There Is Great Medicine Within the Human Body

When our body and mind are beset by all manner of distress and illness, we should know that Amitabha Buddha long ago refined for us a single perfect remedy—the Agada medicine. We need only recite with sincerity; without spending a single penny, our body and mind will become healthy, and we will no longer need to rush to the hospital day after day. As the Huangdi Neijing says, within the human body lies a great medicine.

The great medicine latent within us is awakened and drawn forth through Amitabha's Agada medicine, which was perfected at the fruition stage of his realization. Once activated, all illness and demonic afflictions will keep their distance from us. The emergence of this Agada medicine is something wholly absolute, perfectly harmonized, and inconceivable. What does "absolute" mean here? It means cutting off all relative distinctions.

We ordinary sentient beings all dwell in a world of relative distinctions—so-called subject and object, knower and known, right and wrong, good and evil, long and short, beautiful and ugly. All such dichotomies are projected by the discriminating mind of ordinary beings, arising from delusive conceptualization. To be "absolute," then, is to transcend these dualities and enter into the non-dual suchness of ultimate reality.

And this is precisely what the six-character great name represents—a method devised by Amitabha Buddha out of his realization of the absolute suchness, his compassionate heart, and the skillful means for rescuing sentient beings.

"If I attain supreme perfect enlightenment," he vowed in his causal ground, "I shall establish a name—Namo Amitabha Buddha—to deliver sentient beings. If the limitless, boundless beings of the ten directions can hear and believe this name, and recite with faith and vows, all shall come to my pure land."

Earlier we spoke of healing illness. Once one reaches the Western Land of Ultimate Bliss, one is forever free from disease—not only is there no actual illness, but even the word "illness" cannot be heard. The body there is no longer flesh and blood, but a vajra Narayana body—indestructible and adamantine. It never ages, never dies. What is all this? These are the very functions that flow forth from the absolute suchness.

Within a world of relative distinctions, everything is limited, impermanent, suffering, and empty—ever pressing and afflicting us. Every Buddhist teaching ultimately points us toward the non-dual, the absolute, suchness, and Nirvana. From this Nirvana naturally arise permanence, bliss, self, and purity. These virtues alone provide the most reliable foundation for our sentient lives—the ground upon which our hearts may finally rest. This is what is meant by "Ultimate Bliss."

Our present world is steeped in suffering; even what we call happiness is, in essence, a form of suffering. Ultimate Bliss, by contrast, transcends the duality of pleasure and pain. It is the absolute joy that lies beyond all such distinctions—the true joy, hence called Ultimate Bliss.

Only by entering into the absolute suchness can we bring forth a state of perfect harmony, such a Dharma realm in which all phenomena interpenetrate one another without obstruction.