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82Pacific Worldable to interpret Pure Land tradition (The Land of Bliss, p. 115). Thisposition imposes unnecessary limitations on what could be a richer andmore open-ended process of interpretation.46. Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 2, p. 17.47. Compare, for example, the alchemical metaphor (“I can make bits ofrubble turn into gold”) in Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 1, p. 459 withBodhicaryåvatåra 1.10 (“The idea of the mind of awakening takes thisimpure image and changes it into the priceless image of the jewel of theBuddha; grasp it firmly and work with it as if it were an elixir ofmercury”). Compare also the confession of faults in Bodhicaryåvatårachapter 2 with Shinran’s confessions of his own unworthiness.48. Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 1, p. 461.49. Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 2, p. 201.50. Ueda and Hirota, Shinran: An Introduction, pp. 121 and 117.51. There are many examples of this doctrine outside the Pure Landtradition, such as the Suvar√aprabhåsa S¥tra, trans. R. E. Emmerick asthe S¥tra of Golden Light, Sacred Books of the Buddhists, vol. 27(London: Påli Text Society, 1970; reprint ed., 1979). The locus classicusof this doctrine must certainly be the chapter on the lifespan of theTathågata in the Lotus S¥tra (chapter 15 in Vaidya’s edition of theSanskrit text).52. For this and other references to the idea of the eternal Buddha, see ToSee the Buddha, pp. 109–113.53. The distinction between the conceptual and non-conceptual ultimatesis discussed in Malcolm David Eckel, Jñånagarbha’s Commentary on theDistinction Between the Two Truths (Albany: State University of NewYork Press, 1987), pp. 112–113.54. Karl Potter, Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies (Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice Hall, 1963; reprint ed., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972).55. This outline of the two truths is a simplified version of the doctrinethat was elaborated with much greater complexity in the Madhyamakaschool. More detailed accounts of the two truths can be found in my ToSee the Buddha, ch. 2, and Jñånagarbha’s Commentary. See also “TheSatisfaction of No Analysis: On Tsong kha pa’s Approach to SvåtantrikaMadhyamaka” in The Svåtantrika-Pråsaçgika Distinction, ed. GeorgesB. J. Dreyfus and Sara L. McClintock (Boston: Wisdom Publications,2003), pp. 173–203. The distinction would be stated differently if onefollowed the terminology of the Yogåcåra, but the distinction betweentwo perspectives, the perspective of emptiness and the perspective ofconventional duality, remains.