MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Birds of Paradise
Although no member of the animal kingdom can be reborn directly into the Western Paradise, but must first pass through a human incarnation, Amida Buddha has created apparitional birds of paradise, such as nightingales, to chant the Dharma to the faithful reborn in Jodo. Birds and other winged celestials are, as we have mentioned, symbolical of the higher states of conscious being, and like the Transformed Land itself, their ontological status is one of imaginal reality