the mind who wishes to be born in Amida’s Land and the mind who says Nembutsu are in fact one mind –  the manifestations of the entrusting mind.

In Jodo Shinshu we are saved here and now, that is, we enter the stage of non-retrogression (“truly settled”) or the stage of those assured of Nirvana, in the very moment we entrust ourselves to Amida Buddha, and we are born in the Pure Land where we become immediately Buddhas in the moment we die. But even after we receive shinjin (faith in Amida Buddha) we continue to live our lives like ordinary people, filled with blind passions and illusions, and we can die like ordinary people because of the problems of ordinary people.

However, this very ordinary person is already “received and never abandoned” by the Compassion of Amida Buddha and in this way his end becomes a happy one. He dies like an ordinary person but is reborn as a Buddha in the Pure Land of Amida.

On "White Ashes"

click here for the Spanish version

“White Ashes” is a meditation upon impermanence and death and when I read it I link it to the final words of Shakyamuni before entering Parinirvana: “All things are transient, strive consciously”. In this letter all is reduced to awareness: to be or not to be aware of your own death, of your own impermanence.

I think usually people are not aware of the fact that their life is always going to the inevitability of death. When a person doesn’t become aware from the depth of his heart of the impermanence of life and the changing nature of everything around him, he is not yet capable of making use of religion in order to find a real meaning in his life. He will give all his attention to the outer world and search his fulfillment there.