Four Pure Lands
Four Pure Lands; A classification by the Pure Land and T'ien T'ai schools of the pure realms subsumed under the Land of Amitabha Buddha, as described in the sutras.
They are:
i) the Land of Common Residence of Beings and Saints (Land Where Saints and Ordinary Beings Dwell Together), where all beings, from the six lower worlds (hells, hungry ghosts ...) to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, live together (further divided into two, the Common Residence Pure Land and Common Residence Impure Land);
ii) the Land of Expediency (Land of Expedient Liberation), inhabited by Arhats and lesser Bodhisattvas;
iii) the Land of Real Reward, inhabited by the highest Bodhisattvas;
iv) the Land of Eternally Quiescent Light, in which the Buddhas dwell.
These distinctions are at the phenomenal level. At the noumenon level, there is, of course, no difference among them.
