Q: I was not aware that the purpose of life is to realise True Happiness (via enlightenment). I thought all along that our purpose here is to work out our karma and to aspire to go to Pure Land.
A: Actually, karma doesn’t really need working out in terms of living it out totally (which is impossible, since we keep creating new karma). We just need to create the right conditions (which include creating positive karma via cultivating compassion and wisdom) to facilitate exit from Samsara. This postive karma helps to lessen the effects of past negative karma too. Even going Pure Land is ultimately for attaining True Happiness after training there – for one and all.