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TEACHINGS | EASTERN HORIZON 25
PURE LAND BUDDHISM:
MERGING FAITH AND
REASON
By Raymond Lam
“What does Athens have to do height of my career as an editor for
with Jerusalem?” scoffed the early Asiaweek and Yazhou Zhoukan. If
church writer Tertullian, and in you invited me back then to explore
so uttering drew the battle lines a faith-based spiritual tradition,
between reason and faith for nearly let alone Pure Land, I would have
two millennia in the West. His laughed,” he tells me at his favorite
rhetorical question has become Hong Kong coffee emporium. “My
synonymous with the struggle by background is as rationalist and
scholars and religious devotees secular as they come. I studied the
of many traditions to reconcile liberal arts at Columbia and Harvard.
two apparently contradictory But in the teachings of the original,
Raymond Lam is the Senior instincts: the urge to rationalize pristine Pure Land Buddhism, I
and dispute versus the impulse to discovered a cohesive, well-argued
Writer at Buddhistdoor Global,
surrender and adore. This tension system of faith that resolved the
based in Hong Kong. He has
between rationalism and faith contradictions that had bothered
a BA Studies in Religion, The
has noticeable echoes in Pure me. It’s far from being just about
University of Queensland (2009), Land Buddhism, which has often emotions or some blind belief.”
MA Religions (Buddhist Studies), been misunderstood (even by
School of Oriental and African Buddhist masters) as being suitable Despite a successful career, at 40
Studies, UK, (2011), and MRes largely for emotional, unthinking Tom began to feel something was
Christianity and Interreligious practitioners. But if the journey of missing in his life and commenced
Relations, Heythrop (2012). Thomas Hon Wing Polin is anything a “rationalistic” exploration of
to go by, it is perfectly possible for religions. After examining an
rationalists to be persuaded of the assortment of traditions such as
power of Amitabha Buddha’s 18th Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism,
or fundamental vow: that all beings as well as New Age, he encountered
can be reborn in his Pure Land if Buddhism through reading Western
they invoke his name sincerely. Buddhist classics like D. T. Suzuki
and Thich Nhat Hanh. By the late
Tom has retired from his work as a 1990s he was immersed in the
senior international journalist, but Buddhist tradition, and by 2003
keeps busy through his Buddhist had formally become a Buddhist.
identity as Householder Jingtu. “I Although he explored Theravada,
was a complete rationalist at the Chan, esoteric Buddhism, and other
