Nembutsu Now, Not Off to the Side

 For most of us, death is in the hypothetical future. “Whether it be today, whether it be tomorrow; whether I go before others or others go before me,” as we recite from Rennyo’s “Letter on the White Ashes” (hakkotsu no ofumi). I wanted to visit Rev. Paul Imahara in Las Vegas to hear from someone for whom death is in the very near future.

When I turned 70, it dawned on me that now my life expectancy is more likely in the single, not double digits. There’s a lot I shouldn’t have to put up with anymore (so relieved I retired from the temple October 1st) and there’s things I shouldn’t put off while I still have mobility and a relatively clear head. In that latter category, I was eager to hear what Rev. Paul is doing.

When I heard Rev. Paul was having health issues, I called him for details. He said he was in the hospital and the doctors found he had liver cancer which spread to other areas. His condition was considered inoperable and he was told he had “4.2 months” to live. Remarkably he doesn’t have much pain or nausea and he was able to attend his grandson’s wedding in Hawaii and from there travel to Japan with his family where he wanted to say farewell to his friends.

Since I was going to Berkeley to attend the Ho-on-ko service, my husband suggested I stop in Las Vegas on the way and visit Rev. Paul. I checked into an airport hotel and took a taxi to his residence in a senior community. His daughter and her husband arranged for us to have dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant.

The conversation during dinner was mostly small talk to catch up with each other. I asked Rev. Paul if he had to be careful of what he ate and drank and he said his doctor told him to eat and drink whatever he wanted. During and after dinner Rev. Paul kept remarking the sake was exceptionally delicious and I was glad he could enjoy the taste and I could share in that enjoyment.

His daughter and her husband said they’d drive me back to my hotel (30 minutes trip) and gave Rev. Paul the option to go home instead of riding along. He said, “Patti came all this way because she wanted to talk to me, so let us talk.”

During that ride we had our serious talk. He said he didn’t want to be critical but mentioned one young minister who gave nice lectures explaining Jodo Shinshu history but it was as if he didn’t learn much about the actual teachings during his training. Rev. Paul and I agreed that seemed true for a lot of ministers. They talk of Buddhist philosophy but don’t get into what Shinran taught, which is the nembutsu. In the weekly Dharma discussions on Zoom that Rev. Paul attends, he said the one Japanese minister (the other participants are lay people) confessed that he often gives Dharma talks putting nembutsu off away to the side (ano hen).

Although Shinran said the nembutsu is beyond our comprehension and our attempts to pin it down into a pat explanation, Shinran felt it was important to keep talking about it to people as evidenced in Tannisho and his written works. I said to Rev. Paul that even though nembutsu is beyond our rational thinking, we experience it. Rev. Paul responded with, “We receive it.”

That awareness of receiving is so key to Shinran’s teachings but so hard to convey in English to our Western-educated minds (focused on getting things). English as a language just doesn’t offer such verb conjugations as in Tannisho’s first chapter: tasukerare-mairasete and azukeshime-tamaunari.

In Rev. Paul’s case, he doesn’t have to be standing on a mountain top, shouting to the multitudes about the nembutsu. He participates in some interactive Zoom study groups with fellow travelers (ondobo) from Japan, the US and Europe. To be in touch with a few people who are involved in their own social circles is adequate enough compared with those who may have a large in-person and online audience, with print and video sermons accessible to anyone. It is enough for him to be the attestation (shō) to me of how the Great Life (Amida) flows and provides support in the nembutsu, even as death approaches.

We didn’t have to put our palms together and recite “Namu Amida Butsu.” In so many small gestures and expressions, Rev. Paul is conveying the nembutsu he is receiving in wave after wave.

At this time many people are suffering and we can only do limited things which may (or may not) help them. But in the nembutsu we hear the voice that calls us to an awareness that transcends our suffering and its causes. It is not supernatural like some selfish wish-fulfilling magic, but the voice calls from the Greater Life (Amida) that is not confined by our egocentric concepts. To receive this awareness of all lives being embraced is to shift our focus from the dwindling lifespan we cling to and to open our hearts to the many lives around, before and after us.

Larger Sutra Summary - Sutra Study Class Session 20

On September 19, 2023 for our last class of this series we had a summary of the material we covered in the Larger Sutra and discussed Akegarasu’s story “The Pigeons” (pp.171-174 in Shout of Buddha).

Over some twenty years ago, the weekly study group was reading articles from Shout of Buddha and I was glad to have someone who read Japanese - Michael Conway - in the class to help me find places where the English translation was off. By “off” I mean “misleading” rather than “wrong” – at the time Rev. Saito and Joan Sweany made choices to make the material appealing to Westerners who had no knowledge of Jodo Shinshu. As I mentioned in this class, throughout Shout of Buddha are references to the Larger Sutra, as Akegarasu was praising the text that brought him back to life after he mentally hit bottom from the scandal. But in the English translation it is hard to see this – Rev. Saito and Joan Sweany knew it was no use sending people to read a text that wasn’t available in a full translation at the time.

 

The first time I read “The Pigeons” in Japanese after my study in Japan, the thing that immediately struck me was Akegarasu was writing about his teacher Kiyozawa. When the pigeons deride the black pigeon’s teachings of liberation, the phrases they use are exactly what was thrown at Kiyozawa by the established Jodo Shinshu spokespeople. Akegarasu admits in his writings that after Kiyozawa died, he and the other students presented a softened version of Kiyozawa’s teachings that were more in line with the Edo-period Jodo Shinshu they were raised in as sons of temple priests. From his discovering the true essence of the Larger Sutra, Akegarasu finally could appreciate the full flavor of Kiyozawa’s words guiding us to spiritual liberation.

 

Like the black pigeon in Akegarasu’s story, the whole Larger Sutra is the Buddha guiding us to freedom – freedom from the life-sapping, murderous trap of ego-attachment. In his story, the main character encounters a man of freedom, Lokesvararaja, the one freely moving in this world like a king. This encounter awakens his desire for his own freedom but Lokesvararaja points out that Dharmakara must wrestle with the ego-based judgment that gives him the delusion that he is separate and superior to other beings.

 

It is that ego-based judgment and attachment that is the net trapping us in unfulfilling lives. What “The Pigeons” is warning us against isn’t just the seductive delights of the material world, but the more dangerous bait of religious righteousness. The way I see it now and as I did when I returned to the Buddhist Temple of Chicago in the mid-1990s, people are quick to call themselves Buddhists and indulge in the pleasure of being told and telling others that they are already full of wisdom and compassion, that they are already bodhisattvas who don’t need to do more than encourage others to identify as Buddhists and think the same way. It’s using Buddhism for self- and mutual flattery. And like the pigeons being fed beans by the butchers, people’s egos only get fatter and it becomes harder to escape the net.

 

Teachers such as Kiyozawa saw that Jodo Shinshu coming out of the feudal period was just leading people to slaughter as fodder for the continuing dark forces in this world by making them pin their hopes on an afterlife Pure Land. He heard the shout for liberation in Shinran’s words and wanted others to hear it – “Don't keep feeding your ego-self. Let go of the judgments and attachments that prevent you from awakening to the oneness of all life. Encounter the brightness in the world which encompasses all beings and let that Light lead you to freely live as one who enhances life rather than destroys it.”

 

                                                    [photo from Indiana Dunes website]

It is not that the Pure Land teachings are for making you feel bad about yourself – it is for seeing the limitations you have by insisting on yourself as the prime judge and beneficiary of the world. There’s a big difference between the joy of spiritual liberation that Shinran says the Larger Sutra describes as his experience and the cheap “feel-good” sound bites that people would rather hear. I am grateful that all of you who followed these sessions were willing to hear the words of the Buddha that liberated Shinran and Akegarasu.

When All Attain Birth - Sutra Study Class Session 19

For Part Two of the Larger Sutra we only looked at the beginning (section 22, pages 51-52) and the ending of the verse section known as Tōbōge “Eastern Direction Gatha” (section 27, page 58-59). The Akegarasu piece we looked at was “About Nature” (pages 97-99 in Shout of Buddha).

 

Although there are pages and pages of material in Part Two, I honestly have not read all of it and even Shinran only seems focused on the beginning part, the “Fulfillment Passage” and not much else.

 

In the first section of Part Two, the Buddha tells Ananda of the fulfillment of Dharmakara’s 11^th, 17^th and 18^th vows. In summary – the vow of all in the Pure Land are truly settled, the vow that all Buddhas will praise Amitayus and the vow that all beings hearing Amida’s Name will attain birth. One question that came up in the translation of this text is when does the attainment of birth occur. The Chinese character soku 即 in soku-toku-ojo could mean “is” such as in the Heart Sutra (“form is emptiness, emptiness is form”) and the English speakers in the translation committee argued for “immediately” but in the end, the text reads “they then all attain birth,” as if they have to first satisfy some conditions and sometime later they will attain birth in the Pure Land.

 

For Akegarasu, the theme in the Larger Sutra is awakening to the oneness of all beings and confronting our ego-centered judgments that justify exclusion of some people from our “in” crowd. His article “About Nature” is written in response to Soga Ryojin’s piece called “From the Future World.” (You can read an excerpt in English “From the World of the Future,” p. 239 in A Soga Ryojin Reader, translated by Jan Van Bragt. It is obviously an excerpt because there’s only one page of English but the footnote says the Japanese article Mirai no sekai yori is seven pages in the collection of Soga’s selected works.) Akegarasu criticizes Soga for making humans seem separate from “nature” when in reality we are part of nature, we are nature.

 

The Tōbōge is a long poem about the bodhisattvas from the east going to visit Amida’s land in the west, but I wanted us to read the last six verses just to emphasize the theme that true enlightenment is when we can perceive all beings in the Pure Land with us. The verses tell us that for that awareness we can’t rely on our own limited wisdom but must keep listening to the Dharma, listening to Buddha’s wisdom of non-discrimination. In a way, Akegarasu is saying that to Soga – don’t make Dharmakara seem so separate from us. Universal liberation symbolized by Dharmakara’s aspiration means we are all together in nature, in reality.

 

[From X/Twitter account Anndoe, anti-apartheid activist in Hiroshima]

I’m writing this seven months after we met for the online session. So many things happened that prevented me from continuing this post, but right now, I feel I need to get back to the Larger Sutra. I’m so sick of hearing these authoritarians talking of merit, hard work, law-and-order etc. to make their case that some people are worthless and anyone trying to help them is “woke” (deluded goody two-shoes bleeding hearts). How come we’ve witnessed over six months of tens of thousands of Palestinians, adults and children, being killed and maimed because they’re called terrorists, aligned with the Hamas group who killed and kidnapped a few hundred Israelis on October 7? How come we read about so many young Black men shot to death by police (the latest is Dexter Reed in Chicago)? How come so many homeless people are having their shelters and possessions trashed in “clean-ups” while more and more people are being evicted from their homes?

 

As Shin Buddhists we should not be expecting any of the marginalized people suffering now to have to meet some special criteria (such as “just say Namo Amida Butsu”) for us to see them as being born in the Pure Land simultaneously with each of us. It is for us to hear their cries and answer the call to help them when we hear “Namu Amida Butsu.”

Lights and Castes – Sutra Study Class Session 18

We finished up Part One of the Larger Sutra (sections 9-21, pages 31-50) at the August 15 session and related the Dharmakara story to the Akegarasu piece “The Solitary Pine” (pages 10-15 in Shout of Buddha).

I pointed out that the twelve lights listed in Section 11 (page 36) is what Shinran quotes in Shoshinge. It was when I was chanting Shoshinge for a memorial service that I felt the descriptions of the lights was like a bursting out of praise for the loved one – that she brought light into our lives in many ways.

 

Sections 18 and 19 (pages 46-48) presented the problem of caste discrimination. When Rev. Christina Yanko (from the Toronto temple at the time) gave a seminar at our temple, she pointed out these passages where the king is gloriously stunning and the beggar is disgustingly ugly. We have to see these kinds of passages as reflecting the times when the sutras were compiled – Buddhist institutions were heavily dependent on patronage from the royalty and aristocrats. There was the belief that good karma in your past life means you deserve to be powerful and good-looking in this life, while those who are struggling to get by are looking pitiful as punishment for bad karma in their past lives.

 

We don’t have to take such passages as the gospel truth because Buddhists early on recognized that all texts reflect the biases of the humans who recited and wrote them out. As Rev. Yanko told us, we can still look to the essential message of the Larger Sutra of equality and respect for all beings and take these discriminatory passages as add-ons not related to the central teachings of the text.

[Vasubandhu]

Much of the rest of Part One was made of descriptions of the Pure Land, the trees and ponds etc. We don’t have to take these passages as literally true – in fact, with Vasubandhu and his commentary on the Larger Sutra (Jodoron), we see people knew that these descriptions indicate deeper symbolic meanings. And to know that one of the first great Pure Land teachers in China, Tanluan, expanded upon Vasubandhu’s commentary (in Ronchu) means that the long tradition of Pure Land teachings in China was about metaphors from the beginning, not about painting a fantasy afterlife wonderland for people to believe in.

 

For the past couple Higashi ministers’ retreats we’ve been learning about Vasubandhu’s and Tanluan’s analysis of the Larger Sutra and the material is too complex for me to convey. In the weekly Kyogyoshinsho study group led by Prof. Proffitt, we started reading the fourth chapter “Realization” and Shinran quotes Vasubandhu and Tanluan to show his understanding of the Pure Land as a symbol. It’s a shame some Shin ministers are still stuck in literal readings of the texts when the wise men of ancient times knew that’s not how you read scriptures.

 

When I first read “The Lonely Pine” by Akegarasu, I took it as an ode to one individual’s inner strength and triumph. But if we look at it knowing how deeply Akegarasu was moved by the Larger Sutra, the Lonely Pine could be a reflection of Dharmakara’s aspiration and pure practice which led to benefitting uncountable beings, not just gaining a prize for himself. When the lumberjacks come to cut down the Lonely Pine, their axes and saws are turned away by a power emanating from the tree. When someone taps into an aspiration more ultimate than individual glory, there is no force with the power to cut down that aspiration.

 

Heavy Lifting Vows – Sutra Study Class Session 17

 

At the August 1 session we looked at Section 8 (pages 29-31), the verses called San Sei Ge aka Juseige, and two of Akegarasu’s pieces “Four Lives” (pages 93-94) and “Cicada” (page 105) in Shout of Buddha.

 

Higashi Honganji calls the verses San Sei Ge “Three Vows Gatha” because the first three verses are explicitly expressed as pledges, but the Nishi Honganji title of Juseige is more descriptive of the whole set of verses. The character jū can mean “repeated” (as used in many translations) and it can mean “add layer upon layer” (kasaneru) adding up to “heavy” (omoi).

 

I heard Dr. Haneda joke that Dharmakara came up with Juseige to sum up his vows so we didn’t have to chant all forty-eight at our temples’ Sunday services. In a way, Juseige is a summary of the vows, stating the essence of Dharmakara’s aspirations. That essence is not just in the first three verses but expressed throughout Juseige – his deep wish to include all beings in a shared experience of awakening.

 

 

[from Instagram – cicada with Shinran statue in the background at the head temple of the Koshoji sect of Jodo Shinshu]

 

I picked out the two Akegarasu pieces to show him quietly appreciating the lives around him – his friends and the insect. The Dharmakara story could be read as a grand drama but on a concrete level, it is about ochi-tsuite, just settling down into life as-it-is (or as Kiyozawa says, raku-zai, borrowing the Zen term “falling down into existence”). In our session I think I said something about expressions like “vow” and “aspiration” can sound so abstract, but the Larger Sutra is showing us Shakyamuni Buddha as a human being tapping into the deep wish inside all of us to feel a part of this whole universe of living beings. So the two Akegarasu pieces remind us of the concreteness of our moments experiencing simply being with other beings. Enlightenment doesn’t need to mean much more than that.

 

Dog Dogma – Sutra Study Class Session 16

At the July 18 session we looked at vows 36-48 (Section 7, pages 27-29) and Akegarasu’s “Indescribable Changes” (page 23-27) in Shout of Buddha.

I didn’t have much to say about that last bunch of vows except to point out that Vow 38 is the “fashion vow” – that makes us aware how judgmental we are about what people are wearing. The vow tells us to see all clothes as “fine robes” regardless of whether there are stains, rips, faded colors etc.

 

The last vow mentions the “three dharma-insights” which the Glossary defines on pages 113-114. What is usually translated in Shin texts as “insight” is actually nin, like in the third paramita nin-niku, “endure abuse.” Here’s a reference:

http://tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Three_Endurances_in_the_Dharma

 

In Shōshinge, Shinran praises Shandao’s commentary on the Contemplation Sutra which says all nembutsu followers can be just like Queen Vaidehi in attaining the three dharma-insights. Considering the story of Queen Vaidehi, she had to endure a lot of suffering to get to those insights, particularly the pain of realizing how one’s own judgments were gravely mistaken.

 

The third of the dharma-insights “insight into the non-origination of all existence” is what Akegarasu illustrates in his poem:

            When the large dog appeared at the entrance to the room

            The cats which were sleeping there

            Jumped up in surprise and escaped,

            By accident knocking over a small table:

            The rice bowl was broken.

            The housewife is putting the two pieces together.

            The dog watches her face as if to say,

            “What has happened?”

The web of causes and conditions is so intricate and stretches over vast periods of time but like the dog we wonder why some event suddenly occurred as if out of nowhere. To me “non-origination” means we can’t claim some direct cause like “The devil made me buy this dress” or “The earthquake came to punish the gays.” There is no creation story in Buddhism because how the present world came into being is beyond our knowledge and comprehension.

 

In the poem, though, the dog doesn’t realize he set in motion the sequence of events leading to the broken rice bowl. Even though in the larger picture there is “non-origination of all existence,” we shouldn’t be like the dog and act like we don’t know how some things got broken in our society. As I’ve seen over and over (such as in Piketty’s book on capital), policies were made in the early 1980s that led to a lot of the problems we now face, but we can confront those policies and hopefully turn some things around.

Pervasiveness of Patriarchy – Sutra Study Class Session 15

 At the June 20 session we looked at the 23^rd to 35^th vows and Akegarasu’s “Cross Section of Love” (Shout of Buddha, pp. 149-157).  I mainly wanted to discuss the 35^th vow but most of what we covered is what I wrote in my blog (https://windycityjodoshinshu.blogspot.com/2018/09/vertigo-and-thirty-fifth-vow.html) and the “Women in Buddhism” series (used to be on the West Covina temple’s website but it was picked up by other websites). The main takeaway is that all the translations of the 35^th vow by ignoring the nuances of the three separate terms (female-person, female-body and female-image) are perpetuating the incorrect notion that only males qualify for enlightenment in the Pure Land.

 

The Akegarasu piece was very problematic for me and others in the study group. No matter how wise a Dharma teacher is in many ways, they are not exempt from our pointing out their prejudices and shortcomings. When I first read the piece as a young (late-20s) single person, the idealism Akegarasu expressed sounded attractive to me, but now as an old married person, his descriptions of relationships are discomforting. I can see Joan Sweany, as a single woman finding agreement with the piece as I did when younger, but I wonder how Rev. Gyoko Saito could relate to it because of how I’ve gotten to know him and his wife Toshiko over the years. Maybe he was still thinking of his first love, the woman he fell in love with when he first joined Akegarasu’s group – her parents objected to his wanting to marry her and she left the group.

 

What Akegarasu describes in that piece is why in Buddhism “love” has the negative connotation of “possessiveness.” I know women can get just as obsessed over a man as a man can feel about a woman, but usually women don’t have the means to turn their obsession into possession (unless she’s the Kathy Bates character breaking James Caan’s ankles in the movie “Misery”). Even in the piece when Akegarasu imagines a man’s life being completely “killed” by the woman’s overwhelming power, to me it’s just a twisted expression of how the man controls the woman by putting her in the role of his dominatrix.

[Poster from Communist Student Union of Germany]

For Akegarasu in his time and place, the pervasiveness of patriarchy was deeply embedded in the culture and despite his knowing the Buddhist teaching of respecting the independence of each being, he may have treated some women in his life more like possessions, receptacles of his urges, rather than as fellow Dharma seekers. At least that’s what I heard one minister in Japan criticize Akegarasu for – stringing along his mistress (during his second marriage) who first came to him to hear the Dharma.

 

There are other pieces in Shout of Buddha where Akegarasu demonstrates respect towards his women followers and I believe his assistants such as Toa Nomoto had boundaries that they didn’t allow him to violate. But no matter who the teacher is, we should recognize that any human will exploit another as an object if society lets them get away with it.

Bodhisattvas Everywhere – Sutra Study Class Session 14

At the June 6 session we discussed only the 22^nd vow and read Akegarasu’s “With Whom Would I Like to Live?” (Shout of Buddha, pp. 123-124).

 

Recently (I’m writing this on July 16) in the monthly Kyogyoshinsho online lectures by Prof. Michael Conway for ministers (to help us in talking about Shinran’s teachings to our members), Prof. Conway said the “vow” Shinran says was made “for me only” in Tannisho, is really four vows – the 11^th, 17^th, 18^th and 22^nd. We discussed the 11^th vow in Session 12 and in my last blog post on Session 13, I discussed the relation of the 17^th and 18^th vows, so here I’ll look at why Shinran felt the 22^nd vow was important to include as part of hongan (main vows) along with the other three.

 

As Prof. Conway and other teachers (Takami Inoue and Taira Sato come to mind) point out, in looking at what Shinran says, we should consider his experience in the nembutsu community of Honen and his followers and in the communities Shinran became a part of during his exile and in the Kanto area. The 22^nd vow talks of bodhisattvas – usually in Jodo Shinshu we don’t think of ourselves as bodhisattvas but we should remember that Shinran saw all the many beings around him as bodhisattvas and buddhas.

 

The 22^nd vow refers to the bodhisattva Samantabhadra whose name in Chinese is translated as “universally wise” but originally meant “universally considered worthy.” What Shinran witnessed in Honen’s interactions with people is Honen’s attitude of considering each person as worthy, no matter what their station in life, no matter what immoral acts they were judged as committing. As Akegarasu’s piece says, “he never showed a sour face to anyone,” and Akegarasu goes on to cite the historical Buddha as someone who everyone felt they got along with.

 

So Shinran saw this fulfillment of the 22^nd vow all around him in the bodhisattvas “disguised” as ordinary human beings. I mentioned there’s a book Bodhisattvas Everywhere where Rev. Sakakibara says when he was young he was at a service and thought all the old men and women repeatedly reciting nembutsu were just uneducated fools, but after encountering how powerful the nembutsu is for his life, he realized all those people were bodhisattvas bringing the nembutsu to his foolish heart.

 

 [cover from Tokuso Sakakibara’s book]

Much of Jodo Shinshu (and probably religion in general in our individualistic society) talks of each of us finding our own salvation as if shinjin was this gruel parceled out sparingly to only the deserving ones. But the 11^th and 22^nd vows remind us that Shinran needed to be told (“me only”) that the attainment of great nirvana is experienced in community, in awakening to the fact that we are part of the whole consisting of all lives.

Hearing and Saying – Sutra Study Class Session 13

This is a belated review of the May 16 session. In our reading of vows 14-21 (Larger Sutra section 7, pp 22-23), we went over a few different topics such as the Three-Vow Transition (sangan tennyu referring to the 19^th, 20^th and 18^th vows).

 

I said the 17^th and 18^th vows are like two sides of a coin and got this email about them. I thought instead of just replying to that person, I would use their inquiry as something for me to explore and write about as a follow up to our class.

 

From the email comment:

 

During this week’s class, the 17^th vow was described as “buddhas hearing the Name” and the 18^th vow as “sentient beings saying the Name.” However, Shinran taught that the 17^th Vow is “The Vow that all the Buddhas say the Name” (CWS p. 13) and the fulfillment of the 18^th Vow as “All sentient beings, as they hear the Name, … attain birth” (CWS p. 80). So I was wondering if the interpretation of the 17^th and 18^th vows given in class was perhaps from an earlier Pure Land teacher (Shan-tao or Honen?) who predated Shinran? Thank you for the clarification.

 

As we read in Akegarasu’s piece “Miscellaneous Words” (pp. 201-3 in Shout of Buddha), it’s no use discussing doctrine unless we acknowledge our interaction as actual human beings.

 

[the vows in Chinese and Japanese from the Higashi Honganji Seiten. I always thought it was planned that the 18th vow would fall on page 18 of the book]

The actual person who is telling the Dharmakara story is Shakyamuni Buddha. Through Dharmakara’s vows, he is telling us what the experience of shōgaku, the foremost kind of enlightenment, is. So in the 17^th vow, I think Shakyamuni is saying this story of Dharmakara encapsulated in the Name, Namu Amida Butsu, has to be something other buddhas are talking about, not just a story the one person Shakyamuni tells to the one person Ananda. It has to be a story that other enlightened people (“all buddhas”) relate to as echoing their experience of awakening, otherwise, it’s just a one-off thing for only Shakyamuni. For Shinran, he hears that all the teachers that move him are glorifying and praising the Name, the essence of how awakening is experienced. It wasn’t just Honen giving his version of what enlightenment is, but the same reverberation (“vibe”) as Honen’s expression of awakening is heard in the writings of Shandao, Tanluan et al.

 

For me somehow I was moved by the nembutsu I heard at the Buddhist Temple of Chicago – I really don’t remember which minister it was who was conveying Akegarasu’s words, but more and more I believe it was Rev. Gyoko Saito. I didn’t have much of a grasp of what the nembutsu was and why it moved me and especially after Rev. Saito left for Los Angeles, I felt I wasn’t getting much guidance at the temple about it. Then thankfully I was steered (by Mrs. Saito) to Dr. Nobuo Haneda who clarified what the nembutsu is about and I couldn’t help but be moved by his expressions of it. I wondered if I was just hearing Dr. Haneda’s version since there wasn’t much in the English language materials on Jodo Shinshu at the time (1980s) to support what I heard from him. Then when I went to Japan to study, I heard and read so many teachers (particularly Shinran and the Pure Land masters in their own languages) expressing the nembutsu the way Dr. Haneda did.

 

So in the email above, there is a discrepancy in what the writer thought I said. For me the 17^th vow is “all buddhas saying the Name.” And because those great teachers who came before us are saying the Name, we the beginning students with a long way to go are able to hear the Name. So the 17^th vow is about me and my fellow travelers hearing the Name that all buddhas are praising.

 

The 18^th vow is about us, the mass of beings yet to be enlightened, being able to contemplate the Name so we can say it as a meaningful expression. The word in the 18^th vow nen originally meant “contemplate, to think of, to remember” but as the Pure Land teachings developed in China, it took on the meaning of “to recite.” So by Shinran’s time, the 18^th vow was seen as “all beings saying the Name.”

 

Shinran points to the fulfillment of the 17^th and 18^th vows as described in the second part of the Larger Sutra (pages 51-52). Because the tathagatas of the ten-quarters are praising Amitayus (“immeasurable life”), the deluded beings are able to hear that Name and “with even a single thought of the Buddha,” they all attain birth in the Pure Land. That “single thought” is the nembutsu, which can come out as an audible recitation, in writing or in non-verbal ways.

 

So my clarification to the email writer is to point out that what I said is not a different interpretation from Shinran and his teachers. The two sides of the coin are: because I was able to hear the Name from those great teachers (17^th vow), it becomes meaningful for me to say the Name (18^th vow). And like what Dr. Haneda did for me, I hope that my efforts will help you to also hear the Name being praised by the great teachers (17^th vow) and the fulfillment of the 18^th vow is when you say the Name as something that has meaning for your life.

Aspiration and Inspiration – Sutra Study Class Session 12

When we listen to the Dharma, we are not in an isolated chamber far from our troubles – the Dharma is coming to us in the midst of our personal struggles. But also, we receive the teachings with the same mind/body that we receive the current news of the world. So for this summary of our May 2 session, I can’t write about the Larger Sutra without thinking of the recent horrific killings – Jordan Neely to death on the New York City subway, the Asian and Latinx victims of the mall shooting in Allen, Texas and Banko Brown shot in San Francisco.

 

The essence of the Larger Sutra that Akegarasu and the other teachers are conveying to us is the complete repudiation of what motivated those murders. As the ultimate expression of Mahayana (“large vehicle”), the Pure Land teachings make us aware that all beings are to be equally respected and no one deserves to be killed because they are unhoused, dark-skinned, transgender, born outside the U.S., culturally non-European or a suspected shoplifter.

[Photo from SFist]

As Akegarasu points out in his “Miscellaneous Words” (page 201-203 in Shout of Buddha), some people want to sell Buddhism as a way of feeling good about oneself. He makes fun of those who claim, “Saying the nembutsu makes me feel relieved,” by responding, “When I fart, it makes me feel relieved.” In the Larger Sutra, the whole point of the Buddha telling the Dharmakara story to Ananda is for us to learn that true awakening means the awareness of our inextricable connections to all beings.

 

In other words, as the 48 vows repeat over and over, my enlightenment does not happen unless I consider all beings as enlightened together with me. But why does Dharmakara need 48 versions of this? My opinion is he is dealing with specific issues that get in the way for him to see all beings as enlightened – for someone else, there might be differently worded vows. So I feel it is helpful to read the vows one by one and think about how they point out particular prejudices Dharmakara is dealing with.

 

I won’t be going into each vow here in this blog, but here’s a few examples. The first vow is about how easily we condemn others to punishment, feeling that some people should literally “go to hell” for the things they did. The third vow is about skin color – keeping in mind that in the geographical area of the historical Buddha, there is a wide range of skin colors and unfortunately status and beauty standards are based on “lighter the better.” If we can appreciate all colors as looking like gold, then our enlightenment is inclusive of all beings. References to divine eyes, ears and feet are meant to get us to look beyond the limitations of our senses and know that beings can see, hear and move about in many ways not dependent on being able-bodied.

 

The key vow on these two pages (vows 1-13) is the 11^th vow. For Shinran, he witnessed the fulfillment of this vow in the community of Honen’s followers and later in the developing sanghas throughout eastern Japan. Rather than taking a guru’s stance of “I’m enlightened and you’re not, so I gotta teach you,” Shinran saw in Honen’s embrace of people the recognition that everyone is in the truly settled stage and will inevitably attain nirvana. This vow is followed by the 12^th and 13^th vows that define the name “Amida” – the infinite Light (symbolizing wisdom and pervading through all of space) Amitabha and the immeasurable Life (symbolizing compassion pervading through all of time) Amitayus. For each of us, enlightenment cannot be such a localized, momentary event, so we aspire to awaken to what is all around and all through time.

 

Coming back from the group tour of Japan, following Shinran’s footsteps from Kyoto to Niigata and through Nagano, I felt it was very inspiring to know how Shinran traveled so widely and encountered hundreds of people he came to see as fellow travelers, seeking the Way. Reading the Larger Sutra reminds us that Shinran’s inspiration came from the aspiration expressed in the Dharmakara story – hongan riki, the power of the innermost aspiration to awaken to oneness.

Accepting Diversity – Sutra Study Class Session 11

At the April 4, 2023 session, we read the last part of Section 6 of the Larger Sutra and read “Fireside Chat” from Shout of Buddha. As a way for Dharmakara to know himself, the teacher Lokesvararaja exposes him to several different Buddha-lands with beings of various characteristics. What I think we should see is that it is Dharmakara who sees the beings as bad vs. good, coarse vs. refined etc. And this passage is about Lokesvararaja guiding him to question why he judges beings so readily on criteria based on his self-interests.

 

In the Buddha’s time and up to today, there are many people who go about their lives in societies that are fairly homogeneous – in physical appearance as well as cultural beliefs and habits. I read somewhere not too long ago that 40% of white Americans say they have little or no interaction with non-white people in their daily lives. It could be the people in small towns and rural areas, but also people who live in very affluent suburbs. I remember going to see Japanese friends who just moved to Deerfield and when I got on the train it freaked me out seeing all the passengers were white except me in that car. That was in the 1980s but I hear even though Deerfield has a significant Asian population now, some of the nearby suburbs are overwhelmingly populated by high-income whites. And then there is the historic case in the United States where whites lived alongside the indigenous people and enslaved Africans but regarded them as too inferior to treat as fellow human beings.

 

So in that context, I believe one reason the Pure Land teachings spread in central Asia (current day countries north and west of India such as Pakistan and Afghanistan) is because along the Silk Road, the merchants and other professions supporting trade from China to Europe, came into contact regularly with people who not only looked different but had different cultures and faiths. They were drawn to a teaching that spoke about inclusiveness and how to confront the mental barriers that keep us from seeing all peoples as our equals.

 

It is a shame that the current authoritarian commentators talk of “diversity, equity and inclusion” as a disastrous policy that leads to poorly skilled non-white people getting jobs and promotions that their white counterparts were more qualified for. The Pure Land teachings recognize the fact of diversity and how we fail to recognize that others should be included and seen as equal. It may seem petty that people will judge others as incompetent or criminal simply based on their hairstyle, clothes and speech, but Dharmakara realizes he needs to spell out all those petty ways he judges people as not being deserving of spiritual liberation.

 

Our biases are not easy to recognize and overcome so it should be noted that “five kalpas” was a pretty long time for Dharmakara to examine his heart/mind. But something preceded the Buddha and it arose up within to make him seek the way of diversity, equity and inclusion – that something is hongan, that intergenerational aspiration for awakening to the wholeness of life.

 

In the English translation of “Fireside Chat” I felt something of Joan Sweany’s feeling of being marginalized, judged by the society of her time as being “less than” because she was an unmarried woman of a “certain age,” with intellectual interests instead of domestic skills. As she expressed in her introduction to “Shout of Buddha” she was so grateful and joyful to have encountered the nembutsu teachings through Rev. Saito talking of his teacher Akegarasu. I think the Pure Land teachings make sense when we can identify with the people being marginalized rather than thinking we deserve to be in the company of the elites. It is what Shinran learned from Honen – that we can experience oneness when we know all beings must be included in awakening. Awakening has to be the acceptance of diversity – that each being, no matter how different they are from us, is “alone most noble.”

 

[Instagram post from Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]

 

Your Deepest Wish – Sutra Study Class Session 10

At the March 7, 2023 session, we went over the third paragraph of Section 6 of the Larger Sutra and read the poem “In Praise of the Original Vow” from Shout of Buddha.

 

I’m very late (3 weeks) writing this review of the class but a lot is going on that makes me wonder why I’m not trying to fulfill my deepest wish with the determination of the person emptying the ocean using a “pail” (the sutra has the character 升 which in the graphic the current Chinese measurement sheng is under two pints).

 

It is this metaphor that inspires Akegarasu to write his poem. In the session I said he’s really on fire here. Although for the longest time translators used “vow,” with Rev. Saito, it made more sense to talk of “wish.” (In the session I mentioned D.T. Suzuki used “prayer” because he wanted to indicate the fervent feeling.) I was always put off by the use of “vow” – it sounds too much like someone else’s promise not like something coming from me (don’t get me started on my experience with wedding vows). But to use “wish” makes sense in seeing how Akegarasu identifies with the Dharmakara story in the Larger Sutra. From seeing his teacher’s earnest seeking, he knew hongan has to indicate one’s own innermost desire, a desire that the Buddha found in himself and wants to awaken in each person by telling this story.

 

In the poem Akegarasu says not to let the wish get covered up by what is going on around you and don’t even let the pleas of family and friends deter you. In the ultimate sense, the wish is for the liberation of all of us and not simply a selfish pursuit.

 

Rev. Saito and Joan Sweany did not translate a couple terms – hodo and gwando. “Gwan” is the old romanization for “gan” but you still see that spelling, particularly on the temples in Hawaii (“Hongwanji”).  The “do” in both terms is “land” like in Pure Land, but I like to think of it more as “soil, earth, ground.” The term “hodo” is defined as “recompense land,” whatever that is supposed to mean. It was pointed out in the session that in Native American beliefs, the land rewards us for taking good care of it – so maybe that is what “recompense” could mean. The wish as the ground we stand on will be fulfilled if we take care of it with the determination of one who empties the ocean.

 

I will attest that Rev. Saito had that kind of determination despite all the circumstances in Chicago, Los Angeles and Honolulu that hampered his quest. I would like to believe his wish is continuing to be fulfilled as his work touches each of us. For him in order to bring that deepest wish for the liberation of all beings to fulfillment, he had to do all he could to bring Akegarasu’s teachings to the English-speaking world, so that through his teacher we can find access to the deep meaning of the Larger Sutra and Shinran’s commentaries. It would be his wish that I be a part of that fulfillment, but these days I feel too mentally sick and physically weak and just want to put the pail down.

Heart/Mind of Darkness – Sutra Study Class Session 9

In a short article I wrote for Tricycle magazine some years ago, I characterized Ananda’s questioning of the Buddha as “bitching” but it wasn’t so much complaining but a kind of impatient badgering: “Come on, World-Honored One, for the sake for all present and future beings, don’t leave me hanging about what is going on in your mind when your face is shining so brightly. What’s this ‘buddhas contemplating each other’ stuff really mean?”

 

I think perhaps the Buddha was at a loss for words – human language seemed so inadequate to describe a state that he experienced so deeply. So he needed to go back and retrace his footsteps to see what led him to that experience. It’s strictly my opinion but I think the Buddha is telling Ananda the story of Dharmakara as a way to look back on his own journey.

 

At the February 21, 2023 session, I wanted to explore more about how the phrase Nyo ji tō chi “You – self – must – know” must have struck Akegarasu when it jumped out at him in the Larger Sutra. First of all, I want to clarify that the self-examination we are talking about in Buddhism is not the “who am I?” identity search of our teenage years. That time was about discovering the unique combinations of traits that gave us a sense of “myself”- someone related to but still very different from my parents, siblings, schoolmates etc.

 

The “what is the self?” question in Buddhism is to look at that part of our mentality that Shinran called “snakes and scorpions.” In the session I referred to it as the reptilian brain as I’ve heard some teachers say, but that early evolved part of our grey matter might be more about very primitive reflexes and functions. So here I’ll refer to it as the “dark heart/mind” since the Buddha called his self “Avidya” (not-clear) when he confronted it in his meditation under the Bodhi Tree. I have a feeling real reptiles are a lot nicer than us humans are to each other.

 

[Some reptiles from Wikipedia]

 

That dark heart/mind is our desire to protect and promote ourselves and to see other beings as threats or doormats. That is the heart/mind Kiyozawa saw so disturbingly in himself. Even though on the outside he seemed like a gentle prude, solving math problems as his entertainment, in his writings he sees his lechery and aggressiveness. He recognized that clinging to one’s idea of self was a big problem because that idea has to be constantly defended and pumped up. The way to keep cracking open that clenched fist is to be reminded that our real life is nothing but the flow of causes and conditions, the coming together and coming apart of various elements. To be reminded of that is to let go and let oneself fall down (raku-zai) into the flow of the Power Beyond Self.

 

In his poem “Who Am I?” (pp.  196-7 in Shout of Buddha) uses the same Japanese phrase “Jiko to wa nanzo ya?” that Kiyozawa used in his diary entry of October 1898. In the verses, he says he thought his self was those elements we usually identify as our own – thoughts, experiences, feelings, deeds etc. But in each verse he says it’s a mistake to see one’s self as those elements because “I am not such a limited self” – he is those things but also not limited to those things. The mistake is made when we cling to those aspects as being our identity, when those aspects can change, disappear and reappear in the flow of our lives. Akegarasu echoes the Buddha’s birth cry of “I alone am most noble” – the recognition that my life, as well as each and every life, is to be respected in its uniqueness, different in each moment. So what Akegarasu calls “this indescribable self” is the real life he is connected to and flowing with – in other words, A-mita-yus “un-bounded-Life” (aka Amitabha “immeasurable Light).

 

As I’ve pointed out in other occasions, the last line of the English translation is a bit off. “Truth is here” sounds okay but the actual phrase Shinjitsu no seikatsu o shite yuku no de arimasu, can be literally translated as “Going with the life-activity of reality.” There’s yuku (iku) 行くthat indicates going forth, like the last part of the Heart Sutra, “ga-te ga-te.” Somehow “truth is here” sounds too static to me and I want people to know how dynamic the last line of the poem is.

 

So here we see the Dharmakara story through several lenses – Shakyamuni communicating to Ananda, Honen conveying the Pure Land teachings to Shinran, and Kiyozawa waking Akegarasu up to what each of our lives really is. All the teachers are telling us to be aware of the flow of reality (“Amida”) and not get stuck thinking we are the “gotta get mine while the getting’s good” individual driven solely by the dark heart/mind. In other Buddhist presentations, there’s an overcoming of that dark heart/mind by our own efforts (e.g. “removing dust from the mirror”) but in Jodo Shinshu, we don’t get rid of that mind but we are shown that the Power Beyond Self is the true driving force of our life.

 

Examining the Self – Sutra Study Class Session 8

In our February 7, 2023 session, we read the first two paragraphs in Section 6 of the Larger Sutra but it is this sentence in the SBTS* translation that I focused on:

… the Buddha Lokesvararaja told Bhiksu Dharmakara ‘You yourself should know what needs to be done in order to adorn your Buddha-land.’
 
After the Tan Butsu Ge where Dharmakara praises his teacher and vows to set up his “kingdom of the first,” Dharmakara then asks Lokesvararaja for advice on how to get started. It makes more sense to me that what Lokesvararaja tells Dharmakara is, “In order to fill with virtues (‘adorn’) the Buddha-land you develop, you must first of all know yourself.” For Akegarasu to put the “you must know yourself” at the entrance of his temple (see photo below) means he felt this phrase was the key instruction for Dharmakara. For all of us, I think, it spells out the starting point in our path towards Awakening – and I think that’s what the Buddha is trying to get across in telling Ananda this story.

                                    (read right to left: Nyo – ji- tō – chi = You – self – must – know

This does not come across in the English translations that Nishi Honganji has produced yet for the modern Higashi lineage it is the crucial phrase – the command that we must make examining ourselves a priority in our spiritual seeking.

To me any religion that makes praise its focus has the danger of making what is being praised – God, Amida et al – just a projection of our ego, the idealized version of our self. But to really discover how our heart/mind works is to let go of our hope of becoming an angel by our own efforts even with the help of divine forces. In the email announcement to the class I quoted two of Shinran’s wasan verses about seeing his heart/mind as full of snakes and scorpions, poisoning whatever good he attempts to do.

The instruction to thoroughly examine ourselves in the way Shinran does is what seems to us as Dharmakara says, “so vast and profound that is it beyond my range of comprehension.” So in the next session I want to take a closer look of what Akegarasu learned from Kiyozawa about taking on the painful practice of confronting our ego-centered self.
 

*SBTS=Shin Buddhism Translation Series , what we call the “blue book” but it’s not much different from the Numata series translation since both are based on Hisao Inagaki’s work.

All Shook Up – Sutra Study Class Session 7

 

In our January 17, 2023 session, we read the second half of the Tan Butsu Ge (aka San Butsu Ge) in Section 5 of the Larger Sutra along with “Kingdom of the First”

(Shout of Buddha pp. 125-126).

 

This blog post will be a bit disjointed since that’s how my mind is these days, dealing with some physical and mental health issues.

 

The last verse in the first half of Tan Butsu ge has the “all shook up” expression of Dharmakara – he feels the whole universe shaking because of the wisdom-light coming from Lokesvararaja. This leads to the transition of Dharmakara going from just praising his teacher to vowing to become like his teacher. In religion there’s a lot of praising going on, but the true teachers don’t want to hear praise – they hope to get us off our butts and go forth like they have gone forth, leaving their old complacent lifestyles behind.

 

During the class, I mentioned being impressed by a local Catholic activist but I couldn’t remember her name. Later that evening I remembered she is Kathy Kelly (see photo below) who is still very active and lives in the temple’s neighborhood (Uptown Chicago). What impressed me about her when I attended a talk she gave at a nearby church is how she comes across as a very humble person who respects everyone, including those who oppose her actions and words. I feel she seems like the Bodhisattva ideal – doing what she sees that needs to be done (such as bringing medicine to embargoed countries) but without any stridency of being the one who is absolutely right.

 

 

The Akegarasu article refers to the line in Tan Butsu Ge: koku-do dai-ichi “country-land of number one.” But SBTS* fudges that in their translation using “exquisite” instead of the sense of being the “most noble one” which includes recognizing each being as a “first one.”

 

*SBTS=Shin Buddhism Translation Series , what we call the “blue book” but it’s not much different from the Numata series translation since both are based on Hisao Inagaki’s work.