“Why is the Pure Land divided into four lands?”

One day, a student asked the Buddha what his land was like.

The Buddha touched the ground, and the student instantly saw the Buddha’s pure land, a land so very different from what the student had seen just moments ago. Most reasonable, since the Buddha observed everything with a perfectly enlightened mind, and the student with a mind not yet perfectly unenlightened. And so, due to their respective states of mind, they perceived the world in different ways.

Frankly, in our world, we too all live in different lands. Ignorant people might live in a land that we could call “Ceaseless Craving” or “Recurring Anger.” But one who is awakening might live in a land we could call “Gracious Compassion.”

In the Western Pure Land, beings are also in different lands. As their meditative concentration advances, ignorance gradually drops away, awakening increases, and, in time, they advance from the Land Where Sages and Ordinary Beings Dwell Together all the way to the Land of Eternally Quiescent Light.