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.