Originally posted by Jacky Woo:A Buddha, even with his omniscient knowledge, could not change a person's karma, but how come Amitabha Buddha is able to create his pureland and bring people there?
i think creating an illusions is just a simple trick of one's spiritual power. ghosts and heaven beings can also do this depending on their ability level. Buddha's ability will be much greater. there are many different type of pureland(see below quote). the Amitabha pureland is created in a way karma had no conditions to fruition only.
karma + conditions = fruition.
Amitabha didn't clear your karma. He only destroy the conditions for karma, hence the fruition of karma.
In India, the composition of the classic ‘Pure Land Scriptures’ (such as the Longer and Shorter SukhÄ�vatÄ«-vyÅ«ha SÅ«tras) helped to popularize the idea that the Buddhas who dwelt in these Pure Lands could bring unenlightened beings into them for teaching without compromising the purity of the environs. In China, the rise of the Pure Land school popularized this idea, and spurred many centuries of theoretical accounts of the nature of the Pure Lands, and the genesis of typologies that sought to classify the various types of Pure Lands. For example, the thinker Ching-ying Hui-yüan (523-92) identified three different types of Pure Land, depending upon the beings that dwell in them or attain their vision: (1) the phenomenal Pure Land where unenlightened beings go which, while purified by the Buddha's presence, still presents itself to their minds according to their desires; (2) the Pure Land with characteristics, which accommodates those who achieved enlightenment (bodhi) following the HÄ«nayÄ�na path and MahÄ�yÄ�na followers in the early stages of practice; and (3) the true Pure Land, achieved by accomplished Bodhisattvas on the MahÄ�yÄ�na path. This latter type had further subdivisions into lands of Bodhisattvas and lands of Buddhas, with the latter further categorized into two aspects: the land as it appears to the Buddha residing in it, and the way he manifests it to other beings.
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