Amida Trust - Socially Engaged Pureland Buddhism

Be creative with your life. Amida will inspire you. Amida Trust is both a dedicated Pureland Sangha and also a wide and creative network of spiritually inclined ordinary people from many orientations. Out of this rich diversity has arisen devotional, inspirational, educational, social, community, campaigning, and cultural projects. To join Amida Trust one becomes a member of Amida-kai or of Amida-shu. Membership of the Kai is open to anybody sympathising with creative spirituality. Membership of the Shu is by invitation.

Buddhism

Retreats

Buddhist Psychology
and Psychotherapy

Social Engagment
and Volunteering

Publications

Centres

The difference at Amida is what is called “Other Power”. Other power is the flow of love and creativity that comes from Amida Nyorai. You could call it the cosmic creative force, or the accumulated merit of the Buddhas. There are essentially two kinds of spirituality. In one kind you rely upon your own power and try to perfect yourself so that you, as it were, rise up to heaven by your own inner resources by doing meditation, following a discipline and realising your higher self. In the other kind – which is our kind – you abandon self-power and rely upon a power that comes from outside yourself, that emerges from the emptiness of shunyata, that reanimates things as they are rather than demanding that they change and improve themselves in order to qualify. Consequently our Dharma centre is different. It is a place of happenings. According to Pureland Buddhism, Amida is always at work transforming things. Amida loves our mess and confusion and humanity and uses it as raw material: a fertile ground from which new beauty, new life and new truths arise.

The Amida paradigm is based upon the belief that if we remain modest about human nature and just entrust ourselves, miracles of creativity and growth will constantly erupt in our midst, whereas if we were to try to rely upon our own power, cleverness or self-direction primarily we would stiffle this creative source. Our practice thus precipitates us into Amida's mandala of spontaneity. Particularly important expressions of this creativity have been developments in Buddhist Psychology, Buddhist Arts, Social Engagement and Aidwork, and Volunteering, as well as religious vocations and the creation of communities.