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Yaé could watch almost within range of her lips the powerful profile of his big face, a soldier's face trained to command strong men and to be gentle to women and children. There was a delicious fragrance about him, the dry heathery smell of clean men. He did not look down at her. He was staring into the black shadows ahead, his mind still full of that sudden vision of Buddha Amitabha.
He is mentioned in the Dharmasangraha and in one chapter of the Lotus he is charged with the special duty of protecting those who follow the law. But the Chinese pilgrims do not mention his worship. Mahâsthâmaprâpta is a somewhat similar figure. Together with Amitâbha and Avalokita he forms a triad who rule this Happy Land and are often represented by three images in Chinese temples.
Strange as such doctrines appear when set beside the Pali texts, it is clear that in their origin and even in the form which they assume in the larger Sukhâvatî-vyûha they are simply an exaggeration of ordinary Mahayanist teaching. Amitâbha is merely a monk who devotes himself to the religious life, namely seeking bodhi for the good of others.
There is a dangerous tendency to rely on formulæ and charms. A special doctrine of salvation by faith in a Buddha, usually Amitâbha, and invocation of his name. Mahayanism can exist without this doctrine but it is tolerated by most sects and considered essential by some. Transl. Takakusu, 1896, p. 14. Let us now consider these doctrines and take first the worship of Bodhisattvas.
Another form of the name is Lokeśvara or Lord of the world and this suggests that avalokita may be a synonym of loka, meaning the visible universe. It has also been suggested that the name may refer to the small image of Amitâbha which is set in his diadem and thus looks down on him.
He is the incarnation of the never-dying Buddha, the representative of the unbroken, mysteriously continued line of spiritual emperors ruling since 1670, concealing in themselves the ever refining spirit of Buddha Amitabha joined with Chan-ra-zi or the "Compassionate Spirit of the Mountains."
High up among its temples and monasteries marched processions of monks, with intoned services, and many prostrations, and lighted candles that glimmer through the fog. There in their solemn shrines stood the statues of the Arahats, and there, seated on his white elephant, loomed immense and dim, the image of Amitabha, the Lord of the Western Heavens. She said "Life is so complicated!"
"Among those hypothetical beings the creations of a sickly scholasticism, hollow abstractions without life or reality the fourth Amitabha, 'Immeasurable Light, whose Bodhisatwa is Avalokitesvara, and whose emanation is Gautama, occupies of course the highest and most important rank.
His speculations have little to do with either Gotama or Amitâbha and he was thus not in living touch with either the old or new schools. His brother Vasubandhu had perhaps a greater position. He is reckoned as the twentieth Patriarch and Tibetan tradition connects him with the worship of Amitâbha.
Similarly it is held in the Far East that there were five periods in Śâkyamuni's teaching which after passing through the stage of the Hinayana culminated in the Prajñâ-pâramitâ and Amitâbha sutras shortly before his death. Many critics demur to the assumption that primitive Buddhism was a system of ethics purged of superstition and mythology. And in a way they are right.
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