On December 21 we had our review session of “Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone’” on Zoom. As an overview, I wanted us to think about how we are in a situation not that much different from Shinran’s – struggling to convey the nembutsu teachings to an audience who only knew sparse, corrupted notions of Buddhism during a time of chaos, political and environmental.
Of all the texts by Honen’s disciples, Shinran chose Yuishin-shō by Seikaku to explain to his audience. Just the title alone captures how the Pure Land path differs from the more well known Path of Sages. The ultimate state of nirvana is not something you have to earn by doing physically demanding tasks or by swearing off all “impure” behaviors and thoughts, but it is there by having only (yui) the awareness (shin) of the true state of all beings’ interconnection. (See my January 2025 post about shin NOT meaning merely “faith” as it’s been long translated.)
The common people of Shinran’s time had been told by the Buddhist elites that they were all doomed to spend kalpas in the lower realms because they broke the precepts in their daily life and they were incapable of doing marathon bouts of meditation and acts of devotion. After leaving the Mt. Hiei monastery, Shinran witnessed Honen assuring the poor and working folks in Kyoto that they were already taken up, not to be abandoned, by the awakening personified as Amida Buddha. When they asked Honen, “But don’t we have to do something?” his response was “Just Namu Amida Butsu,” express your awareness and gratitude for being already liberated.
I said if anyone asks what you got out of studying this text, you can point to the key section where Shinran quotes the verse by Tz’u-min (CWS p. 456) and goes on to explain the wording. In expanding on “Solely making beings turn about and abundantly say the nembutsu, I can make bits of rubble change into gold” (CWS 459-460), Shinran uses the pronoun warera, “we,” showing his total identification with the non-elites, the so-called “rubble” – the discarded, dismissed, looked down upon.
There is a lot of “us versus them” in the current political rhetoric that says you’re “us” if you see white, Jewish/Christian, hetero-cisgendered, homeowning, Western cultured people as superior and believe the “them” deserve to be downtrodden (impoverished, incarcerated, incinerated etc.). Shinran’s declaration of solidarity calls to us to identify with all the people being maligned as “less than” and see each one as precious as gold. Most of us, like Shinran, come from privileged backgrounds, and we can understand what a leap of shin (awareness, acceptance) it is to break from the messaging of our surrounding society and let the true principles of the Buddhist teachings guide our lives.
n[graphic from Substack]
This month I want to call attention to the Buddhists who are not necessarily followers (or even people aware) of Jodo Shinshu, but they are channeling Amida’s mission of awakening people to equality and interdependence. You can learn about and support Decolonial Dharma (https://www.decolonialdharma.org/#donate) and read their posts on Substack “Bad Buddhists.” Also in 2026, I will be participating in the online Refuge Circles of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, hoping to bring attention to Shinran’s teaching of “just show up” for the people who are being treated as “bits of rubble.”
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