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.