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 11th, 17th and 18th 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.”
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