Aspirations?

Or expectations? 

Aspirations are our wish to achieve things.

Expectations are the belief that something will happen.

Aspirations involve what happens inside us. Arising from within, they require action on our part. I aspire to help others. I aspire to be a more understanding person. I aspire to enjoy the day whether the sun shines or the rain pours down.

Expectations often involve what happens outside us. I expect others to appreciate my help, my partner to agree with my dinner plans, the sun to shine while the rain holds off.

Aspirations show our higher goals. I aspire to be more patient, to spend more time with my children, to be a model of goodness, to meet my parent’s ideals for me. Expectations are more ordinary. Because expectations involve others, outcomes are unpredictable, which invariably translates to unhappiness. An aspiration is a wish that I act on, but an expectation can depend on others to perform or a situation to unfold as I want.

Expectations often bind us to disappointment.

Aspirations enable us to soar.

“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 an enlightened mind, and the student with a deluded one. 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 could be called “Ceaseless Craving” or “Recurring Anger.” But one who is awakening could be living in a land that might be called “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.