Product Description

The Pureland schools are the largest Buddhist denominations in Japan, and yet this approach to Buddhism is hardly known in the West. Pureland centres on our relationship with Amida Buddha, the embodiment of measureless love, light and life. It offers a fresh view of spirituality, recognizing us in our mundane lives, whilst lifting us into relationship with the eternal. As ordinary people, we cannot fathom our own depths nor can we know the immensity of the universe. We can but stand in awe and reach out to what we intuitively know to be beyond the small orbit of our lives. Pureland is a path of simplicity and beauty, poetry and nature. It is the path of faith.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #608615 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
In this profound work, Caroline Brazier looks at the apparent opposites of Pure Land Buddhism and psychotherapeutic practice in a deep and unifying manner. Leading us gently but firmly, she shows how the Other-power - which is the essence of the Pure Land (Jodo) Path - can be a vital factor in a full restoration of the harmony of self. The result is not only an essential book for Buddhists, for students of religion, and for therapists of all schools, but for anyone who seeks an improved ability to cope with the stresses of our everyday world. Jim Pym, editor of Pure Land Notes, and author of You Dont Have to Sit on the Floor.

About the Author
Caroline Brazier is a practicing psychotherapist , a senior ordained member of the Amida Order, a Pureland Buddhist community and a founder of Amida Trust. Caroline is also the author of Buddhist Psychology (Constable Robinson).

Customer Reviews

Engaged and engaging Pure Land Buddhism
The number of books written in English on Pure Land Buddhism is steadily increasing, as is the number of translations on the subject from Japanese and other languages. Still, we get the impression that the readership for these books continues to be those already interested in or committed to one or other of the Pure Land schools.

For those who've not encountered Pure Land Buddhism, it holds that self-perfectibility through meditation, the keeping of precepts, or tantric practices, is beyond the reach of most ordinary men and women because of our accrued karmic bonds and limitations. Pure Land emphasizes instead the transfer of the vast storehouse of merits accumulated by the Buddhas to the individual to bring her or him to Pure Land, which is -- depending on the interpretation -- either a 'place' where there are no hindrances to enlightenment, or enlightenment itself.

It's perhaps inevitable, though a shame nevertheless, that THE OTHER BUDDHISM: AMIDA COMES WEST isn't any more likely to catch the eye of those for whom Buddhism is synonymous with arduous disciplines. This excellent book likely will become known only to a few, but those few may find their previous appreciation of Pure Land Buddhism transformed by it.

Caroline Brazier is a psychotherapist, an ordained religious in the Amida Order and a priest in the Amida-shu which is a contemporary presentation in the West of Jodo Buddhism, the oldest Pure Land school in Japan. Centered on nembutsu practice, self-examination and contrition, and social engagement, Amida-shu is -- arguably -- the form of Pure Land Buddhism best integrated with progressive Western religious and social sensibilities. Rev. Brazier makes a compelling and ultimately persuasive case for Amida Pureland Buddhism by rooting its message in a clear Buddhist psychology. While at times chewy, THE OTHER BUDDHISM is never pedantic or erudite for its own sake. On the contrary, Rev. Brazier writes as a poet with an acute sensitivity to the bittersweet quality of the impermanent and interdependent.

All in all, a highly recommendable book.

Not at all what it pretends to be

This book does not deliver what it promises. The author, especially in the early part of the book, shows a potential for mature insight into the psychological and spiritual failings of most of us, but in the end the book is disappointing and disturbing.

The book opens with an insight into the fragility of life and happiness using the examples of the death of the author's mother-in-law and the bittersweet imagery of the Japanese poet Yugen as a way to introduce the central Buddhist teachings of the four-fold Noble Path. The author also touches on her conception of faith. She goes on briefly to the teachings of Honen Shonin and the concept familiar to us all, the bonbu. As she continues Brazier introduces the concepts of self and other power. She references Nagarjuna Boddhisattva as a Pure Land teacher. This is all fairly standard stuff and, although lacking depth, fair enough, but already by the fourth chapter Brazier is deep into what I found disappointing about this book. A psychotherapist by training Brazier relentlessly over psychologizes the spiritual life. She continually references our deeply flawed nature, our bonbu nature, but doesn't really seem to grasp what insight into our nature truly implies - a radical self-acceptance. Instead she repeatedly returns to the possibility of change. The book peters out with an over long discussion of the stories of Patacana and Kisagotami (exemplifying loss/grief and subsequent transformation) and Joanne Macy's concepts of our relationship with the world. This is disappointing because this book is not, as the title might imply, an accessible introduction to Pure Land teachings and practice for Westerners. Again, despite the title it gives us no idea about who Amida is. If all this were all that was wrong with the book, though, it could be accepted as a flawed attempt.

This book has, however, a disturbing sub-text. Its agenda is really an attempt to appropriate the Pure Land teachings to a naïve and self-generated `Western' sectarian project, an act of appropriation as blatant and misguided as the 19th Century `discovery' of Buddhism. The title of the book is the opening gambit. `Amida comes West' is an inherently presumptuous title since Pure Land Buddhism as represented by Jodo Shinshu in the United States is arguably the longest established form of Buddhism in the West, but if the book had given us a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of Pure Land Buddhism the title could have been appropriate. The book being such as it is, the title merely illegimately appropriates a special understanding for the author, as if she and her group were bringing `true' Pure Land Buddhism to the West for the first time. The next gambit is to rename the thing that is being appropriated. Throughout the book a new word is used for the teachings - `Pureland'. This term is devoid of the breadth and depth of meaning of the term it replaces - Pure Land - and its use implies a new and special understanding, again, an act of appropriation.

Brazier expresses reverence for Honen Shonin, but does not do reverence to his teachings as she does not present them in any detail. Nor does she seek to give the reader the teachings of Honen Shonin as transmitted by his pupil Shinran Shonin or by his other pupils as the teachings of the different branches of the Jodo-shu. She gives us an outline of Shinran Shonin's biography and even discusses the concept of shinjin but in a way that is quite non-committal - as if commitment to this concept might necessitate commitment to the Jodo Shinshu way, which, of course, it would. She misunderstands the subtle depth of Shinran Shonin's teachings about the salvation of the `evil man', mentioning it in an unhelpful way. Whether by oversight or design Shinran's name does not appear in the index. Brazier and the very small organization of which she is part reference Honen and Shinran and by association hope to claim legitimacy for their own mish-mash of teachings. They have set up their own forms of ordination, robes, `vinaya', liturgy etc outside of any lineage, and therefore it can only be as an act of appropriation that they use Japanese terms such as `Amida', `shu' and `kai' as parts of their designators.

The act of appropriation that troubled me most is again, as with so much that is passed off in this book as legitimate, written in such a way as to give false confidence. Brazier quotes from the `Larger Sutra' using a `translation we have developed in Amida-shu' (p288). I should like to know who exactly in the `Amida-shu' has the expertise in Classical Chinese or Sanskrit to produce a new translation of the Sutra. Brazier quotes their version of the 18th Vow of Amida Tathagata and it is simply wrong, being in fact the first half of the 18th Vow with the second half of the 19th Vow pasted on. The new `translation' is wrong according to the translations of both Inagaki Sensei and that of Luis O. Gomez. Brazier must know this since she mentions that she has `used' the translation of Inagaki Sensei.

The Pure Land teachings given to us by Shakyamuni Buddha and compassionately explained to us by generations of Patriarchs and teachers are not the exclusive property of anyone, but it is illegitimate to claim a new and special understanding when all that is presented is an eclectic, half understood caricature of the teachings. I advise against any one bothering to read this book.

A feelingful, sensitive description of an approach to Buddhism
One of the things that is often missing in Buddhist literature in English is the description of what it FEELS like to be a Buddhist. Caroline answers that need with this book.
She, an long time practitioner of Pure Land Buddhism as well as a psychotherapist, fills the book with a sense of the feeling of Pure Land practice: a tender hearted, unshielded awareness of both the pain and hope in our every day lives, and an awareness of a greater sense of love in which we all move. She draws on various sources, from modern experiences in working with grieving, to medieval Japanese 'yugen' poetry, to convey this feeling. She writes in favor of a simple appreciation of our lives, the good and the bad, and especially our connection with others - without the usual glamour and ambition with which we plaster both our spiritual and personal lives. She argues that Buddhism is best understood (for most people) when we are grounded in an awareness of how confused we are, and we call on the grace of Amida Buddha.

I practice another tradition of Buddhism, and its worth saying that there are some areas where our views differ. But I wanted to learn more about Pure Land Buddhism, and this was a good book for getting some of the *feeling* of the practice - most particularly a deep, calm faith in the Buddha. As I read it, there were many points where I felt I wanted to have a good-natured debate with the author, and that sort of thing definitely has a place. But for me, in this case, I've tried to focus again on the lovely sense of devotion and faith - which has brought on some deep touches of peace.