Starting a Study Group in 2025

Starting in January 2025, I would like to host a study group on Zoom to read and discuss Shinran’s writings with me. The theme is “Warera: Shinran and Solidarity.” The pronoun “warera” is what Shinran used for “we” in his Yuishinsho mon’i. He wrote what are called “commentaries” to explain in vernacular Japanese the Buddhist texts written in Chinese. The non-elites of his day were not completely illiterate – many could read kana, the simple notations indicating syllables, but as Shinran notes, they did not read the complex ideographs known as kanji, the Han writing from China.

 
I would like to take the time to read through the commentaries, starting with Yuishinsho mon’i. So the first half hour of the session will be reading the passages and the second half hour will be for discussion. We will use the English translation in the Collected Works of Shinran but we will look at the original Japanese and consider alternative ways to translate the text.

This group is for people who want to seriously study Shinran’s teachings but in the context of how we participate in our communities to promote liberation and resist authoritarianism. It would not be appropriate for someone to join the group if they do not fit that description.

I have not set a date and time yet, but will ask those who are interested what days and times work for them. I hope to start the group around mid-January 2025. If you are interested, please email or message me.
 

Intra-Buddhist Encounters

Sometimes it seems hard for Shin Buddhists to dialogue with other traditions because their practices and doctrines seem so far away from Shinran’s teachings. At the 2015 Buddhist Catholic dialogue in Rome, the three Shin ministers and I agreed that we seemed to have more in common with the Catholics than the mostly monastic representatives of the various Buddhist sects.

Yet I feel the need to keep in contact with Buddhists of other traditions, especially in working together for liberatory causes, such a the freeing of Palestine from the current genocidal attacks. It helps to remember that Shinran drew on a wide variety of Buddhist traditions in his clarification of the Pure Land teachings in Kyogyoshinsho. He and his teacher Honen would not feel out of place in discussions of Buddhism with followers of other traditions. The problem was too many elitists in the other traditions felt threatened by the Pure Land teachings’ embrace of the poor, working class and women, so they advocated for the persecution of the nembutsu followers.

 

What led to the suppression of the nembutsu groups in medieval Japan is not a factor in the West where almost all Buddhist groups try to uphold the principles of racial and gender equality. The main difference between Jodo Shinshu and other lineages practiced in the West is what they consider the agent that brings awakening. For most western Buddhists, the individual is the agent, while for Shin Buddhists, it is Amida because we believe each of us is incapable of attaining awakening by individual effort. But I think we can bridge that gap even if the other Buddhists find it hard to understand our centering of Amida.

 

I would like to give examples of how we can bridge that gap. I participated in some of the sessions of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s recent series of Refuge Circles, the online gathering for contemplation and action during this time of genocides in Palestine and other locations.

 

 [From Instagram: Refuge Circles announcement]

 

In one session, Rev. Mushim Ikeda, a Japanese American ordained in Korean Zen, read a series of Bodhisattva vows. I don’t feel I can make any promises to do the Bodhisattva tasks of eliminating suffering, providing comfort, conquering delusions etc. But as I wrote to Mushim-sensei in the chat, I can hear these vows coming from Amida, the ultimate bodhisattva working in this world. As someone who’s worked with Jodo Shinshu ministers in the Bay Area, she replied, “Namu Amida Butsu.”

 

At the final session of this year’s Refuge Circles, the leader was BPF co-director Kate Johnson, filling in because the scheduled speaker couldn’t make it. This was the Thursday after the elections, so she spoke of seeing the good in people, even though the political scene seems full of people saying and doing things harmful to other beings and our environment.

 

As a Jodo Shinshu minister, I avoid talking about the “basic goodness” of all people. As Shinran sees so clearly in himself, our beings are filled with the poisons of greed, anger and delusion so I really can’t talk of my or anyone else’s “inherent good.” In Tannisho, Shinran is quoted saying, “I know nothing of good and evil. For if I could know thoroughly, as Amida Tathagata knows, that an act was good, then I would know good…” (CWS 679)

 

With that in mind, I listened to Kate’s words as describing the goodness (thought/word/deed karma to nurture lives) of Amida which is manifested through the people in our lives. Even though I have no stock of pure goodness in me, I can appreciate how Amida’s compassion is conveyed through the kind thoughts, words and actions of people. And through the nurturing and support I receive from others, such as my Dharma friends in BPF, I may be able to participate in bringing Amida’s healing compassion to those in suffering.

 

I say “participate” because the work ahead of us will require group effort, not the illusion of a heroic individual swooping in as a savior. Although there are thousands of people who identify as Jodo Shinshu followers in the West (North and South America, Europe etc.), it seems only a handful here and there are activists and organizers against the destructive forces of genocides, prisons and poverty. So I believe we need to be able to join with other Buddhists, as well as those of other religions, particularly the followers of Islam who’ve been so vilified in the media. We are not out to convert the “spiritual not religious” crowd to Jodo Shinshu, but we open our hearts to the spiritual oneness their activism is expressing.

 

Keeping in mind how easily I can fall into ego-enhancing delusions, I look to “only the nembutsu is true” as I navigate how to contribute to organizing, mutual aid and resistance in the days ahead.

Uncountable Lives (Mu-ryō-jū)

Part One: Right View

 

When I first started attending the Buddhist Temple of Chicago, I heard Rev. Gyomay Kubose translating hongan as “the will to live.” He gave the example of a plant that grows from a crack in the city sidewalk as manifesting the strength of that will to live. Reading Shout of Buddha (trans. Saito and Sweany, Orchid Press, 1977), I thought Akegarasu was also explaining hongan, the Original Vow, as not only the will to live but my will to live. In the piece “To Live,” I identified with Miss T who proclaims, “I just want to live” despite all her sufferings, such as the loss of family members.

 

After Rev. Gyoko Saito left the Chicago temple to take a post in Los Angeles, I went through a phase of disillusionment with Buddhism and the teachings of Akegarasu, in particular. What good was having a strong will to live when my life was continual sufferings? All my intense listening to Rev. Kubose in Sunday services, the meditation sessions and in personal consultations wasn’t helping to relieve my sufferings and I decided I would quit the temple after it hosted the Eastern Buddhist League conference.

 

But it was at that EBL conference that I was led to Dr. Nobuo Haneda by Rev. Saito and his wife. In Dr. Haneda’s weekly class at BTC I came to learn why he and Rev. Saito translated hongan as “innermost aspiration.” It is not my simple will to live, but it is a desire gushing up from a deep, ancient consciousness shared with all beings, not confined by the constricting walls of my ego.

 

During that time I studied under Dr. Haneda, I realized I was reading Akegarasu wrong and that realization was made more clear when I read him in Japanese during my studies in Japan and later studying with Rev. Saito in Los Angeles.

 

In the piece “To Live,” the person I should identify with is Akegarasu, the one who clearly hears Miss T and respects her vibrant expression of being alive. I found this was exemplified by Rev. Saito – in his talks and in his writings, he was always the listener, the learner, the one who bows down to the lives he encounters. I saw in him the embodiment of Namu Amida Butsu.

 

So I can state that I was misled by Rev. Kubose saying hongan was “the will to live.” Hongan is not about destructively busting through the concrete as an urban dandelion. Hongan is the aspiration to recognize the organic life of the minerals in the concrete and to embrace their life as being as dignified as the flower. To hear and say Namu Amida Butsu is to recognize my connection to all lives, how much they have helped me, along with how much I’ve harmed them in my selfish pursuit of personal peace.

 

Part Two: Right Action

 

Here I also want to explain my recent break with Dr. Haneda, who I will always consider my important teacher. From him I learned Amitayus means all lives uncountable (mu-ryō) of past, present and future. But for me it is important to encounter some of these many lives, not just in Buddhism study groups and at Japanese American temples, but in the world that includes the ill and injured, the financially struggling, the demonized folks all around us and far away in all directions.

 

In Q & A sessions, whenever Dr. Haneda is asked about social justice activity, he answers that it is all “small compassion,” an individual’s efforts to feel good about oneself. It is a response I’ve heard often from Japanese scholars and an attitude some Buddhist Churches of America ministers also subscribe to. But for me, I need concrete experience of my interconnection with other lives.

 

Becoming involved in affordable housing campaigns has introduced me to people I would not encounter otherwise – men and women who lost their housing because of a sudden job layoff, divorce, serious accident or illness, and not because they are “too lazy to work.”

 

[Calligraphy of the beginning of Shoshinge displayed at the Kiyozawa Manshi Memorial Museum in Hekinan, Japan]

 

Now as I am involved in supporting efforts to end the genocide in Palestine, I’m learning how connected I am to people who are on the other side of the world from me. When we chant at the beginning of Shoshinge, Kimyō muryōjū nyorai, I know the Tathagata (“thus-come”) includes the uncountable lives being massacred in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. How can we not honor them as well as our teachers and relatives of the past?

 

The second line of Shoshinge is paying respect to the inconceivable lights (wisdoms) of the universe – those wisdoms include indigenous wisdoms as well as the insights expressed in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. It is the height of sectarian arrogance to think Amitabha (unbounded lights) only refers to Sino-Japanese Buddhism.

 

I am grateful that when the genocidal attacks on Gaza started, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship has offered Refuge Circles on Zoom, four days a week to give us a moment of calm to process our grief and outrage. In September they asked me to conduct two sessions. In the first session I explained a lot about Pure Land Buddhism (which not many BPF members are aware of) but in the second session as our shared contemplation, I read from the second chapter of Kyogyoshinsho, the series of verses where Shinran praises hongan. (Collected Works of Shinran, pages 66-67).

 

The Vow of Compassion is like vast space, for all its excellent virtues are broad and boundless. …

It is like the great earth, for it sustains the birth of all beings.

It is like the great waters, for it washes away the scum of blind passions [the selfish greed of oneself and others that causes sufferings].

It is like the great fire, for it burns the firewood of all [one-sided] views.

It is like the great wind, for it goes everywhere in the world and is without hindrances.

 

That is just a bit of Shinran’s description of hongan, the innermost aspiration to move us into caring and into action as part of this interconnected reality of all lives.