On June 22 we gathered on Zoom for the sixth session of “Warera: Shinran and Solidarity.” Because the U.S. bombed Iran the night before, I was thinking of opening up the study group discussion to the public in case others were feeling like me – desperate to hear Shinran’s teachings during this anxiety-inducing time. But as it turned out only four people came to our Zoom session.
We discussed what is one of the core sections of “Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone’” (CWS pages 459-460) where Shinran uses the pronoun “warera” for “we” and “us.” On page 459, Shinran hits hard in explaining what “to abandon the mind of self-power” means: “to abandon the conviction that one is good, to cease relying on the self; to stop reflecting knowingly on one’s evil heart, and further to abandon the judging of people as good and bad.” I commented that this may be difficult for other Buddhists to understand – I’ve heard people from other sects repeatedly say, “Each person is innately good.” But what Shinran is warning us about is how easily our grasping ego pumps itself up about being “innately good” and closes itself off from hearing the wisdom of self-examination. Shinran wants us to really confront our highly prejudiced heart and not brush it off with “Oh, I’m just a foolish ordinary being.”
It struck me as painful to hear Shinran refer to “hunters and peddlers” as “lowly kinds” but then he also strongly identifies with them as “we.” The term “lowly kinds” is what Shinran heard his aristocratic peers of the one-percent refer to everyone else, the ninety-nine percent, who have to struggle to live. He is abandoning the class he was born into and seeing himself as part of the masses that the aristocrats labeled as trash – worthless as dirt and broken pieces of tile.
Then we go on to the key phrase “bits of rubble change into gold” where all the beings designated as trash are now seen as precious substances. The Chinese poet Tz’u-min is revealing the mind of Dharmakara, his heart-mind completely turned around from being a king who looks down on others, to becoming the one who bows down and looks up with respect to all beings, i.e. the buddha (butsu) who bows down (namu) to all of life (amida).
[screenshot of the Makdisi Street podcast on YouTube]
In the May 27 episode of the podcast Makdisi Street, I heard legal scholar Noura Erekat use the phrase “infallible optimism” to describe the firm faith of the Palestinians that they as a people will survive and flourish despite the genocidal measures Israel is taking against them – bombings, shootings, starvation, cutting off access to water and medicine. When I heard that phrase, I think it captures what all religions would call faith and what Shinran is referring to as “diamondlike shinjin.” It expresses the shift away from individual concern to knowing that one is a part of an interconnected larger life, the light that takes us into itself and will not abandon our lives in its spiritual aspects.
In contemplating that “infallible optimism” it occurred to me that what Shinran and our teachers have been pointing to is not the Pure Land as an individual’s reward in the realm after death, but the Pure Land as the place of true community, the vision of returning to the reality of all of us being equal and connected. Even the term “afterlife” can mean that everything we each think, say and do in our lifetimes contributes to making that vision a reality for those who come after us.
In our discussion the idea of “fearlessness” came up – a great teaching we receive from Shinran. Instead of worrying about making ourselves ethically pure, deserving of some rarified state called “enlightenment,” Shinran tells us to experience the already established state of nirvana in the Pure Land as being in community with others. More than fearing for our physical safety, we tend to be afraid of “messing up,” especially in the judgment of those who seemed positioned above us. It all comes down to abandoning the mind of self-power and entrust ourselves to what the power of hongan, the aspiration to awaken to oneness, brings us to think, say and do. When we can resonate with “bits of rubble change into gold,” then the nembutsu abundantly is heard.
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