MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Mundus Imaginalis
Those whose karma assigns them to the lowest grade of the lowest level will be reborn in a closed lotus-bud that will not open for twelve longer kalpas. This means in effect that the being is confined to a spiritually embryonic state because of a heavy burden of past evil thoughts, words, and deeds. But at the end of that period, the lotus-bud will open and enable the reborn being to hear Amida's preaching of the Dharma, after which attainment of actual Nirvana becomes possible. In scroll-paintings and wood-block prints of the Jodo mandala, those faithful who have been reborn from lotus-buds on the celestial lake are depicted as little naked children who sing and dance for joy, as narrated in the Three Sutras.
Beyond such a mythic description of the Transformed Pure Land given in the sacred texts, words and images cannot go, for the True Pure Land is ineffable and the Ultimate Suchness can only be signified by silence. But again it must be stressed that such a spiritual Vision of the Transformed Pure Land is no mere fantasy; for Jodo symbolizes one aspect of what the Islamic scholar Henry Corbin has called the Mundus Imaginalis. This World of Images possesses full reality on the subtle plane of manifestation and acts as the intermediary between the sensory and the intellectual orders. It is a region ruled over by the Imaginatio vera, or active Imagination, which is ontologically real and should be clearly differentiated from fancy, the weaver of mere illusions, which is subject to perverse and capricious desires. It is interesting that the Sufi masters describe this Imaginal (but not imaginary) Realm as the ‘Eighth Clime’ and that it closely corresponds to the Alaya-vijnana, or Eighth Consciousness, of the Yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism.