All Encompassing

   Every moment is a choice as to whether there is going to be a pure land or not. I was thinking about this: one actively chooses purity in their world or impurity. How is this done, you might wonder? From my understanding of Buddhist teachings, impurity does not refer to something that is poor in quality compared to something else. Rather, it relates more to an orientation; a way of seeing that treats phenomena as actively created and shaped by mind. I can see something in an infinite number of ways, to the point where that phenomena I am experiencing is really the product of choices I am or have made. Without those choices, nothing would really exist.
   This is a very liberating perspective, but there is something deeper than this, and that is the notion that mind encompasses every state of being, no matter what it happens to be. In other words, there is simply no need for me to take sides in any of this: to side with the torturer or the tortured, since they are both phenomena. It's hard to really practice this approach, yet it is essential to try doing so, even if it's only mapping the situation out on paper until one gets a genuine feel for it.
   What it entails is that there is simply no winning and losing. The only time I think of 'win' or 'lose' is when I keep comparing two thoughts. An example: I see someone get in front of me in a line or on the street, and the immediate thoughts are, "how dare he or she try to surpass me!" But in this situation, the thought of the person passing by is being paired with the thought of me standing or walking (whichever happens to be the case). The suffering arises when I am thinking that these two thoughts interact with each other, when they don't in reality. In fact, the two are completely unrelated; it is only the mind that just happens to connect them together and come up with associations and comparisons.
   If I didn't do this kind of thing and allowed my mind to simply be present, a lot of the tension and suffering I feel would naturally disappear on its own. Of course, this perspective is not easy to reach, but I think it can be practiced by writing it out as a reminder or saying it out loud.