Instructions on Reciting the Buddha's Name

( by the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua )

The reason this simple method is so efficacious is that in former lives, when Amitabha Buddha was cultivating, he practised many Dharmas and suffered innumberable bitter experiences--all of which he found difficult to use and perfect. Accordingly, he made forty-eight great vows, one of which states that any person who recite his name will be assured rebirth in his world system in the West, the Pure Land of Ultimate Happiness and there become enlightened. Our recitation is like sending a telegram to Amitabha Buddha in the West. At the end of our lives, the Boddhisattvas will guide us to be reborn in his Western Pure Land.

From morning to night, moving or quiet, at all times, you recite. While moving, you can recite and change motion into stillness; when still, you can recite and turn stillness into motion. When there is neither motion nor stillness, your telegam to Amitabha Buddha has gotten through and you've received his response.

If you maintain your recitation with undivided attention morning and night without stopping, you may recite to the point that you don't know that you are walking when you walk, you don't feel thirst when you are thirsty, and you don't experience hanger when you are hungry, you don't know you are cold in freesing weather, and you don't notice the heat in hot weather. People and things are empty, and you and Amitabha become one. 'Amitabha Buddha is me and I am Amitabha Budha.' The two cannot be separated. Recite single-mindedly and sincerely without false thinking. Pay no attention to worldly concerns. When you don't know the time and don't know the day, you may arrive at a miraculous state.

You may ask, "But isn't that just bring dumb?"

In fact, rather than having become dumb, you will have experienced 'great wisdom which seems like stupidity'.