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.