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The Greatest Obstacle to Rebirth in the Pure Land
By Master Jingjie (淨界法師)

From the perspective of the Pure Land school, what is the greatest obstacle to our rebirth in the Pure Land? It is attachment to the Sahā World—our deep clinging to this world. This is the greatest barrier within our minds.

Why is it that Amitabha Buddha’s Forty-Eight Great Vows are sometimes unable to bring us to rebirth? Amitabha Buddha spent inconceivably long eons accomplishing the Name, gathering all His immeasurable merits into it so that we may uphold and recite it. Yet why are we unable to fully awaken the power of His merits? Because our minds are obstructed by attachment to this world. As the saying goes, “If one’s attachment is not deep, one will not be born in the Sahā World.” Therefore, we must use the power of contemplation to transform our attachment to the Sahā World into joyful aspiration for rebirth in the Land of Ultimate Bliss.

If our way of thinking does not change, then merely reciting the Buddha’s Name cannot bring about rebirth. This is because no Buddhist school—including the Pure Land school—can deny the principle that all phenomena arise through causes and conditions. If one could attain rebirth without any transformation of the mind, it would imply that things arise through an external power independent of one’s own mind—that someone outside ourselves controls our destiny. Such an idea resembles belief in an all-controlling deity rather than the Buddha’s teaching.

Non-Buddhist paths seek salvation by relying on an external power. They believe that whether one ascends to heaven or falls into hell is determined by another being. Buddhism does not teach this. The Buddha teaches that all phenomena arise through causes and conditions, and this is a fundamental principle shared by all Buddhist traditions.
What, then, are these causes and conditions? Fundamentally, they are our own minds. So how should we transform them? According to the sutras, we should cultivate three kinds of contemplation.

1. Contemplation of True Suchness
Our True Suchness (Buddha-nature) has remained dormant for far too long. Thus Chan masters often exhort us:

“Awaken, O true master within! Do not continue sleeping.”

Most of the time, we mistake deluded thoughts for our true self, as though mistaking a thief for our own father. In reality, these wandering thoughts are merely habitual tendencies left behind by our past actions. When we continually contemplate:
“How unexpected! Our own nature is originally pure.” and “Originally, there is not a single thing,”
our deluded thoughts gradually lose their power. Since they arise only through causes and conditions and possess no true existence, constant contemplation of True Suchness naturally weakens and extinguishes them. This greatly helps us maintain right mindfulness at the time of death.

2. Contemplation of the Merits of Amitabha’s Name
A Pure Land practitioner should firmly believe that Amitabha Buddha’s Name possesses complete and sufficient power to save all beings. Train yourself to take complete refuge in the Name. If your refuge is one hundred percent complete, then rebirth is one hundred percent certain. In Pure Land practice, there is no such thing as ninety-nine percent. Even a tiny deficiency means the work is incomplete.

Master Ouyi emphasized the need for true faith, while Master Yinguang stressed firm and decisive faith and aspiration. Why did they repeatedly emphasize “true” and “decisive”? Because the key to spiritual resonance with Amitabha Buddha lies precisely here. Whether one responds to Amitabha’s compassionate vow does not depend primarily on the quantity of Buddha-recitation. Rather, it depends on the depth of one’s wholehearted reliance and refuge.

Naturally, such faith cannot be given to us by someone else—not even by the Buddha. It must be cultivated through repeated contemplation.
Reflect again and again on the inconceivable virtues of Amitabha’s Name: that it eliminates karmic obstacles, increases blessings, nurtures wholesome roots, and enables us at life’s end to receive Amitabha Buddha’s welcoming guidance.
Repeated contemplation gradually matures the mind. Whatever we repeatedly reflect upon develops tremendous strength. This is known as repeated perfuming (數數熏習). Through contemplating the virtues of the Name, unwavering faith naturally arises.

3. Contemplation of the Splendor of the Pure Land
This is an aspect many practitioners overlook.
We must never forget that the purpose of reciting the Buddha’s Name is not merely to eliminate karmic obstacles, but to seek rebirth in the Pure Land.
According to Master Ouyi’s Essential Explanation of the Amitabha Sutra, the entire structure of Pure Land practice begins with the aspiration for rebirth. Recognizing that we cannot accomplish liberation by our own strength, we rely upon Amitabha Buddha’s Name. The goal comes first; the practice is the means. Many people simply recite the Buddha’s Name without clearly knowing why they do so. Their recitation lacks direction and purpose.

Without the aspiration for rebirth, Buddha-recitation may merely become a cause for blessings within the human or heavenly realms, because the vow to be reborn in the Pure Land is absent. Many practitioners remain unfamiliar with the magnificent adornments of the Pure Land. If we know nothing about it, how can we develop joyful aspiration toward it?

Many of you immigrated here from Taiwan, China, or elsewhere. Before coming to America, if you had known absolutely nothing about America, would you have chosen to move here? Of course not.
Only after reflecting on its advantages were you willing to leave your former home and begin a new life. Change is never easy. Likewise, if we remain unfamiliar with the Pure Land while being deeply familiar with the Sahā World, then after death we will naturally return to the place we know best. The familiar environment exerts a powerful pull.

Therefore, we must study and contemplate the glorious adornments of the Pure Land, gradually nurturing the aspiration to seek rebirth there for the sake of fulfilling the Bodhisattva Path. The stream of our lives has flowed from the past into the present. How we lived in the past can no longer be changed.
“The past is gone.”The Buddha’s teaching focuses on the future, because the future can still be transformed. Infinite possibilities lie ahead.

Thus we must prepare ourselves through:
contemplating True Suchness,
contemplating the merits of Amitabha’s Name, and
contemplating the splendor of the Pure Land, so that we may preserve right mindfulness at the moment of death. When these three preparations have been completed, then we simply raise the Buddha’s Name.

“One thought corresponding to the Buddha is one thought of Buddhahood; thought after thought corresponding to the Buddha is thought after thought of Buddhahood.”

The real question is: Have we prepared ourselves?
Amitabha Buddha is even more eager than we are, for His great compassion is boundless. Therefore, through listening to the Dharma, studying the teachings, and reflecting upon them in accordance with right principles, we gradually transform our way of thinking. Only then, when we recite the Buddha’s Name, can we truly establish perfect resonance with Amitabha Buddha—eliminating calamities and karmic obstacles in this very life, and attaining rebirth in the Land of Ultimate Bliss at the end of this one.

Wikipedia Page of Venerable Da’an, Abbot of Donglin Monastery, the Ancestral Monastery of Chinese Pure Land Buddhism

How Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva Delivered Insects to Amitabha Buddha’s Pure Land

“Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara then left the island of Siṃhala and went to a place where many hundreds of thousands of different kinds of insects lived within a cesspit in the great city of Vārāṇasī.

When Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara arrived there, he transformed himself into the form of a bee that made a buzzing sound that was heard by the insects as the words, ‘Namo buddhāya, namo dharmāya, namaḥ saṃghāya.’ The insects remembered the words namo buddhāya, namo dharmāya, namaḥ saṃghāya, and the thunderbolt of wisdom destroyed the mountain, which has twenty peaks, that is the view of the aggregates as a self, and they were then all reborn in the realm of Sukhāvatī as bodhisattvas named Sugandhamukha

After Bodhisattva Mahāsattva Avalokiteśvara had ripened those beings, he left the great city of Vārāṇasī.”

- Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra

Master Shandao’s Gatha of Praise of Amitabha Buddha 善导大师 《赞佛偈》

弥陀身色如金山，
Amitabha's body is like a golden mountain.

相好光明照十方；
The splendid lights from his marks illuminate the ten directions.

唯有念佛蒙光摄，
Only those who recite his name are embraced by such lights.

当知本愿最为强。
His Fundemental Vow is the most powerful.

六方如来舒舌证，
Tathagatas of the Six Directions extend their tongues to attest:

专称名号至西方；
Sentient beings will attain rebirth in Amitabha's Western Pure Land by reciting his name exclusively.

到彼华开闻妙法，
Once reborn there and the lotus blooms, one can listen to the wondrous Dharma teachings.

十地愿行自然彰。
The aspirations and practices of the ten bodhisattva grounds manifest naturally.