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 18th 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 18th 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.
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