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영어

Even though the purpose of the Pure Land Buddhism is to preach the rebirth in the Pure Land, we need to notice that the Pure Land Buddhism particularly depicts the grandeur of the Pure Land, the beautiful scenery of the Pure Land, to lead unawakened sentient beings to the Paradise.
In the Pure Land, are there sevenfold corals, sevenfold rails and nets, sevenfold roadside trees, and the Land is decorated with four gems. In addition, there is a pond with seven precious gems, and the water with eight merits is flowing there. In the pond, lotus flowers are in blossom, blue lotus flowers give out blue light, yellow lotus flowers emit yellow light. Moreover, heavenly music keep on being played without stopping, so many birds including white cranes, peacocks, and kalavinka etc. are singing in beautiful voices day and night, and their voices become the very ones
which deliver Buddha's Teachings. Hearing these voices, all sentient beings come to think of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. When the breeze blows, branches of trees decorated with four jewels sway in the wind and make various sounds and the harmony of different sounds sound like a beautiful orchestra. From the above mentioned passage, it seems that the Pure Land is not the ethical world but the sensuous world. Hence, the sense of beauty which the Pure Land belief owns is regarded as a significant issue. In other words, the Pure Land thought comes to stir up a strong sense of beauty in the heart of people and let them make a great contribution to art development. Event if I compared Heart Sutra with Jeongto Sutra, according to a Chinese-translated Sutra, we are often confused because the Pure Land is mentioned in the Heart Sutra as well as in the Jeongto Sutra. However, it should be noticed that while Jeongto(淨土 the Pure Land) of Heart Sutra is the abbreviation of Jeongbulgukto(淨佛國土 the Pure Buddha Land), that (淨土) of Jeongto Sutra means the abbreviation of Geukrakjeongto(極樂淨土 the Land of Supreme Happiness).
That's why we apt to understand these two Jeongto as the same in view of the abbreviation of both of them, but in Sanskrit, both of them are really understood as a different concept respectively. We can identify the fact in that both of them have a different etymology: while Jeongbulgukto(淨佛國土) in the Heart Sutra is parisubuddi, Geukrakjeongto(極樂淨土) in the Jeongto Sutra is sukhavati.
When we compare the thought of Heart Sutra with the characteristic of Amitabha belief, we can find that such a different etymology of the above two Sutras results in the fact
that while Heart Sutra thinks much of the Dharma, Jeongto Sutra thinks highly of belief, the Buddha. In particular, in the structure of these two sutras, the Heart Sutra stresses the process of establishing the pure Buddha Land, and centering around great Boddhisattvas, Boddhisattva's cultivation effort is emphasized as well, but the figure of the Pure Land made by Boddhisattva's cultivation merit doesn't attract people's attention. On the other hand, while Amitayur Sutra explains roughly that Bopjang Boddhisattva's process of constructing the Pure Land already existed, it also mentions the sublimity(beauty ) of the Pure Land concretely which was established by Bopjang's vow and practice. The fact sheds a light on that all sentient beings are saved by Amitabha Buddha. Such a Paradise or the Land of Supreme Bliss attracts our attention because it is actually depicted as the supreme of beauty. That is to say, the feature of the Land of Supreme Bliss does much for saving sentient beings by arousing our deep sense of beauty. To be short, the characteristic of Amitabha-Jeongto Sect lies in making the opportunity to develop a variety of Buddhist art.