Some persons understand Pure Land practice as a dispensation for inferior beings who cannot tread the more excellent and difficult Holy Path of the Sages, whether in its Theravada or Mahayana iterations.
On the contrary, the arduous Path of the Sages is a concession to the arrogant fools among us who believe —against all-pervasive evidence to the contrary— in our own spiritual prowess, and who are not intelligent and humble enough to understand and accept the grace of the Buddha, His dedication of merit to our welfare.
Tethered to the struggles of this world of duality, we can only conceive that a great and formidable effort is necessary to attain enlightenment. We cannot understand how the simple invocation of the Buddha Amideva can purify and enlighten ordinary beings who have spent eons in the obscuration of wrong views and afflicted emotions.
However, whether a room has been in darkness for one minute, one hour, one century, or millennia, at the very moment that a light is brought in, illumination is fully present. Millennial darkness is no more resistant to light than recent shadows. All darkness retreats immediately in the presence of the light.
So it is when the Infinite Light of the Buddha Amideva enters our hearts and minds. He is, indeed, the Sugata, the Well Come.
om amideva hrih
Great Middle Way 