At the June 6 session we discussed only the 22nd 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 11th, 17th, 18th and 22nd. We discussed the 11th vow in Session 12 and in my last blog post on Session 13, I discussed the relation of the 17th and 18th vows, so here I’ll look at why Shinran felt the 22nd 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 22nd 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 22nd 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 22nd 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.
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 11th and 22nd 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.
