frankie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 17, 2021 6:28 pmAnd yet...the pure mind
is Bodhicitta.
This is why we see great masters like HHDL and Dilgo Khyentse still continuing to 'practice'. They are merely expressing the pure mind of Bodhicitta. They are in a physical form and will therefore often and effortlessly enact and express their true nature, physically, via 'practice'.
The realisation of this innate quality leads to the natural expression of it. After enlightenment - I guess the idea of effortful cultivation through action/practise would become quite literally redundant. Because it just spontaneously 'happens'; the gap between means and ends having been dissolved.
Yeah but this section of the forum takes a different stance. Rather than saying that the mind is innately pure, clouded by obscurations, and can be awakened through cultivation, this school says the exact opposite. Jodo Shin Shu says that we are foolish beings (凡夫 - Pṛthagjana). Since the infinite past we have been completely entranced by blind passions (煩悩 - kleśa), with no hope for awakening through our own efforts. Rather than various practices or tantras to purify the mind (or realize it was innately pure the whole time); this method involves abandoning self-aggrandizing cultivation, self-reifying merit-generation, self-serving calculation, and self-centered orientation, while relying absolutely on the other power of Amida. Rather than generating bodhicitta through cultivation, Shin practitioners receive the bodhicitta of Amida and manifest it outwardly naturally (自然) once all self-calculation has been removed. It's fundamentally a different approach. Most other schools encountering these teachings have a gut reaction of thinking it's laziness, but the method has some interesting outcomes as it takes this approach to its logical conclusion. 84,000 dharma gates and all that.