Make Rebirth in the Pure Land Your Top Priority

To leave this world with a smile on your face is the hallmark of a true Pure Land practitioner: one who is genuinely resolved to transcend birth and death, holds firm faith and earnest vows, and chants the Buddha’s name with sincere, unpretentious diligence. Such a person will be completely at ease, just like Master Sheng’an. Master Sheng’an was able to finish composing his final gatha peacefully, then pass away joyfully. He demonstrated this for us: a practitioner has no need to chase after a long lifespan. He was only 49 years old when he passed away. His lifespan at passing teaches us that when the conditions for rebirth in the Pure Land are ripe, we may leave this world joyfully whenever that moment comes.

Master Sheng’an spent his entire life conveying this message to us: rebirth in the Pure Land is the single most important task of all. The work of saving sentient beings can be taken up after we arrive in the Pure Land and return to this world at a later time. There is no need to live to 80 or 90 years old. If you achieve the conditions for rebirth at 49, you may depart at 49; if you succeed at 39, you may leave at 39; even novice monks in their teens have attained this and passed away early.

This is why we must make rebirth in the Pure Land our foremost and sole priority. No other value or pursuit can come close to comparing with it. Only then can you demonstrate that you are a person genuinely resolved to transcend birth and death.

We often describe this world as a burning house, a prison. If you can escape this burning house, is that not a cause for great joy? If you gain freedom from this prison, is that not something to be deeply grateful for? Who would ever say, “Oh, I need to file for a leave of absence, I want to live a few more years, I want to linger in this prison a little longer”? And if you stay in such a place for too long, you become warped by your environment, alienated even from the very idea of freedom.

You may know the American film The Shawshank Redemption. It depicts a man who spent 50 years in prison, and when he was finally granted parole, he refused to leave. He was so desperate to stay incarcerated that he even considered committing another crime in the hope of being kept in prison, but he was still released anyway. When he was let out, he could not adjust to life on the outside and ended up hanging himself. He was so averse to freedom that he preferred the total lack of liberty in prison: even using the bathroom meant being watched by guards at all times. He would rather live that life than experience freedom. This is the strange reality for people who have been enslaved for so long: they can even become afraid of freedom.

This is a very strange phenomenon of life, a result of that alienation. So if you have attained the fruit of Pure Land practice through chanting the Buddha’s name, but still want to linger in this world for a while longer, it is no different from a prisoner who refuses to leave jail. That is a serious problem.

But this is truly an extraordinary matter. Ordinary people who hear it may think we are cold and lacking in basic human empathy: who doesn’t want to live a few more years? They have no idea what the true purpose of our life in this world even is, let alone the immeasurable value of rebirth in the Western Pure Land. These two are entirely incomparable.

That is why Master Sheng’an said, “The extraordinary merit of countless eons rests on this single act.” This is a force as mighty as uprooting a mountain! Whether we can finally accomplish the task of escaping the cycle of birth and death, which we have been striving for across infinite eons, depends entirely on this lifetime, this single act—on whether we can generate bodhicitta, chant the Buddha’s name, and seek rebirth in the Western Pure Land.

And after we are reborn in the Western Pure Land and escape the cycle of birth and death, we will also strive to bring all sentient beings to the Pure Land as well! This forms the core content of the sixth cause and condition for generating bodhicitta.