Akshobhya and blue

"a monk wished to practice the Dharma in the eastern world of delight and made a vow not to harbor anger or malice towards any being until he achieved enlightenment. He duly proved "immovable" and when he succeeded, he became the buddha Akshobhya." 

He represents mirror like wisdom, which perhaps means equanimity, a fairly advanced Buddhist virtue and skill, maybe not even attained until enlightenment. Unflappable. Steadfast. Non-reactive. Profound endurance and patience.

He resides in Abhirati, the eastern world and pure land connected by a staircase (source). The a paper from 2000:  "... in Aksobhya's  world  birth  does  not  result  from  ordinary  sexual  intercourse.  On the  contrary,  whenever  a man  looks  at  a  woman  with  desire  (for  in  this  world  desire  has  not  been  completely  eliminated)  his  lust  is  immediately  cooled,  and  he  enters  into  a  state of samddhi;  as for  the  woman,  she  immediately conceives  a child." (op cit). 

A desired food just appears. No need to do dishes. There are no precepts because nobody does anything wrong. 

"Though Mara is  present  in  Aksobhya's world  -   or  rather,  though  Abhirati  has  its  own  Mara  figure  -  he  will  not  attempt  to  obstruct  the  bodhisattvas'  progress,  and  without  such interference  they  will  all be  able to  attain  the  state of non-retrogression from Buddhahood." (op cit) You can also transport to another Buddha land if you think of it, so there's instant mental teleportation. You never forget a teaching or sutra, everyone has an eidetic memory. 

"No longer  do these paradise-like realms  appear  as  a concession to  the  needs  of  an under-achieving laity, much less  as  evidence for  the incorporation of  foreign  (e.g.,  Iranian)  or  non-Buddhist  (e.g.,  Hindu) ideas.  On  the  contrary,  the  existence  of other  Buddha-fields now  appears  as  a  logical  necessity,  elicited  by  the  mainstream  understanding  of the  requirements  of  the  bodhisattva  path  itself." (op cit)

I read the following:

Strauch, Ingo. “More Missing Pieces of Early Pure Land Buddhism: New Evidence for Akṣobhya and Abhirati in an Early Mahayana Sutra from Gandhāra.” The Eastern Buddhist, vol. 41, no. 1, 2010, pp. 23–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26289588. Accessed 30 Sept. 2023.

With all the sectarian bluster about short cuts, or most direct path, the Akshobhya sutra supposedly doesn't downplay the difficult of the path. I can't force myself to more than skim the article. I like the idea of Gandhara texts, but the reality has yet to catalyse anything. I can't say the Gandhara texts have really set the world on fire, but anything Buddhisty is what this blog is about, and it's not setting the world on fire either.

I dipped into Meeting The Buddhas by Vessantara. Sometimes he is shown an an elephant throne. In the image below he's holding a vajra. He is associated with sunyata. He can be shown touching the earth. The Mara asked the Buddha why he thought he could become enlightened. And his answer was to say he'd been working on it for a long time, the earth goddess was his witness. Perhaps it's addressing the audacity to imagine you could move towards enlightenment. 

I picked this jina to study today because I'm reading Bluets by Maggie Nelson. She writes about her obsession with the color blue. My first question was what Buddha is blue, and it's Akshobya. Her preoccupations are not Buddhist, but I read everything through the lense of Buddhism. Suggesting you rouge your nipples in blue isn't a Buddhist move really, but I also like reading wide and potentially off topic:

"Over the past decade I have been given blue inks, paintings, postcards, dyes, bracelets, rocks, precious stones, watercolors, pigments, paperweights, goblets, and candies. I have been introduced to a man who had one of his front teeth replaced with lapis lazuli, solely because he loved the stone, and to another who worships blue so devoutly that he refuses to eat blue food and grows only blue and white flowers in his garden, which surrounds the blue ex-cathedral in which he lives. I have met a man who is the primary grower of organic indigo in the world, and another who sings Joni Mitchell's Blue in heartbreaking drag, and another with the face of a derelict whose eyes literally leaked blue, and I called this one the prince of blue, which was, in fact, his name." (p. 6)

Nelson talks about Christian saints who avoid skeezy men by taking their blue eyes out, and I can think of instances of that in the Theragatha. It's really quite a classic, read it over two weekend retreats, and wow. Really vivid memory of being impressed, really want a hard copy of it to read from my bedside.

“...when the mines of Sar-e-Sang run dry (locals say the repressive rule of the Taliban, who, in 2000, blew up the two giant statues of Buddha at the mines entrance Buddhas whose blue auras were the oldest-known application of lapis on earth--caused a particularly long dry spell; God only knows what the American bombing has done since), the miners use dynamite to bleed a vein, in hopes of starting a "blue rush."" (p. 31)

Learned about Dionysius the Areopagite is a Christian saint, who's day is October 3rd. He was a convert of Paul the Apostle. There's also a Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite. 

Maggie Nelson on freedom (YouTube).

Reading about Nelson's associations with blue, I come up with my own. My soccer team is blue. It contrasts with the red of it's rival. "New York is blue" is what you say when NYCFC beat the Red Bulls in the Hudson Derby. Hasn't happened this year, the team has struggled.

    The local vegan and vegetarian restaurants are from the Sri Chinmoy community. The memoir I read about growing up in the community, she calls it a cult. They wear blue and they paint their houses and business a baby blue.

    I saw Blue Men Group perform in the 90's. 

    Nelson quotes Neidecker, the poet of Wisconsin, who I long to read but haven't read.

    I love reading about new tribes, the Tuareg are a tribe in Africa wear blue. They call themselves Imohag, free. They are nomads that refuse to convert to Islam.

    The Prince estate just released Get Blue in 2023. Even from his grave.

Links:

Akshobhya Sutra

Blue Wikipedia: I need to figure out how to edit Wikipedia, because they ignore Buddhism.

Cyanometer can measure the blue.

The Marginalia on Bluets