Study Group April 2026 Session

 

On April 19 we had our fourth session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). We looked at the section CWS 499-500 where Shinran comments on an inscription on a scroll which depicted Nagarjuna, the Dharma teacher which all Mahayana sects consider as their first “high-monk” (literal for kōsō since I want to avoid the term “patriarch”).

 

By highlighting this particular quote, Shinran is letting his audience know that the eminent teacher is advocating what they are already doing – being mindful of the support and virtues coming to them through the nembutsu. We and they don’t have to get into the complex philosophical concepts Nagarjuna is known for among Buddhist scholars and teachers in other sects. It is enough for us to enter the stage of definitely settled by entrusting ourselves to the power beyond our ego-selves.

 

And it is not Nagarjuna on a high perch looking down on poor incompetent people saying, “Your only hope is to do nembutsu because you don’t have the smarts and physical strength for elite practices.” Nagarjuna uses the first person singular “I” in his verse “I take refuge” just as in his Junirai, he repeatedly says “Therefore I bow down in respect to Amida.” Shinran wants us to know we are in the same definitely settled crowd as the great teachers.

 

I quibbled about CWS saying “the Buddha will appear” when it is tathagata, nyorai, “thusness coming.” We have the appearance of this thusness coming at us in our teachers, the texts, events and various living beings (such as the cats who appear on our Zoom call).

 

In our discussion about “entrusting,” a question was raised about how Shinran uses the term “doubt” in contrast to “trust.” I feel the English term is misleading because we use “doubt” in the sense of questioning the truth of something and this continual examination is what we do as Buddhists, especially questioning our own judgments. Shinran used the term gi, utagai, in the sense of being full of reliance on our own self-serving view as opposed to being aware of reality. One example is this gi Shinran says is when we believe in reward and punishment – “I should be rewarded and those other guys should be punished” – when the reality of unbounded compassion is that all beings are embraced, no matter how much we or they messed up.

 

 

[Screenshot of singing protesters in Japan]

 

I know I’m not the only one trying to keep my hopes up during this time of awful stuff going on in the world and all around us. I feel some inspiration from the social media reports of the huge crowds of protesters in the cities of Japan. They are spurred to protest their own government trying to be more militaristic, but in the protests there are also calls for “Free Palestine” and ‘”Stop the War with Iran.” The young folks have their chants and pop/rock music but at various locations I saw the middle aged and older people are singing the song “Do You Hear the People Singing?” from the musical Les Miserables. The Japanese version is based mainly on the English lyrics rather than the original French, but to me the lyrics sound more universal and relevant than the English version. I know after the “no kings” marches and other demonstrations, some critics say nothing changes from people singing and dancing, yet I think we need songs to remind us to fight for freedom and equality. Isn’t that what the nembutsu is calling us to do?

 

Study Group March 2026 Session

On March 29 we had our third session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). We looked at the section CWS 497-499 on Bodhisattva Mahāsthāmaprāta (which after pronouncing the Sanskrit once, I only used the Japanese version Dai-seishi which is also easier to type). In many pictures and sculptures, Amida Buddha is depicted flanked by the two bodhisattvas, Avalokiteśvara (Jpn. Kannon) and Dai-seishi. And while Kannon is mentioned a ton of times in many sutras and commentaries, Dai-seishi is hardly referenced outside the inscription from the Suramgama Sutra on the scroll Shinran cites.

 

My theory for why Shinran wants to highlight Dai-seishi for his audience is to show Buddhism is about the powerful strength of wisdom and not just the warm fuzzy embrace of compassion.  For his fellow travelers on the Pure Land path, he wanted to let them know that there’s something strong and dynamic in their spiritual liberation despite how society demeans them as weak and passive. The Other Power symbolized by Amida expresses itself as both Kannon (unbounded Life) and Dai-seishi (infinite Light).

 

Shinran in his commentary brings the text from its general sense of extolling meditation (samadhi) to a specific exhortation for the vocal nembutsu. Where the text says awakening (satori) will naturally occur without depending on expedient means, Shinran says that with jinen (inevitability) other practices are not needed at all.

 

We discussed how many Jodo Shinshu ministers (especially the ones from Japan) talk of shinjin as something everyone can just jump into from square one and anyone who indulges in practices besides reciting nembutsu is suspected of being a self-power addict. In the section we read, it is clear that Shinran is not dismissing other practices as bad, but only pointing out that awakening can happen without depending on them. I can speak for the converts by saying I needed to do a lot of other practices in order to realize the efficacy of the nembutsu and my overestimation of my abilities.

 

We talked about how the phrase “Come as you are” can be misleading as a motto for Jodo Shinshu temples. It is meant to be welcoming, telling people there are no pre-requisites for becoming a member. But often it is interpreted as “I don’t need to do anything because Amida accepts me like I am, sitting on my hands and saying nothing.” But the motto comes from the White Path Parable when the traveler is told to “come immediately,” that is, get your rear in gear without overthinking about how to make yourself look good. It signifies a forward movement towards life itself, propelled by the wisdom that breaks through your preconceived notions. The nembutsu is a call to be engaged with reality, to participate in the working of hongan, the most basic aspiration to recognize all lives in one’s existence.

[photo from The Australian]

I wanted to highlight someone who is like Dai-seishi (“great arriving at strength”) and I thought of Susan Abulhawa, who I saw interviewed on the Bad Faith podcast of March 19 on YouTube. She was in the news because people were criticizing the New York City mayor’s wife for providing illustrations for a book to which Abulhawa contributed. The critics were concerned with Abulhawa’s statements criticizing Israel (calling its people “parasites” and various beasts) so the mayor spoke to distance himself and his wife from Abulhawa. On the Bad Faith podcast, Abulhawa spoke eloquently of why she uses those terms for people who do cruel things such as (what she witnessed as a child) making two little boys spit in each other’s mouths like a soccer match in order for a group of children to pass through a checkpoint. Her novel Mornings in Jenin describes the decades of violence and humiliations that the Palestinians have been subjected to.

 

Buddhism teaches us to respect all beings equally but that teaching also tells us to catch ourselves and others thinking, saying and doing things that do not recognize the dignity of all beings. Right now is not the time to only sit silently while children and adults throughout the world are being murdered and maimed by weapons and by deprivation. As individuals there is not much we can do alone but the nembutsu calls us into community and into the actions of wisdom and compassion.

Study Group February 2026 Session

On February 22 we had our second session of discussing “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). Shinran’s notes begin with the three passages from the Larger Sutra that appeared on one scroll (CWS 493-497). And as I said last time, the Larger Sutra is the foundational text for Jodo Shinshu, but after watching Jim Pollard’s talk on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3uqmghr5es), it made me realize we need to read foundational texts (sutras and commentaries) because especially in the West, it’s too easy to make Buddhism into an ego-enhancing project. In Jim’s talk, Shinran could have gotten stuck in the first two gates of making oneself look good – the “ethical” phase of becoming a moral paragon or the “religious” phase of becoming a dedicated follower. But by reading the Larger Sutra with the commentaries of Vasubandhu and Tanluan, Shinran was reminded that Buddhism is the teaching of transcending the ego, of settling down to just being a foolish being in the embrace of the true wisdom and real compassion of unbounded Life and Light (the Wide-Vow gate).

 

We discussed two related concepts brought up in the Larger Sutra quotes: nonretrogression and jinen. Nonretrogression is a mouthful but I think in the Buddha’s time it resonated with people fearful of their next reincarnation, afraid any moral misstep could result in being reborn as an animal, hungry ghost or devil, or in the human realm as a poor, sick and/or ugly woman (male rebirth was considered a promotion). In Shinran’s time, people who worked for a living were told they were already condemned to hell for breaking the precepts that the aristocratic monks upheld by keeping their hands clean of doing labor and business transactions. For these people to hear from Honen and Shinran that there was no backsliding into the “unsaved” category due to any causes or circumstances affecting your thoughts and behavior was a big relief.

 

Prof. Jeff Wilson suggested “spiritual momentum” as a synonym for nonretrogression. That term captured the idea that we are receiving a wind at our backs to keep us going towards enlightenment no matter how unworthy we think we are. Another person suggested “gravity” which played on the idea of the settling feeling of falling back down to earth.

 

That sense of getting one’s feet back on the ground and out of the clouds of calculations relates to the concept of jinen, the ji “automatic,” nen “essence.” And it relates to the horizontal “crosswise” movement in the passages Shinran highlights as opposed to the usual way of thinking of spirituality as climbing up. Unfortunately in the main hall hondo in many temples, the ministers sit on a raised platform and some ministers speak and write from a lofty detached position talking down to the members sunk in their miseries. I mentioned Rev. Cyndi Yasaki’s article in Wheel of Dharma as a refreshing example of a minister relating the Dharma to her current personal experience of being pregnant.

 

[Screenshot of June Jordan in "A Place of Rage"]

These days I wish all religious people would be talking about solidarity with the actual people in our world who are experiencing hardships instead of making generalized statements of “all lives matter.” Recently I watched the short documentary “A Place of Rage” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEK7dlImtA) and I was impressed with the poet June Jordan, reading her poems and giving commentary. In the film twice she mentions her solidarity with the Palestinians which at that time (early 1990s) was not a common topic with Black activists. I read that she had to persuade some of her fellow activists to stop supporting Israel and to recognize the suffering of the Palestinians. The recently deceased Rev. Jesse Jackson was another Black activist who visibly supported the Palestinians and was unfairly labeled as an anti-Semite.

 

The plight of Palestinians is not unrelated to the current persecution of immigrants in the U.S. There is a close connection between the authoritarian forces in Israel, in the U.S. and all over the world, referred to as the “imperial boomerang” or recently in an article by Nikhil Pal Singh in Equator, it is called “homeland empire,” pointing out how the post-9/11 security measures are aimed at subjugating U.S. residents to the same oppression that our country imposes overseas. As Buddhists we already know about the interconnection of all lives, yet how come it is so difficult to get Japanese American Jodo Shinshu followers to have empathy for the people being hounded by ICE/CBP? Talk to the people in Minnesota who are going out of their way to help their neighbors getting groceries and providing lookouts at schools and daycare centers. To me, they are the ones moved by “the karmic power of the great Vow.”

 

Study Group January 2026 Session

 

On January 25 we started our reading and discussion of “Notes on the Inscriptions on Sacred Scrolls” (Songō shinzō meimon). From the time of our last meeting in December finishing up “Notes on ‘Essentials of Faith Alone,’” many horrendous things have happened in our country. In the state of Minnesota there was a surge of forces of the Department of Homeland Security: Customs Border Patrol (CBP) and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). Two people were shot and killed in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and with the news of those murders, it was learned an off-duty ICE agent had shot and killed a man in Los Angeles, Keith Porter, Jr. on New Year’s Eve. Besides those murders, we have seen numerous photos and videos of people being dragged from their cars, students and teachers being attacked with tear gas at schools, observers and protesters hit with pepper spray and rubber bullets.

 

These days with all the depressing news, I find it hard to get started doing anything “serious” but thankfully, I have those of you in this study group to support me in delving into the words of Shinran. We do this study not as an escape from reality but in order for us to make sense of, survive and be inspired to resist the current surge of authoritarianism. Shinran is speaking to the people of his time dealing with the chaos of a violently repressive ruling class along with natural disasters, sharing with them the wisdom from past teachers who also had to deal with difficult times and personal circumstances.

 

Back in Shinran’s time, they didn’t have videos and photos but Buddhism was conveyed to the common people in visual form using hanging scrolls. The scrolls which Jodo Shinshu followers would display at their gatherings usually depicted either a Buddhist figure  (shin-zō, “true image”) or a form of the nembutsu (son-gō, “revered Name”). There would be passages (mei-mon, “impressive words”) written or pasted around the main image and Shinran compiled this work to explain in vernacular Japanese those significant passages which were written in Chinese.

 

Shinran begins with three passages from the Larger Sutra that appeared on one scroll (CWS 493-497). The Larger Sutra is the basis of Jodo Shinshu for Shinran because the story of Dharmakara is what gives the nembutsu meaning. The first passage noted is the 18^th vow and we discussed shingyō, here translated as “entrusting.” The shin part is to be aware, to accept what is true, while the gyō part indicates joy and aspiration (see CWS 94), so “entrusting” doesn’t quite capture what Shinran sees in the 18^th vow.

 

The second passage comes from the verse section of the second half of the Larger Sutra, called Tōbō-ge by Higashi and Ōgon-ge by Nishi. The two verse sections in the first half of the Larger Sutra are often chanted at Shin temples but not this third verse section. We discussed the phrase “coming about of itself” as related to jinen, usually translated as “naturalness.” I said it didn’t mean “natural” as in the “natural world” but more like coming about inevitably without calculation like how each of us can say somehow we’ve reached the stage of nonretrogression, having encountered the teachings that changed how we live and see the world.

 

I meant to save the third passage for the next session but I realized later that I totally skipped over page 495 when we were talking about jinen. So we look at the commentary on page 495 about the second passage and will pick up the third passage next time.

 

 

It is depressing to hear that over 73,000 people are presently being held in U.S. detention centers. To see that aerial photo of adults and children yelling for “libertad” makes me wish the camera-drones could have bombed down the walls and fences so those prisoners could escape. I think many of us hate seeing people in cages, especially those of us whose parents and grandparents had to spend years behind barbed wire. What we call the Pure Land has to be a vision of complete freedom for all beings – there is no justification for placing anyone in a cell, camp or corral, not in the U.S. or anywhere else. In the nembutsu if we can hear those cries of “libertad” we can be drawn into participating in the liberating power of hongan, the universal aspiration for freedom and equality.