MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
The Great Physician
As the Great Physician, the Buddha's aim is to cure all ills of mind and body, and so in the Pali texts his teachings are even set out like an ancient Indian doctor's diagnosis of disease and his prescription for its remedy. Pain and suffering are the signs warning us that the psyche and its physical vehicle are injured or diseased. Mens sana in corpore sano feels no pain; which does not mean that the healthy man feels no religious awe, wonder, delight, or compassion. Indeed, when overwhelmed by agony, these are just the emotions that the invalid can no longer feel, for extremities of pain make the sufferer more egocentric and, like torture, erode all the higher human qualities, so that the victim becomes self-indulgent, irritable, demanding, querulous, and a burden to those who care for his needs. It was the Buddha who first discovered the cure for sickness, old age, and death, which can be overcome provided the regimen that he prescribed is faithfully followed. It is this therapeutic method, based on his own experience and expounded in rational terms, that forms the core of his doctrine; for his universal wish in blessing says: ‘May all beings be well and happy!’
Only when one's own sickness has been cured, and not before, is one in a position to undertake the cure of others by taking their sicknesses upon oneself. When asked why he was so often ill, Vimalakirti, the great Indian Buddhist layman, answered: ‘Because all other beings are ill’. As a Bodhisattva, he refused to enjoy the Nirvana of perfect health alone, until all other sufferers had been healed, for he had realized that all beings are interrelated as aspects of the One and Only Being.
Whereas Shakyamuni is one of the Nirmanakaya, or historical incarnations of Buddhahood, his counterpart Yakushi Nyorai is a Sambhogakaya or one of the spiritual manifestations of the formless Dharmakaya, or Supreme Buddhahood. Yakushi Nyorai made Twelve Vows to establish in the Eastern Quarter of the Universe a Buddha-field of Emerald Light (the vaiduryaprabha in his Sanskrit title) to ensure the spiritual as well as psycho-physical health of gods and men. These Twelve Vows are personified as his guard of Twelve Divine Generals (Juni Shinsho), who combat sickness and misfortune, each presiding over one of the zodiacal signs. Yakushi is usually attended by two Bodhisattvas to form a Sanzon, or Triad. Their names are Nikko (Sanskrit: Suryaprabha), or Sunlight, symbolizing Being; and Gakko (Sanskrit: Candraprabha), or Moonlight, symbolizing Consciousness. His Paradise is said to be of an emerald green, the colour of the mystical Light to be seen in the haloes of Buddhist divinities, surrounded by the fine gold ring of Shunyata, from which the mathematical sign for zero was derived.
Like all the Buddhas, Yakushi Nyorai is continually radiating his spiritual influence to all beings; but by ignorance and disbelief we exclude ourselves from his aid; and so his Eastern Paradise of Emerald Light now appears to be hidden from mankind, and his period of great popular worship nearer the beginning of the present cycle seems to be past. The Traditional cyclic and qualitative notion of Time is accepted by both Hindus and Buddhists, so that time accelerates and change deteriorates through Four Ages, comparable to those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. While certain patterns and paradigms, as presented in the perennial myths, continually recur in ever-varied forms with each turn of the spiral, no exact and identical repetition of events and things, no closed cycle, is possible, since this would constitute a limitation to the realization of the Infinite Possibilities. This consideration suffices to expose the fallacy of the theory of "eternal return", since Eternity is Now-ever and so cannot return.
As the world-clock, which follows the course of the sun, from Yakushi and his Emerald Paradise in the East to Amida and his Pure Land in the West, now approaches midnight, there is a denial and disregard of all spiritual qualities and virtues. So Mappoji, the Third Age, in which the Buddha's doctrines have slowly fallen into decay, nears its end and foreshadows the Fourth Age, in which religion will be extinct and spiritual darkness will prevail, until the moment of total negation, which can never quite be reached, ends the present cycle.
As time moves on inexorably towards its stop, posthumous Rebirth in the Western Paradise, or its equivalent in the other Traditions, alone remains available to a humanity lacking in any religious aspiration. it provides man's last chance in an age devoid of Faith. So the formerly long, complex, and difficult methods of self-effort requiring years of practice have been reduced by Amida to the simplest possible form: the mere repetition of his Name as an expedient means to meet the desperate needs of the spiritually underdeveloped and incapacitated.