What’s Wrong With Saying “Namo Amida Butsu”

from "Taste of Chicago Buddhism" October 2017

[Note: Since the 1990s, Nishi Honganji prefers to use the spelling “Namo Amida Butsu” while Higashi Honganji continues using “Namu.”]

I need to explain what I was trying to say for my Dharmathon talk titled “STFU” recorded this past week (Sept. 27, 2017). I don’t think I am the first or will be the last person to complain about those individuals who have to burst out with frequent shouts of “Namo Amida Butsu!” causing a disturbance for those of us trying to listen to what is going on at the time, such as a minister giving a Dharma talk.

Actually it’s not just the rudeness of old men loudly demonstrating their piety that I’m questioning, but whether there are any reasons for saying that string of syllables aloud. I can think of two – cultural and ritual. For centuries “Namo Amida Butsu” has been a part of Japanese Buddhist culture (and in the cultures of other East Asian countries with the phrase spelled out differently). Way before Honen and Shinran, it was heard in the cities and countryside of Japan, in and outside of Buddhist sites – spread by hijiri, wandering monks, such as Kuya. So despite the wide range of how to interpret the phrase (magic mantra, plea for the afterlife, expression of inner peace, etc.), it is a familiar sound that Japanese people can voice comfortably.

As in any religious tradition, it helps to have some stock phrases that everyone can chime in on at the start and finish of certain sections of the service (readings, meditation, chanting). So saying “Namo Amida Butsu” together and in response to the leader during a weekly Sunday service, memorial/funeral, wedding etc. serves as punctuation in the flow of ritual routines.

But outside of those two contexts, is there a need to say “Namo Amida Butsu” out loud? I used to think Shinran specified oral recitation when he used the verb sho-suru but then Dr. Haneda pointed out that the original meaning of sho (tonaeru) was to “carefully consider.” As is described in Japanese dictionary sources, the Chinese character is a stylized picture of the scales of balance. Maybe when the person doing the weighing announced when the object was in balance, the verb came to have the meaning of “vocalizing.”

The great Higashi lineage teachers such as Kiyozawa and Maida don’t write about “Namu Amida Butsu” very much and for all the times I’ve heard Rev. Gyoko Saito speak in services and lectures, he seldom inserted “Namu Amida Butsu.” But what all the great teachers do talk about is the nembutsu. For certain persons at particular times, the nembutsu could take the form of saying “Namo Amida Butsu.” But the nembutsu that the great teachers describe is too profound and universal to be restricted to a specific kind of action.

The title of this post is a statement, not a question. Here are three general categories of why I refer to the saying “Namo Amida Butsu” as the seven-syllable barrier.

It perpetuates the impression that Jodo Shinshu is an exclusive group that identifies as Japanese.

The saying of “Namo Amida Butsu” seems like a special phrase that the insiders say to each other like members of some old men’s lodge. And in Jodo Shinshu no matter what country you are in and what language you speak, you are required to say the phrase in Japanese pronunciation – an indication of the primacy of Japan and its culture.

It makes Buddhism into hocus-pocus incantation rather than teachings of self-examination and awakening to reality.

Just as Zen in the West played into the American cultural streak of anti-intellectualism (“You don’t have to know what Buddha or anyone else said, just sit on this here cushion until I hit the gong”), too many Jodo Shinshu ministers get to play the part of the Wise Master, “Just keep saying Namo Amida Butsu and don’t worry about what it means,” instead of making the effort to explain anything that smacks of scholarship (sutras, history etc.). What’s lost is the opportunity to hear the essence of the Buddha-Dharma which is what Shinran dedicated his life to bringing to us through his many written works.

It becomes a “required practice” which contradicts the ultimate Mahayana principle of unconditional access to awakening for all beings.

To hear the strained speech of the current Otani-ha abbot, a deaf-mute, should be a reminder to us all that saying “Namo Amida Butsu” is not an “easy practice” for anyone with physical or mental disabilities. Recitation becomes a forced custom divorced from what “Namo Amida Butsu” was meant to express. Suppose Shinran had a laugh that was a high-pitched “Tee hee hee” and everyone thought they had to copy it exactly in order to attain his level of bliss. That recitation ignores what made Shinran laugh in the first place and the fact that laughter is a spontaneous expression of enjoyment with each person having their own unique way of laughing. Instead of enjoying a good laugh, the imitators are stuck joylessly repeating “Tee hee hee, tee hee hee.”

What “Namo Amida Butsu” expresses is the voice of hongan, the deepest aspiration, the universal wish to awaken to the interconnected oneness of all life, liberated from the delusion of self. At the recent Dharmathon, I would say the story that Rev. Fred Brenion told was an example of the nembutsu. In his job working at a prison for the criminally insane, he encountered a woman who had murdered her children. He couldn’t help feeling a sense of revulsion about her crime, yet he felt enabled to say to her, “There is no pit too deep for God’s hand to reach into.” Knowing she was a Christian, Rev. Fred felt it was better to tell her that instead of trying to convert her with talk of Amida’s Light. To me, hearing that story was to hear the nembutsu, the voice of hongan, the universal wish – the voice that makes us contemplate and remember (nem-) what awakening (-butsu) is.