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.”