{"id":131,"date":"2009-09-18T12:33:12","date_gmt":"2009-09-18T19:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dharmarealm.com\/?p=131"},"modified":"2012-03-25T20:07:31","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T03:07:31","slug":"listener-question-where-are-all-the-bodhisattvas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dharmarealm.com\/?p=131","title":{"rendered":"Listener question: where are all the bodhisattvas?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A listener writes in with an extremely interesting question: if Jodo Shinshu claims that when you go to the Pure Land you come back to this world as a bodhisattva, where are all these bodhisattvas?!<\/em> This begs a lot of questions and raises a lot of issues about Jodo Shinshu Buddhism with the most obvious being, what is a bodhisattva? We can think of them as “Buddhas in training,” real sentient beings doing specific actions; but we can also think of them as “cosmic” or semi-spiritial beings, maybe working behind the scenes. But Harry points out that according to Shinran, birth in the Pure Land leads not to bodhisattva-hood — but to fully enlightened Buddhahood! That, of course, begs the question of, well, where are all the Buddhas?<\/em> So we do our best to talk about how we can understand these teachings and put them into practice in our everyday lives in both spiritual and practical terms.<\/p>\n