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                     TABLE OF CONTENTS

                I     What is Shin?....................      1
                II    What Is Shinjin..................      6
                III   Buddhist Wisdom..................     10
                IV    Great-Self and Non-Ego...........     16
                V     The Logic of Prajna..............     20
                VI    Hell and PureLand................     23
                VII   Causes and Conditions............     26
                VIII  Great Compassion.................     29
                IX    Nembutsu.........................     32
                X     Where is the Buddha?.............     36
                XI    The Transformation of Shinjin....     38
                XII   Other-Power......................     43
                XI    The Finger and the Moon..........     47
                X     Symbolism and Paradox............     50
                XV    Tasting the Teachings............     53
                XVI   Change and Growth in Shinjin.....     56
                XVII  Buddhist Salvation...............     59
                XVIII The Problem of Death.............     63
                XIX   Ojo..............................     69
                XX    The Process of Shinjin...........     72
                XXI   The Essential Integration........     76
                XXII  Only Nembutsu Is Real............     80
                XXIII The Essential Gate...............     83
                IV    Gugan-Great Vow..................     85







                     PREFACE
                     There exists a distance between knowing Buddhism in
                intellectually and being a Buddhist. In the author of this
                concise work, Professor Takamaro Shigaraki of Ryukoku University,
                that distance is completely eliminated, since he is an eminent
                scholar of Shin Buddhism and a devout Buddhist as well.
                     In this collection of lectures which were given at the
                Buddhist Study Center in the summer of 1 979, the author clearly
                describes, chapter after chapter, the salient features of Shin
                Buddhism that have given Shinran Shonin's teachings a unique
                place not only within the family of Buddhist schools, but also
                within the community of religions.
                     The primary purpose of these lectures is to instruct, and
                thus, drawing abundantly from his childhood experiences and his
                continuing encounter with life's pain and suffering, Professor
                Shigaraki succeeds in making complex Shinshu concepts quite
                understandable to novices as well as those who are more familiar
                with Shinshu.
                     The translator, the Rev. Will Masuda, Director of the






                Buddhist Study Center, has effectively captured the spirit of
                Shin Buddhism and brought to life through his command of English
                an exciting world of the religious life for those familiar with
                the Japanese language.
                     The author likens this group of lectures to the finger
                pointing to the moon of the Buddha Dharma. it is certainly that,
                but at the same time these lectures will prepare the reader to
                appreciate other works on Shinshu and general Buddhism so that
                the journey to the moon may be more exciting and gratifying.
                     Bishop Yoshiaki Fujitani
                     Honpa Hongwanji Mission
                     of Hawaii








                CHAPTER ONE

                WHAT IS SHIN?

        I am a Shin Buddhist.

        Zen, which arose in Japan in the same thirteenth century period  of
        religious reform as did Shin Buddhism, became popular in America and Europe
        through  the writings of D.T. Suzuki and others. Suzuki's writings on  Shin
        never  attained wide readership. Yet, for we ordinary men and women
        everywhere, Shin Buddhism's Nembutsu path opens the Buddhist world of awakening
        through  the process of our everyday lives. It is to explore Shin  Buddhism
        in as clear and concise a manner as possible that I write this book,  which
        evolved from my lecture series at the Buddhist Study Center's 1979  Summer
        Session in Honolulu, Hawaii.
                1  shall  approach the teachings of Shinran, founder of Shin
        Buddhism, from  the  broad perspective of my own experience. I was born in
        Hiroshima,  and raised the second son in a country temple. Because of  this
        background , I received a somewhat strict religious training. For  example,
        as a youngster I liked to go fishing, but my father did not permit this.  1
        had  to sneak out to go fishing. When my father caught me, he would  really
        give it to me!
                In  my early life, the process of death was a condition leading  to
        my religious sensitivity. When I was eight years old, my sister died.  When
        I was thirteen, my mother died. When I was fifteen, my brother died.  After
        my  mother's death, my father remarried. A stepmother came into my  family,
        and this too became one of the painful experiences of my youth.
                As  the  surviving son, I was expected to stay and  take  over  the
        temple as is the custom in temple families in Japan. This


                2      The Buddhist World of Awakening


        I  did  not want to do. Instead, I planned after high school to  leave  and






        become  a  teacher. In the Larger Pure Land Sutra, one of the  five  deadly
        sins  is the slandering of one's mother and father. Now, as I look back  on
        the  early days of my stepmother, I realize that my urge to leave home  was
        from my wanting to slander this new mother who had come into my family.
                When  I was in school, the war was going on and at age nineteen,  I
        joined  the  army. One month after I joined, Japan lost the war. It  was  a
        time  of confusion. Many were truly lost, spiritually, and of these many  I
        was  one. I abandoned my idea of going to college to become a  teacher.  In
        this period of postwar confusion, I decided to seek out anew the meaning of
        Shinran in my life.
                For  those  who  are not familiar with Shinran, I  should  like  to
        provide a brief background. He lived from 1173-1262 during the Kamakura
        period , a time of intense political and religious upheaval  in  Kyoto,
        the  ancient  capital of Japan. The Emperor was then merely  a  figurehead,
        with  affairs of the nation in the powerful hands of a succession of  noble
        families  and considerable power wielded by the Buddhist hierarchy  of  Mt.
        Hiei, a Tendai complex of temples and monasteries just northeast of  Kyoto.
        Women  and police were both forbidden on that monastic mountain-the  result
        of the latter prohibition being that among the monks were refugees who  had
        been thieves, criminals of all kinds, who formed the most powerful army  of
        the day.
                A  great many of the monks on Hiei were, however, serious and  sincere seekers after enlightenment. Such a one was Shinran, who had taken his
        vows at the age of nine. For twenty years he immersed himself in  strenuous
        study,  following  the  most difficult monastic practices. At  the  age  of
        twenty-nine  he felt himself a total failure in all this, and with  despair
        left Hiei knowing himself incapable of honestly going forward on



                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     3

                what he called the self-power "path of sages." The former Hiei
                monk, Honen, a brilliant teacher then nearing seventy, had begun
                a "Nembutsu only" movement to which Shinran was drawn. For the
                next six years he remained with Honen, devoting himself to the
                single practice of his teacher: Nembutsu.
                     The "Nembutsu only" practice was that of reliance on salvation
                (enlightenment) through "other power" acknowledged by the
                recitation of Namu Amida Butsu, a homage to the name of Amida,
                signifying trust in the Buddha whose Vow was to save all beings
                everywhere at all times. This was a practice available to even
                the lowliest, uneducated person, a way in sharp contrast to the
                scholasticism and noble family connections of the Buddhist
                hierarchy on Mt. Hiei and that other, more ancient Buddhist
                center, Nara.

                     Before long, the leaders of Nara and Hiei joined forces to
                persuade the Emperor to ban the increasingly popular competition
                of this "Nembutsu only" movement. Two of Honen's followers were
                executed. The others, including Honen himself, and thirty-five
                year old Shinran, were banished to different remote provinces.
                Shinran was exiled to Echigo, now the modern area of Naoetsu. He
                was stripped of his name, reduced to the status of a common
                criminal, and forbidden to practice Nembutsu. It was a prohibition
                he chose to ignore. Instead, during his exile he himself






                became a religious teacher.

                     Shinran, one of the first Buddhist priests to openly marry
                and live an ordinary life, called himself "neither priest nor
                layman. " He fathered a large family and shared the harsh lives
                of the people among whom he chose to remain after word of his
                pardon came from Kyoto. With his wife Eshinni, he moved to
                Mito-Kanto, which like Echigo was then a remote rural area. He stayed
                in that region, spreading "Nembutsu only" and beginning his major
                work, Kyo-Gyo-Shin-Sho-(Teaching-Living-True Mind-Awakening),
                until he was sixty years old. He then







                4     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                left his wife and family behind to return to Kyoto where he
                devoted the remaining thirty years of his life to writings and
                study that he hoped would settle the place of Honen's teachings
                in the mainstream of Mahayana Buddhism. He lived in quiet
                obscurity, without a temple of his own, working at tracing
                "Nembutsu only" in a spiritual lineage back to Sakyamuni Buddha,
                a scholarly project that was disparaged by many of the Nembutsu
                teachers of his period. He continuously revised Kyo-Gyo-Shin-Sho,
                and composed many poems, hymns and a large body of other writings
                before his death at the age of eighty-nine.

                     Throughout his long life, Shinran considered himself only a
                follower of his teacher Honen. He had no idea that he himself had
                founded a new tradition in Buddhism. However, the religious
                insights he developed took Shinran far beyond Honen, who is the
                founder of the Jodo tradition in Japanese Buddhism. Despite the
                passage of eight centuries between his time and ours, Shinran's
                writings and his approach to religion and life remain fresh and
                compelling. His is the freeing path that has been described as so
                simple-yet the most difficult of all difficulties for he encourages
                each one of us to make a choice in terms of our own life, to
                look honestly at our real self and the reality of our life. For
                himself, Shinran, Nembutsu was the only way, but for others-
                "whether you choose to accept it or not, that is up to you."
                     There is no distinction, no discrimination, no judgmentalism,
                in Shinran's teachings. He exposes the sham and deception of ordinary
                life, and pioneers into the humbling realm of
                "beyond good and evil." For his followers, and for those of us
                today who follow the Nembutsu path, he opens a way of life that
                leads to boundless spiritual freedom through the totally honest
                exploration of oneself and the real world that is so difficult
                for our ego-limited vision to perceive.
                     In the past century, Shinran's teachings traveled with













                     The Buddhist World of Awakening 5

                emigrants from Japan to Hawaii, the mainland United States and to
                Canada. Emigrants also carried Shin Buddhism to South America.
                Translation of such Shin Buddhist classics as Tannisho into
                German, English, and French, stimulated an interest in Shinran's
                teachings in England and Europe where Shin Buddhist societies
                have formed in a number of cities.







                     CHAPTER TWO

                     WHAT IS SHINJIN?

                     Like countless millions over the past 800 years, I feel that
                my Life has been enriched and transformed by Shinran 's teachings.
                It is, as I stated earlier, from the broad perspective of
                my own experience that I write these chapters, but of necessity
                a number of technical terms must be dealt with. In
                several areas, I have thought it essential to trace linguistic
                trails from Sanskrit to Chinese to Japanese, in order to clarify
                meanings in English. Too often, a simple translation presents a
                distorted and misleading view of the original. Such has
                been the case with Shinjin, the term that expresses the essence
                of Shin Buddhism. Shinjin has on occasion been translated as
                "faith" but to use that English word without considerable further
                explanation is inadequate as well as potentially misleading. I
                propose that, like nirvana  and Nembutsu , Shinjin become one of
                those Buddhist terms adopted without translation, as is, into the
                English vocabulary.

                     Buddhism cannot be grasped by the analytical logic of the
                west. Therefore, I wish to tackle the essential question-what is
                Shinjin?-by first explaining what Shinjin is not. Here is
                where the linguistic trail tracing must begin. In Japanese, there
                are three expressions which can all be approximately translated
                by the English word "faith. " These three-Shinrai,Shinko, and
                Shinjin-share the common root of shin, "to believe. "

                     Shinrai, the first of the three possible Japanese translations
                of "faith," means to "depend on", or "to use." It expresses
                a belief that does not have a religious context but is used













                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     7

                rather in the area of secular relationships such as, for
                example, my assuming something is going to be the way it is even
                when I don't really know-like my assumption today that I will be
                alive tomorrow. This kind of belief is based on my condition
                now, at this moment. Based on my wellness today, there is a high
                probability that I will continue to live on tomorrow. However,
                if I am ill, that probability is not so high after all. The
                "knowing" factor is minimal in this kind of believing. Rather,
                we believe in terms of what we think we can project. So, in many
                of our human relationships we experience difficulty in believing
                that these really are what they seem to be, especially at first
                encounter. With frequency, and familiarity, some kind of understanding
                is established and it is then that we believe in terms
                of what we feel more certain about.
                     Shinko, the second expression translatable as "faith" is
                more of a religious term. During Shinran's time, many of his
                contemporaries-his teacher Honen, Dogen who was the founder of
                Soto Zen, and Nichiren, another Kamakura religious reformer,
                all used shinko. However, Shinran himself always used shinjin.
                In dissecting shinko linguistically to trace its meanings, we
                find that to the root of shin, "to believe," is added a character
                "ko" which in this instance is also read as aogu-"to look
                up to." For example, in Shinto, the god you believe in is looked
                up to. In Japanese, the words for `god' and `above' are
                homonyms, expressed in the Chinese character read "kami"-god,
                but a character that often was read "above"or "on top of", and
                thus the implication that what is "on top" or "above" is "looked
                up to." The believer neither knows nor questions whether the god
                which he "looks up to" exists or not. This is not a belief in
                which intellectual, rational, or scientific evidence is
                important. In shinko, it is because we do not know that we
                believe. When Christianity began to establish itself in Japan
                one hundred years ago, the word "faith" in the Bible was
                translated as shinko; This aptly translates the Christian







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                belief that God is in heaven and therefore spatially "above" or
                "on top of" the believer.

                     Shinjin is totally different from either shinko or shinrai
                in that it has no intimation whatsoever of "looking up to" but
                expresses a condition of trust in Amida Buddha and his Vow to






                save all beings everywhere at all times. In this entrusting
                there is no subject, no object, no "I believe in something." It
                is an entrusting relating to the Sanskrit word prasada, which
                describes a condition that is very calm, still, pure.
                Cittaprasada is "the mind and heart which is clear and pure,"
                translated in the Chinese text as joshin, "clear or pure mind."

                     Shinran chose shinjin as the word more adequately carrying
                his intended meaning of "the truth of one 's heart and mind in a
                clear and pure way. " Here "pure" is to be carefully understood
                not as moral purity in the puritanical sense, but as the purity
                that is the result of non-calculation and non-ego. It is at the
                point where the pure, clear mind (cittaprasada) becomes my
                condition that the shinjin of Shinran's teachings becomes
                manifest. Thus shinjin is neither "faith" in a secular nor in
                the commonly held religious sense of the English word.

                     My interpretations of shinjin as it was used by Shinran is
                that its meaning has two aspects: that of "realizing" or "knowing"
                as well as the implicit aspect of truth or reality. It is
                "to know the heart and mind" as well as "the heart and mind that
                is true and real." This "knowing" is a special implication, the
                "knowing" that in Sanskrit is expressed by the word prajna, the
                Buddhist wisdom that is the dynamic of shinjin. To know one's
                heart and mind refers to the working of prajna, the wisdom that
                brings about "the true mind and heart." This is not a dualism
                but a whole in which prajna and "true mind and heart"
                (cittaprasada) are descriptions, one of the function and the
                other of the essence of shinjin.

                     Cittaprasada was, in the Sanskrit texts, used synonymously







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     9

                with samadhi, the state where the heart and mind being
                calm, truth or reality, can be penetrated. In other words,
                cittaprasada refers to the ability to "see the Buddha," to
                satori-be awakened and to be born in the home of Tathagata,
                the home of the Buddha.

                     As we interpret shinjin in this light, we begin to comprehend
                its breadth and depth. Shinjin embodies the wisdom which
                cittaprasada expresses: the mind which is clear and pure, the
                ability to "see the Buddha," and to be born into the home of the
                Buddha.

                     At this point, we come to the necessity of understanding
                the nature of Buddhist wisdom.













                     CHAPTER THREE

                     BUDDHIST WISDOM

                     Once again, as with shinjin in the preceding chapter, to
                understand what Buddhist wisdom is can best be approached by
                explaining what it is not. At this point, it is fruitful to
                examine in terms of human experience the three kinds of "knowing"
                which the English word "wisdom" can represent.
                     The first of these, "knowledge," is based on what is
                usually called objectivity, the "knowing" of an object which
                stands outside of oneself and which, upon analyzing, we can
                understand. This is the scientific approach, in which we are all
                trained to view objects standing in relation to ourselves. In
                scientific knowledge, the subject-which is myself- is not the
                focus of attention. Even in psychology the mind is viewed as an
                object to be analyzed quite apart from the whole mind-heart-body
                of which the mind is but one aspect. Indeed, scientific
                knowledge so objectifies the world around us, including
                ourselves, that in this kind of "knowing," we become an "it."
                     The other two kinds of "knowing " are quite different. One
                is a common-sense "knowing" that emerges from our daily
                experience, a "knowing" that we expect everyone to have. It is a
                wisdom based not on scientific analysis but on human
                experience. There is a Japanese proverb that says, "Those who lose
                really win. Those who fail are victorious. " This kind of wisdom
                infers it's not good to win just to be winning. When we lose, we
                sometimes become winners. This is a worldly wisdom , based on
                "give and take. " In the context of daily human affairs, this
                kind of wisdom takes into account the feelings. It is a wisdom
                born of many experiences in life, a wisdom







                     The Buddhist world of Awakening       11

                not immediately graspable by children. It is not fully subjective,
                for this wisdom born of experience is always in relation
                to the object as well.
                     It is the third, quite different kind of wisdom that is
                what we mean when we talk about Buddhist wisdom, the wisdom
                that, in Shinran's view, is the dynamic through which shinjin is
                established. This is a "knowing" that stands in sharp contrast
                to the "knowing" of science and the "knowing" of common-sense.
                The focus is "deeply" rooted in the subject, a "depth" referring






                to the dimension of our human potential for evil, a potential
                unlimited in our life. This existential depth is expressed in
                Japanese by bonno, another word which it would be well to
                transpose as is into the English vocabulary.
                     In his perception of bonno as the profound depths of the
                self, Shinran is not speaking from a scientific nor from a
                common-sense point of view. Neither is his a psychological
                perception. Rather, he speaks from the dimension of Buddhist
                wisdom, which is acutely aware of this aspect of existence. The
                important difference in the emphasis of Buddhist wisdom is that
                it is neither subjective nor objective. The total self, freed
                from any split of subject-object differentiation, is involved.

                     in Chapter Two of Tannisho, the slim volume that is the
                great religious classic written by Shinran's follower Yuienbo,
                Shinran is quoted as saying "Hell is my only home." This is a
                statement of the workings of Buddhist wisdom, the wisdom of
                "deep" heart and mind, with "deep" here referring to existential
                depth. This wisdom does not simply look outwardly to
                see things objectively. In "Hell is my only home," Shinran looks
                inward to the limitless inner depths of his bonno in order to
                come to truly know himself. When he says "hell is my only home,"
                he is talking about the deep mind that undergirds the
                existential reality of the way we all live. His shinjin, which
                we too can experience, is based on this kind of wisdom , an







                12    The Buddhist World of Awakening

                awakening in which one comes to know totally what one is.

                     For example, the world in which we live is the world in
                which we die- This is reality. Yet, in the everyday world we
                seldom see this essential condition in which our subconscious
                depths are rooted. In Buddhism, it is not in spite of our
                constantly "falling into hell" but because of this condition that
                we are surrounded, sustained, embraced in the boundless compassion
                of Amida Buddha. Buddhism does not have the reward or
                punishment judgmentalism of the Christian religion. In Buddhism,
                the end of life does not necessarily mean going to hell or to
                Pure Land. In fact, our "falling into hell" is crucial to 2n
                appreciation of the Buddhist world of awakening in this life,
                here and now, at this very moment. This critical awareness,
                developed and taught by Shinran at a profound existential
                level, is succinctly expressed in his "Hell is my only home."

                     Shinran's twenty years of monastic practice on Mt. Hiei
                were mainly at Yogawa, the place where Genshin, an eleventh
                century religious teacher and writer, has also once studied and
                practiced. Genshin's writings made such a strong impression on






                Shinran that in the Kyo-Gyo-Shin-Sho he named Genshin as one of
                the seven patriarchs through whom he traces the spiritual
                lineage of the nembutsu teaching, back to Sakyamuni Buddha.

                     Genshin's major work was Ojoyoshu-Essentials for Birth, the
                story of a man falling into hell. It has been compared to that
                later western work, Dante's Inferno. As Dante did, Genshin
                gives a vivid description of the various levels of hell. For
                Genshin however, the phrase "bound for hell" expresses symbolically
                the experience of one who has awakened to the realization
                of continuously creating karmic evil, and who perceives
                the bottomless depths of his own potential for evil. In the
                sutras, the statement : "hell is at the bottom of this great
                earth" symbolizes the hell we create in the depths of our
                conscious







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening    13

                and unconscious minds. It is this reality which Genshin depicts
                in his classic work.

                     Genshin's masterpiece portrays a man who, in his extreme
                suffering, pleads forgiveness of a demon whose recurrent answer
                is, "To plead with me is no use. I can't do a thing about it
                now. Why didn't you state your situation truly while you were
                still a human being?" This theme of question and reply, "There's
                no use asking me now," and "you created your own hell while you
                were still alive," runs throughout the work. The first part is a
                detailed description of hell in which, according to Genshin,
                there are eight levels. One works from the first level and
                descends down into the eighth level-which he describes as the
                hell of unlimited suffering.

                     The first level is the one resulting from committing the
                slightest evil, such as the killing of fish or chickens. In this
                life, according to Genshin, we kill animals and then, when we
                die, the devils in hell come after us and chop us up until a
                cool wind comes across and makes us whole again. This process
                happens over and over. The depth of this first stage of hell is
                described as being 1000 yojanas (one yojana being the distance
                of about nine miles or as far as an ox can travel between
                sunrise and sunset).

                     From this, the various levels descend to the eighth hell of
                unlimited suffering, that of persons who have killed their
                mother and father or, as Genshin phrased it, "taken life away
                from father and mother." Among those who fall into this hell are
                those who vainly live on the donations from people. Here,
                Genshin is talking about himself and through this he tries to






                clarify the direction into which he sees himself as falling. The
                depth of this eighth level is described as falling headfirst for
                2,000 years to arrive completely into this unlimited suffering
                which, to Genshin, is his own karmic state. This use of the term
                "falling" into hell does not refer to a physical fall, but
                rather







                14    The Buddhist World of Awakening

                to an awareness of the absolute depth of the hell we are all
                falling into the unlimited depths of our unconscious or
                deep mind. Thus what Genshin was writing about was the
                awakening to one 's own limitless falling into hell as being the
                very condition essential for birth in the Buddha Land.

                     This extraordinary Buddhist view is likewise concisely
                expressed by Shinran in Tannisho, Chapter Three (Taitetsu Unno
                translation) : "Even the good person attains birth in the Buddha
                Land, how much more so the evil person. But the people of the
                world constantly say, `Even the evil person attains birth how
                much more so the good person.' Although this appears to be sound
                at first glance, it goes against the will of the Primal Vow of
                Other Power. The reason is that since the person of self-power,
                being conscious of doing good, lacks the thought of entrusting
                himself completely to OtherPower, he is not the focus of the
                Primal Vow of Amida. But when he turns over self-power and
                entrusts himself to Other Power, he attains birth in the land of
                true fulfillment."

                     Shinran then goes on to say, "The Primal Vow was established
                out of deep compassion for us who cannot become freed
                from the bondage of birth-and-death through any religious
                practice, due to the abundance of blind passion. Since its basic
                intention is to effect the enlightenment of such an evil one,
                the evil person who entrusts himself to Other Power is truly the
                one who attains birth in the Buddha Land. Therefore, even the
                good person attains birth, how much more the evil person ! "
                     In the Buddhist world of awakening, those who have the
                confidence to fall into hell-that is, to see the existential
                reality of their bonno-are thus able to experience the very joy
                that they are going to the "Pure Land,"that spiritual realm of
                reality itself from which the workings of compassion are
                manifested. Again, translation is acutely important. "Pure Land"
                does not have any connotation of geographical place or location.
                It is a spiritual realm, the world of the Buddha, which manifests













                     The Buddhist World of Awakening    15
                the great wisdom and compassion of Amida (prajna and
                karuna).
                     Those who do not really see hell interwoven into their
                lives do not really see the Pure Land. In other words, those who
                do not see hell in the depths of their own minds are really
                falling into it. Genshin had this full consciousness of his own
                evil, and Shinran likewise. So too did an old man in my village
                temple who used to say, "Do-sun! Do-sun!" over and over, an
                exhortation reminding himself and all those inside and outside
                the temple of this existential reality.
                     Do-sun is not translatable. It is one of those onomato
                poetic Japanese words whose sounds convey the meaning. I wonder.
                Is there a like word in English whose sound and meaning are
                that of falling into hell?







                     CHAPTER FOUR

                     GREAT-SELF AND NON-EGO

                     In both the common-sense way of knowing and in scientific
                knowledge, there is always a dichotomy, a split between subject
                and object. As noted in the preceding chapter, the emphasis is
                usually in the direction of the object, including the "Self" as
                object in such behavioral sciences as psychology. Prajna,
                Buddhist wisdom, is quite otherwise. While there is an emphasis
                in the direction of the self, prajna is actually the "knowing"
                in which the self gets to know itself as it really is. in this
                there is no split, no dichotomy, no tension. I look within at
                myself but the self that I am seeing is, in the Buddhist
                wisdom of prajna, not a subject of analysis. "I" do not become a
                separate "thing."
                     As an example, in the common-sense way of knowing I know
                that someday maybe even today I will die. I understand this,
                but at the same time the "I" that "understands" has no desire to
                die. When I reflect in such a common-sense or in the objective,
                scientific way, I don't grasp myself in my totality. My
                reflection is only partial. I see only parts of myself. Or, to
                approach the difference from another angle, in terms of my
                bonno-the unlimited capacity for evil in my subconscious
                depths-I know I am not a good man but this "I" who thinks he is
                aware of this still harbors somewhere within "me" the thought
                that "I am good." In parts of myself, as in thinking of my past,
                I can say that "I" am bad, but the "I" looking at those evil
                parts of my life which I condemn, this "I" looks at parts of
                myself which are also "I" and which I objectify- What "I" see






                about "myself" in this way is only partial





                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      17

                seeing, filled with the tension of subject-object dichotomy.

                     In Buddhist wisdom, prajna, the wisdom through which
                shinjin is established, subject and object are brought into a
                unifying whole. What I am and what I think about myself is
                totally whole, totally complete. There is an interpenetration of
                the subject (all that I see inwardly and outwardly in the world)
                with the object (all that I am in being seen)-thus a
                simultaneous realization of interdependence and oneness. In this
                realization, subject and object having become one, the tension
                of dichotomy is released. I am then able to see all things are
                objects and at the same time, that all things are subjects.
                The self that is able to see that all things are subjects is
                "Great Self." From the perspective of the Great Absolute Self,
                when we eat other life we see that we are killing our own life
                and descending into hell. The primary focus of Buddhism is to
                waken to this basic contradiction of life: that we kill in order
                to survive. Some of us may have the attitude: "we pay for it and
                therefore we may consume it." The Buddhist attitude however is
                that even the life of one egg is equal in lifevalue to that of
                my own life. In this attitude, the choice to take other life in
                order to survive is something I can make based on my awareness
                of the equal value of all life. Originally, in India, the focus
                was on not taking the lives of animals, but gradually this
                evolved to the stage where all things in existence were included
                into what is called life. The realization developed that man in
                his egocentricity destroys all these in order to survive.

                     Man's historical process has shown that the world has
                developed in material ways through his own ingenuity. He has
                employed science and technology but yet has not reached a point
                of security and happiness through these developments. Thus it is
                important for us to look at life from the perspective of Buddhist
                wisdom, seeing that all life is interrelated and has







                18     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                the same value as one's own life. "I" am included in all things
                as object and all things are included in "me "as subject. The
                world and myself are not separated, not divided, not different,
                but share a natural oneness.







                     A Zen Master was once told by a student that he was afraid
                of death. The fearful student asked whether there was a way to
                escape dying. The Zen Master's answer was, "When it comes time
                to die, it's okay to die. This is the only way to escape death"
                (i.e., to avoid the fear of death). This reply was made from the
                standpoint of non-ego: all things are interrelated. It is from
                this all-object viewpoint that flowers bud, blossom and die,
                that human beings are born, live and die. All have the same
                weight, same value-so why the tears? All things have the same
                value as objects in the natural world.
                     In the natural world of things-as-they-are, that which is
                true and real-life-is not beautiful but stark, severe, awesome.
                How simple and yet how difficult to see that my being "me" is so
                in exactly the way the rock is a rock, the tree is a tree, the
                flower is a flower. I am one with all of these and with the
                droplet of water that as water can flow, can fall as rain, can
                freeze as steam or fog, be itself and yet at the same time be
                one drop in the vast ocean or one infinitely small and changing
                component of a cloud passing an unseen horizon in the sky.

                     To live in the world of non-ego and at the same time to
                live in the world in which all objects are equal as subjects is
                to live in the Buddha-world. The Buddhist sense of all-self
                means all things have an equal value of life and are equal in
                value to my own life. This is the Shin Buddhist way of "seeing,"
                the Buddhist wisdom described by the Sanskrit word
                prajna.

                     Many years ago a Shin Buddhist layman, a man of shinjin
                named Genza, and his friend Naoji, both in their eighties, be
                came ill. Naoji still had an unresolved problem and asked his







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     19

                daughter to take this to Genza. This the daughter did, repeating
                to Genza her father's statement of his problem: "I am afraid
                to die!"

                     The answer sent back by Genza was, "Naoji, why don't you
                just die. It's okay to die. I'm one with you." This is the
                attitude of non-ego which is at the same time the way of the
                Great Self. It is an awareness rooted in the activity
                of prajna- an activity called "awakening" or "realization."

                     Flowers bloom, wither, and die. Man is born, lives, and
                dies. This is how things are. This is true and real. And it is
                in this profound dimension of existential reality that we
                concretely experience shinjin as religious experience.













                     CHAPTER FIVE

                     THE LOGIC OF PRAJNA


                     Sakyamuni Buddha was the first to realize this way of
                looking at life through the eye of wisdom, of Great-Self, of
                non-ego. In the subsequent history of Buddhism, the process of
                this realization took two main streams : the monastic life in
                which meditation is central and the way of the ordinary lay
                person in which nembutsu becomes central.
                     In our everyday lives we tend not to see or think about
                things other than in terms of a subject-object dichotomy, a
                separation of subject and object. Our assumption in this is that
                separation implies difference. Only when the dichotomy is
                negated do we come to see that all subjects are objects, and all
                objects are subjects. In this view, which is possible from the
                standpoint of Buddhist wisdom where all is subject (great mind
                or great self and all is object (egolessness, non-ego, without
                permanent substance), simultaneously all these are equal.  Subject
                equals object. Object equals and is the same as subject. Each is
                part of, and one with, the other. D.T. Suzuki expressed this as
                `A= not A.'
                     The level of dualism where the split of subject-object
                dichotomy occurs is the level of samsara (illusion). It is
                when one is enabled to see from the eyes of the enlightened one
                that the split vanishes. The illusion which is samsara is
                then perceived as in itself the same as enlightenment or
                oneness. In fact, it is often said that in Buddhism, samsara is
                in itself nirvana, enlightenment. Buddhist wisdom (prajna) has
                this power and ability to make two contradictory poles (such as
                `A' and 'not A'; samsara and nirvana) become as one.







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening        21

                     Dr. D.T. Suzuki's `A' equals `not A' was devised as a
                formula to express this activity that makes two contradictory
                poles able to be seen as one. However, it is a formula in which
                the `equals' is not at all the usual simple kind. Samsara
                (`A') equals nirvana (`not A') when one is enabled to see with
                the eyes of the Buddha. This is the `equals' of the dynamic
                experience of shinjin. The struggle in our lives is how to work






                through to become awakened to this.

                     In this process of awakening, Shinran says the Buddha
                Dharma, the teaching, is like a finger pointing to the moon.
                That moon is itself the world of shinjin. Do not mistake the
                finger for the moon! In other words, do not mistake the teachings
                for reality itself. No matter how good a talk or a book may
                be, they are only like fingers pointing to the moon, leading us
                to the moon. Ultimately, each of us must see the moon with our
                own eyes. Prajna, the dynamic activity of shinjin, makes this
                possible.

                     In Mahayana Buddhism, the focus is on prajna, (which is a
                synonym for satori-enlightenment,) and also on prajna's
                inseparable companion and component, karuna-compassion. It can
                be said that karuna has two aspects: to mourn and to cry-not
                the cry that comes from a child but the cry of anguish that
                comes out of the activity of deep sorrow. Buddhist wisdom has
                this aspect of the ability to see things as they are in this
                world, and at the same time to feel great sorrow for our human
                condition-a sorrow expressed as Great Compassion.

                     In Shin Buddhism, the Pure Land (Jodo) is the realm from
                which the workings of this compassion are manifested. The
                ceaseless activity of Great Compassion working throughout my
                life is a process like the maturing of pearls in an oyster
                shell. Just as the oyster is taking in the piece of the shell
                that is part of him and yet not part of him, so karuna (Great
                Compassion) is taking my life into its sorrowing embrace. We








                22 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                can say that as the oyster in its own dynamism `cries' because it
                is painful to take in a foreign substance, so, as I am taken in
                and transformed by Great Compassion, great sorrow is expressed at
                my human condition. In other words, the Buddha is always sensitive,
                crying, moving to embrace me in the world of samsara , taking
                in and transforming me from a being of delusion into a being of
                enlightenment.







                     CHAPTER SIX







                     HELL AND THE PURELAND

                     With total sincerity, Shinran told his follower Yuienbo, the
                author of Tannisho , "Hell is my only destination." For me,
                personally, this too is my realization. The one path I have
                plunges me into hell and yet, at the same time, into birth in the
                Pure Land, to which the experience of shinjin awakens me. Shinran
                expresses the existential sadness of falling into hell, but, at
                the same time he expresses his joy about going to the Pure Land.
                Thus he says, with equal conviction, "Hell is my only
                destination" and "I am walking to the Pure Land".
                     Again, these are the contradictory poles of `A' equals 'not
                A' , the formula used by Dr. Suzuki to express the logic of
                Buddhist wisdom. The `equals' that welds these contradictory
                poles of Hell and the Pure Land is the very point of
                nembutsu, the point of all-connectedness at which one is enabled to
                experience the reality of non-dualism. To repeat and emphasize
                the content of the previous chapter, this is not logical in
                terms of western logic, but in the way of contradictions, the
                logic of paradox, a way which Shinran uses freely because he has
                passed through a depth of experience that unifies the
                contradictions in his life. To explain in terms of example,
                there is a haiku that reads :

                     "Matsu kage no kuraki wa tsuki no hikari kana."

                     This translates as "the starkness of the shadow of the pine
                tree at night comes from the light of the moon" or, "the
                stronger the moon radiates its light, the darker the shadow."
                This poem illustrates the two-fold aspect of Shin Buddhist
                awakening. The shadow refers to myself, living in hell, living







                24           The World of Buddhist Awakening

                in the everyday world of illusion, ignorance and suffering that
                is samsara. The moon refers to my walking in the light of
                Amida Buddha's wisdom and compassion-to my being made able to
                experience and appreciate myself as I truly am, the world as it
                truly is, in the boundless freedom of nirvana, of non-ego, of
                oneness, of Great Self.
                     The meaning of being born in the Pure Land is that you are
                going to move away from Hell. But only those who have fallen
                into hell are going to be saved to move towards the Pure Land !
                Therefore the statement that Pure Land "equals" Hell forms the
                very structure of shinjin. I, the being creating hell in my
                life, am the same being who is saved by Amida. The more we
                listen to the teachings and our awareness deepens, the more we
                cannot help but awaken to this two-fold aspect of reality in
                which we live. The question that then arises is, can those who






                have experienced shinjin-who have awakened to this "equals" of
                nembutsu-be called Buddhas?
                     Shinran called shinjin "wisdom." Dogen, the founder of Soto
                Zen, also made this same equation. Yet, though he and Shinran
                share the same meaning in this, Dogen places the emphasis on
                the side of the Buddha, whereas Shinran emphasizes the side of
                ordinary beings. Zen views wisdom as "who the Buddha is," while
                Shin views wisdom as "who I am." The reason for this difference
                is that Dogen's path was that of the monk. His was the
                realization gained on becoming a Buddha. This is why Zen's
                emphasis is on the side of the Buddha. Since Shinran's dimension
                is the common ordinary life of samsara, where illusions are
                spun, his emphasis is on wisdom, on this side, the side of
                ordinary beings.
                     In Zen, meditation is of primary importance, based on the
                premise that "I am already a Buddha and only the Pure Land is my
                destination. Since I am already a Buddha, my practice is a
                practice that goes on throughout my lifetime." For Shinran,
                however, the starting point is that he is an ordinary







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening       25

                hell-creating being, that "awakening" is made possible only
                through the Other Power of the Vow (Hongan) to save such beings.
                In the light of Amida's Vow, Shinran becomes able to truly see
                himself as an ordinary hell-creating being. He emphasizes this
                realization, this awakening, seeing Pure Land as the destination
                coming to him, the being heavy with karmic evil, who is
                awakened and embraced by the Vow. The crucial point of Shin Buddhism
                is that the very being who is falling into hell is the one who
                is born in the Pure Land. Thus the person of shinjin is not a
                Buddha but, Shinran says, equal to or the same as a Buddha. The
                reason for this distinction is that his emphasis is on the
                being, not on the Buddha.







                     CHAPTER SEVEN

                     CAUSES AND CONDITIONS

                     Vasubandhu, the second patriarch through whom Shinran traced
                the spiritual lineage of nembutsu teachings, was a fourth
                century Indian thinker who said there are two forms of faith. The
                first he described as that of firm reliance on the Three






                Treasures: the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. This, he says, is the
                threshold for the second form which he called "true" faith, that
                of cittaprasada-the lucid, clear purity of mind brought about by
                the workings of prajna.

                     Even when one views this in the natural way of common
                sense, there is apparent here a process that works through from
                the starting point of the Three Treasures to the culmination of
                cittaprasada. In Shinran's writings and teachings, we find this
                same basic approach. The starting point for Shinran is to
                encounter and believe in the teaching, and to encounter and
                believe in the person who transmits that teaching. Both what is
                said, and who says it, must become credible and totally
                dependable.
                     At Buddhist Study Center's summer session, every morning
                we chanted Shoshinge, Shinran's Hymn of True Faith, which is a
                concise, simplified summary of his teachings. The first of its
                two parts brings out the essence of Sakyamuni Buddha's teachings
                as expressed in the Larger Pure Land Sutra. Towards the end of
                this section there is a line which says, "Believe in the
                teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha. " The latter half of Shoshinge
                is a summary of Shin's seven patriarchs (including Vasubandhu)
                from India, China, and Japan. The hymn gives the essence of
                their teachings, with the refrain : "Believe







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening    27

                only in the teachings of these seven patriarchs." In saying this,
                Shinran is not referring to the "true faith" that is the
                awakening gained in cittaprasada but to the threshold of belief that,
                as Vasubandhu made clear, is the starting point for the process
                that leads to cittaprasada.
                     What is important is that one begin at the starting point
                of the process-listening to the teachings-in order to
                ultimately experience shinjin and oneself become part of its true
                meaning. To take off at this starting point, to encounter the
                nembutsu teaching in one's life, means that one meets the per
                son who manifests the teaching in his or her own life. Such an
                encounter can come through direct listening to that teacher, or
                through "listening" by hearing or reading the teacher's written
                words. In Tannisho, Yuienbo describes such a good teacher as a
                person "with whom our spiritual destinies are bound." In
                Japanese, the word for this is zenchishiki, "a good friend of the
                way," a word which connotes a spiritual guide and gives the
                importance of the personal dimension in Shinran's teachings.
                     Rennyo Shonin, a direct descendant of Shinran, was a great
                Shin Buddhist teacher and leader of the fifteenth century. His
                experience of frustration in trying to transmit the teachings
                to those who literally "did not like the Buddha" led him to






                develop the concept of "past good"-shukuzen-as being a
                cause-and-condition without which he felt he could not sway even
                his wife to turn to the teachings. This condition is one of the
                doctrinal points which has led to much discussion among Shin
                Buddhist scholars over the years.
                     "Past good" does not mean past good but rather various
                conditions created for us by parents, teachers, good friends who
                have made it possible for us to listen to the teachings and take
                them into our lives. We ourselves, by ourselves, do not create
                good but rather one bumbling path after another. Shukuzen is
                different from Shinran's term,shukugo-past karma.







                28     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                Past karma means to be able to see where one is now in
                relation to the past. Past good implies that in one's past there
                exists some kind of condition that results in the effect of
                one's being able to listen and take in the teachings.
                     Shukuzen was the first of the five conditions Rennyo
                proposed as leading to birth in the Buddha Land. The second was
                that one encounter a spiritual teacher, a "good friend of the
                way." A third condition is komyo-the Buddha's Light, a symbolic
                expression for the teachings. The fourth is myogo, the Buddha's
                Name, nembutsu. The fifth is shinjin.
                     To me this first condition of shukuzen is not a problem of
                any great importance. I feel rather that in such an expression
                Rennyo sought to contrast those people with this condition, and
                those without. He defined those with "past good" as those who
                have been able to truly hear the teachings. Out of his personal
                experience, in his description of this as a cause-and-condition,
                he was primarily lamenting for those who cannot listen or who,
                if they do listen, cannot experience shinjin.  Conversely, for
                him, "past good" expressed a joy for those who can and do listen
                to the teachings and take them into their lives. It must be
                emphasized that his awareness of this came from insight gained
                in his trying to transmit the teachings and to interpret
                essential steps in the process leading to shinjin.

                     The important issue here is that there must be a starting
                point, that of stepping onto and moving along the path of the
                Buddha's teachings. To quote Alan Watts, the American writer on
                Zen, the truth is something that is there. You might stumble on
                it, but this is rare. A good teacher leads you to what by chance
                you might miss or mistake.













                     CHAPTER EIGHT

                     GREAT COMPASSION

                     In Mahayana Buddhism, an underlying premise is that all
                beings have the potential which, if nurtured properly, will
                blossom into enlightenment-Buddhahood. This universality of the
                potential for becoming Buddha was understood as his subjective
                condition by the twentieth century myokonin, Saichi. "Amida's
                Vow is for me alone," wrote Saichi. "Everyone will be saved
                because this Saichi is saved." This restatement of the
                underlying Mahayana premise is that of a simple layman, but
                Saichi's deep understanding is that others who become aware that
                Amida's Vow is likewise for themselves alone will also certainly
                be "saved"-that is, become Buddhas.

                     Fulfillment of this universal human potential for enlightenment
                is not a matter of counting numbers but, as understood
                by Saichi, of internal awareness on the part of each individual.
                In Shin Buddhism, "all beings have the potential of becoming
                Buddha" means that all beings in the universe are embraced and
                enfolded in the Great Compassion of Amida Buddha.

                     If we look at the karma we create in our life, we really
                cannot become Buddhas. The truth of our lives is that by our
                daily actions we sow the seeds that will cause us to fall into
                hell! The path for us to attain Buddhahood is made by the
                Buddha's actions. This being so, the very act that this path is made
                available to us-isn't this karuna, the Great Compassion of the
                Buddha?

                * wondrously devout lay person.







                30          The Buddhist World of Awakening

                     The Sanskrit word karuna is translated in Chinese as Daihi
                which can also be literally translated in English as "Buddha's
                heart" For my own part, this conveys the essence of Great
                Compassion. The Buddha is always sorrowful, crying for me. It is
                as if should his eyes be fully opened, all the tears would flow
                out, for he is focused on me as a being falling into hell. To
                awaken to this reality-that this "I" am the being creating seeds
                to fall into hell-is the experience of shinjin.  Since Great
                Compassion is directed to this hell-bent fearsome heart of mine,
                how essential to nurture the conditions by which I can awaken to
                the awesome reality of my true nature: my limitless potential
                for evil which in itself is my "salvation. " It is not that J






                have created or can create the seeds of Buddhahood. If someone
                asked the question as to whether I am creating merit through
                which I can attain Buddhahood, my honest answer would have to be
                in the negative. Our deep rooted evil is such that if the
                conditions are made possible, we don't know what we may do.
                Often, in reading of violence or watching violence on
                television, I reflect that I, too, have the potential to kill.
                     Since Great Compassion is directed to our fearsome hell
                bent hearts, how essential it is for us, on our part, to nurture
                the conditions by which we can become awakened to this reality
                that is ourselves. Thus the importance of meeting a good teacher
                on the way, for no matter how profound a teaching or sutra may
                be, if it is not manifested through such a person, its meaning
                is difficult to grasp.
                     Nagarjuna, an early teacher of Buddhism in India, and
                another of those whom Shinran acknowledges as his patriarch in
                the lineage of nembutsu teachings, says that to tread the
                Buddha Way is like crossing the river. First you must enter the
                river and keep walking until you reach the other shore.
                Likewise, to walk the Buddha's path one must enter and continue
                onward entrusting that this is the path of True and Real







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening        31

                Life. In the person-to-person encounter of those who listen to
                the Dharma, the belief in the teaching starts, is exchanged, or
                shared. After this entry, in order to move along the Buddha path
                there must as well be the strong wish or desire to do so, in
                order that we can come to see what the teacher we encounter is
                expressing in his or her life. Great effort is necessary to
                deepen our awareness of this process and in Shin Buddhism, the
                crux of this effort is listening, an immediate, direct listening
                with one's heart, one's whole being. Shinran says to listen
                to oneself, which is really difficult, for his meaning of "to
                listen" is to awaken to and manifest shinjin in one's life.
                     Shinjin is not a speculation or thinking about things, but
                a joyful experience. For us to meet through these words and
                mutually share and "listen" to the Dharma is one aspect of
                shinjin. The gradual awareness that comes through the activity
                of the Buddha's Great Compassion grows through our listening to
                the Dharma not in conceptual terms, but in terms of our own
                lives. It is a gradual awareness that, indeed, we are beings
                sowing seeds for our falling into hell. It is this awareness
                that shows we are in the process of shinjin , and it is through
                this process true awakening becomes possible.













                     CHAPTER NINE

                     NEMBUTSU

                     "Nem" (or "nen") has a two-fold meaning. One is "to
                think of." The other is "to recite."Nembutsu"therefore means "I
                think and I utter or call Amida's Name."

                     In the ordinary meaning, this would imply that the
                direction of the calling is from me to the Buddha, but in the
                world of awakening to shinjin , there is a complete reversal.
                The direction is from Amida to me ! My saying of the nembutsu
                is not merely my saying-it is at the same time Amidas Calling to
                me! Thus, Amida is not the object I am calling but the subject
                who thinks of and calls me.
                     This is an analysis still within the realm of objective
                rational explanation. It does not translate the personal experiencing
                of shinjin in one's life in which this other direction
                of the nembutsu becomes real. In order to experience this
                change of direction, to truly move into the world of shinjin ,
                one must take the first step into the world of listening to the
                Dharma. When this happens, I and the Dharma become of one
                essence, "of one body."
                     In Japanese, "of one body" is ittai rather than the word
                gattai, which means "combining." "Of one body" (ittai) is not a
                unification where the identity of both are gone. It is the two
                coming together and still remaining what they are.  Gattai
                expresses the coming together of a husband and wife, ittai that
                of a parent and child. In terms of the latter, a parent is not a
                parent without a child. There would be no children in this world
                without parents. Yet , these two , although they are
                interdependent, have separate karmas. Unlike the gattai of







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening    33

                marriage which may end in divorce, there is no split possible in
                the ittai of parent and child. No condition can alter that the
                parent is a parent, nor that the child is a child.

                     The Larger Sukhavati sutra relates that kalpas ago Amida
                made his original vow not to become a Buddha until all beings
                everywhere are saved. Yet, in the same sutra, the statement is
                made that Amida has already become a Buddha. This infers that
                his attainment of Buddhahood was possible only because all beings
                are already saved. Amida is not yet a Buddha in the sense of his
                compassionate weeping for the salvation of all suffering beings.






                Yet, for many who have died and are born in the Pure Land, he is
                Amida Buddha per se. But my Buddha and your Buddha are not yet
                the Buddha, so the question is: what am I seeking in life? Is
                Amida Buddha my Buddha?

                     In the "of one body" sense expressed in the word ittai,
                Amida is increasingly, unceasingly working to make his life one
                with you, one with me. Thus, although he is originally a Buddha,
                he is at the same time not a Buddha because he is working for
                the salvation-the enlightenment-of each individual, for the
                deepest wish of each one of us. It is in this sense that he is
                not yet a Buddha for you, for me.

                     How do we come to understand this unceasing working of the
                Buddha to make his life one with yours, one with mine? This is
                an understanding that is a total apprehension of mind and body.
                It is for this very reason Amida is shedding great tears for the
                sorrow I am in. When I experience this, it is the realization
                that becomes the awakening to my human condition, to his
                compassion, to the world of what is True and Real, all of which
                are so difficult for me to realize that I am already a part.

                     It is in this way that my nembutsu is Amida's calling out
                to me, and that Amida and I are of one body, one essence, ittai
                Though Amida has become a Buddha in past time beyond







                34 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                our conception, as he works for my salvation he has not yet
                fulfilled his becoming a Buddha. The logic here is again that of
                `A equals not A,' the logic based on the wisdom of shinjin. This
                is the world of awakening in which the nembutsu is uttered, the
                world that opens to us as we tread the path of Shin Buddhism.
                     In my own life, my own process, I was past the age of forty
                before I could really utter nembutsu, before I myself could
                experience this world of Buddhist awakening. Yet, it was a
                process that went back to my childhood, and my experience of
                having lost my mother at the age of thirteen. It was February
                when she died, a cold time of the year. As she lay dying, she
                had said she wanted to see me. When I got home from school, my
                aunt took me to see her, but her eyes were already closed. I
                called to her, tugged at her, but she died before me, and from
                her lips the nembutsu flowed at the moment of death. Her
                dying, and the experience of her death, made me think of life,
                so after the war, one of the big motivating factors in my going
                to Kyoto to seek the meaning of Shinran was my mother's
                utterance of the nembutsu as she lay dying. In the dead end I
                reached at War's end, I was able to go to Kyoto because of this
                sad but powerful incident of my mother's death still remaining a






                strong motivation for me. I went to Kyoto to seek the meaning of
                Shinran in the nembutsu, impelled by the love for my
                mother-rather than being drawn by the nembutsu itself.
                     As she lay dying, I had called but she had not answered as
                I wanted desperately. I wanted her at death to call n?y name and
                not the Buddha's name. In so many ways I felt alone, abandoned
                by my mother. Since I'd entered elementary school she had been
                ill with tuberculosis and my recollections of her were of her
                illness. It was out of my deep need of love for her and my
                loneliness for her, I was drawn to study the nembutsu she had
                uttered as she died.







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     35

                In Kyoto I entered Ryukoku University and began my studies of
                Shin Buddhism. Through good teachers and students, I was
                encouraged to pursue my studies. After twenty years of study, at age
                forty, the nembutsu that I'd heard from my dying mother's lips
                took root in my life as I realized the passage in Tannisho, "In
                this world of impermanence and burning house. .  only the
                nembutsu is true and real."
                     The fact that I had called my mother and that she didn't
                reply , made me think that for the child what seems really true
                is the parent just as, for the parent, the child seems real. But
                the Tannisho , through this passage, struck me with the realization
                that even this relationship is unreliable, impermanent,
                and that transcending this vain and empty relationship is the
                nembutsu. Now, reflecting back, I can see that the nembutsu
                on my mother's lips as she died showed this. In the end, the
                ultimate is to return to the nembutsu. Thirty years after her
                death, twenty years after I started studying, I was able to
                truly touch and be open to the nembutsu.







                     CHAPTER TEN

                     WHERE IS THE BUDDHA?

                     In the preceding chapter, we saw that true nembutsu comes
                from the direction of the Buddha. When a small child asks, "where
                is the Buddha?", either we point to the statue on the altar, or
                we pick up a flower, and say that this flower expresses the life
                of the Buddha. Neither of these answers is wrong, but neither
                makes clear the deeper implication that; even the Name, Amida






                Buddha, is but a symbol pointing to the True and Real Life
                flowing through our existence. In terms of karma and Shinran's view
                of life, we create our own hell. In each of our hearts is all of
                hell itself. But, at the very point where hell resides, this is
                where the Buddha resides. Yet, to say only "The Buddha is in my
                heart" can mislead one in terms of the reality of his existence.

                     Dogen says we are already Buddhas and this is the reason we
                practice. In Shin Buddhism, especially with children, we speak
                of the Buddha as being in the temple because in doing so we
                avoid misleading the young who do not as yet practice bringing
                out the Buddha from within. As we mature, and begin to perceive
                the reality of our existence, to see into the depths of our
                hell-bent hearts, in this inner world through the activity of
                prajna, the negative and positive polarities of our life
                become one-It is only then that the reality of "where the
                Buddha is" becomes our existential reality. In Japanese, this is
                referred to as the area of shinjitsu-truth, the truth which is
                the foundation of shinjin.

                     In his writings, Shinran uses shinshin-"True Mind"
                interchangeably with shinjin . Shin (meaning belief) and jin (mind





                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     37

                and heart) is the same as, or equivalent to the two characters
                that each express a different shin, that meaning "truth" and
                that meaning"mind and heart." To reiterate, Shinran's "faith,"
                the shinjin of Shin Buddhism, the point where the Buddha
                becomes my Buddha, is not a matter of relationship between the
                believer and what is believed in but has a deeper dimension of
                the truth itself.

                     In the Smaller Sukhavati sutra there is the expression
                "coming together to meet in one place," referring to the Pure
                Land. People who live in shinjin are always able to meet, truly
                able to meet each other in this here and now. To be able to say
                "let's meet again" with this meaning is made possible by the
                power of truth, for the essence of the life of the person
                of shinjin is rooted in this True and Real Life. I would like
                to live within this world where such expressions are made
                possible to say to our loved ones, to say even to ourselves.

                     "Let's meet again," were the dying words of my father.
                Isn't this the kind of expression, at my own dying moment, that
                I'd like to leave with those who love me? I thought of this
                again recently, at Berkeley, when I met an elderly lady who was
                devout in the nembutsu. She was an invalid, a stroke patient,
                eighty years old, living alone. She brought a paper and brush
                and asked me to write something. I wrote, "Namu Amida Butsu.
                Let's meet again." She then said, "I'll be waiting for you!"






                     I was deeply affected by these words coming out so
                innocently from her words that came straight out of the
                dimension of reality itself. I feel it is Truth sustaining her,
                making these words come out of her in a totally natural, non
                contriving way. Such a woman does not need to ask, "Where is the
                Buddha?" She knows.







                     CHAPTER ELEVEN

                     THE TRANSFORMATION OF SHINJIN

                     In Buddhism as a whole, faith is cittaprasada, the pellucid
                and clear mind. As we have seen, in Shin Buddhism, the
                particular word expressing this is shinjin, joyful faith. It is often
                said that cittaprasada is like a flower opening up whereby one
                sees the Buddha. When one experiences this ultimate truth in
                one's life, one enters "into the house of the Tathagata," Thus
                shinjin equals Buddha-nature, things-as-they-are-of-themselves;
                and Tathagata, one who has come from Suchness.

                     Shinran speaks of awakening to shinjin through experiences
                of this ultimate truth. The person of shinjin, although he is
                still a being creating karma that destines him for hell, has a
                true mind that results in his already living in the Pure Land,
                for in the experience of shinjin, one receives truth. One
                receives the Buddha's life into one's own life. It is in this
                way we say a new life is born to the person of shinjin. In
                essence, the old self dies and a new self is born. The life I
                received through my parents dies and the life of Amida-my
                spiritual parent-takes over my life. This is eloquently
                expressed in myokonin Saichi's description of experiencing
                shinjin. "My funeral is now over! " By this he means that his
                life is now rooted in the Buddha's life. It is in this dimension
                that "let's meet again" becomes so meaningful.
                     Shomatsu, a myokonin who lived 150 years ago on the island
                of Shikoku, was returning from a pilgrimage to Kyoto, when a
                violent storm came up, endangering the boat on which he
                was traveling. Shomatsu slept through the storm. His worried
                friends finally found him asleep in the hold and shook him







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      39

                awake. When they did so, his first words to them were:"Are we






                still in the world of illusion?" This kind of attitude comes
                only from the reality of living the life of Suchness. How to
                attain this for my own life is the question.
                     Another myokonin, Oseki, a woman who also lived about 1
                50 years ago, was spiritually nurtured by a priest, Tokuryu.
                One day, as she was serving him tea, he asked, "How is your
                ojo?* If you should die now, are you ready to be born in the
                Pure Land?"

                     As she held out the tea to him she simply said, "Yes, Just
                like this. Just as I am!"

                     Tokuryu replied, "Oseki! Oseki! That's wonderful!"

                     Thus, in Shin Buddhism, in the experiencing of shinjin ,
                our salvation is established , a salvation one hundred per cent
                in this life. Nothing is withheld. Nothing is conditional. No
                thing is postponed until after death. We have total assurance of
                our birth in the Buddha Land and that assurance is confirmed by
                the experience of shinjin being accompanied by the experience of
                a new life, an utter transformation of oneself.

                     In that transformation, we simply live in truth as such. It
                is this kind of life-the kind of life lived by Saichi and Oseki
                that Shinran taught and that his teachings make possible for
                each one of us. In order to meet the Vow Power moving towards
                us, we need to be moving on the Buddha Path. Anyone can walk
                that path. And for the person who does so, he or she must walk
                it personally, alone. Whether one awakens to this or not is the
                problem. Shinjin is not like a ticket with which you reach your
                destination. Shinjin is the destination.
                     The person who has not awakened to shinjin is not saved.
                Ketsu-jo-the settledness of shinjin implies that one "knows"
                from the deepest part of one's life, a "knowing" which is

                *"is your birth into the Pure Land clear?"







                40 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                expressed from the body, for in shinjin we receive truth as it is
                and simultaneously that truth becomes our salvation. Therefore,
                "birth into the Pure Land at the moment of our death" means the
                Pure Land begins within this here and now in which we live. With
                regard to salvation, Shinran doesn't talk about the kind of
                happiness you get after you die. His emphasis is solely on the
                experience of shinjin in this life.
                     I don't really know about the after-life. While I live,
                there is nothing to be concerned about except meeting the Buddha
                in my present life, encountering the teachings in my present






                life. What happens to me after death? I feel I can leave that up
                to the Buddha.
                     When salvation takes root in our lives, whether the Pure
                Land is going to be there at the end or not-all this we leave up
                to the Buddha to do what is best for us. This is the essence of
                faith that expresses itself as Amida's faith in me being realized
                by me with tears of contrition and a smile of gratitude.
                The process of our life and death occurs in the heart of the
                Buddha's life itself. To me, this is the meaning of being saved
                by the Buddha. It is a salvation here and now, right this moment,
                in the present.
                     But then, if this is so, why didn't Shinran designate the
                person of faith as Buddha, and this life as the Pure Land?
                Dogen, Nichiren, Eisai* all proclaim one does become a Buddha in
                this life, and that one who is able to see with the eyes of the
                Buddha is already in the Pure Land. The reason Shinran did not
                say this is because of his hardships, his struggles in life
                treading the Buddha path for nearly ninety years. Through his
                experience, his perception of his own inner life was more
                truthful. He was honest in regard to his real existential
                condition. Thus the stark severity of his teaching.
                     In Buddhist tradition, Shinran was one who focused on
                * the founder of Rinzai Zen.







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      41

                bonno, the defilements of the body. The ego which is rooted in
                this body of ours, no matter how old we get, simply cannot be
                set aside, for it is rooted in these defilements. It is because
                of this that Shinran came to the realization he was a common
                ordinary being, unable to escape from his ego which is rooted in
                his cravings and attachments. In Buddhism, human beings are not
                viewed as different from other living beings. The word used in
                Japanese is shujo: shu meaning "many" or "numerous" and jo
                meaning "those with consciousness. " The Sanskrit word for this
                is sattva. This is basically similar to, and yet different from
                Darwin's theory of evolution. Scientific study looks
                objectively at the history of mankind through archeological finds.
                The Buddhist view of shujo is not a reality objectively
                validated by science but an insight that within the depths of
                our hearts we lead a life that corresponds to the most fearsome
                and repulsive of animals.

                     It was in this light that Shinran says, "My heart is like
                the scorpion and the snake." Outwardly, we are human beings who
                control our lives moralistically and ethically, but deep within
                each of us is an uncontrollable unconsciousness identical to
                the most savage primitive animals. Our ego-centered lives are
                rooted in such instincts and urges. The deep truth is that we






                are all-out for ourselves.

                     As he came to realize this, Shinran saw himself as nothing
                great, a common ordinary being, and so named himself Gu-toku-Ran,
                literally, Shinran, the foolish, bald-headed one. With
                his keen eyes seeing into the depths of his own heart, Shinran
                was aware he was embraced in the compassion of the Buddha even
                as he was creating his own karmic hell. Yet he could also see
                that embraced as he was, he was not a Buddha and that his world
                was not the Pure Land. My thoughts are that Shinran had to carry
                a burden of worry and sorrow to the moment of his death-the
                effect of karma in his life. At his death, he was born into the
                Pure Land. This is my imagining,







                42     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                my opinion as I reflect on Shinran's death at the age of
                eighty-nine.







                     CHAPTER TWELVE

                     OTHER-POWER

                     Deeply connected to the "True Mind" is tariki, often
                translated as "Other-Power." Even those outside Shin Buddhism know
                this term, but there is much misconception as to its real
                meaning.

                     Tariki is that which enables me to see that my bonno
                stuffed mind and "True Mind" are interrelated in the same way as
                the interrelatedness of there being no shadow without light, no
                light without shadow. Thus the more Shinran encountered the
                light of shinjin in his life, the more he was able to see the
                darkness of himself.

                     What he came to understand as not his, but a gift given to
                him, was this realization that he is a being who cannot hear
                Amida, cannot hear the Dharma, is falling into hell. His
                receiving of this gift is what Shinran calls the shinjin of
                Other-Power. What is "not of me" really is already here. I don't
                have "True Mind" and yet it is part of me and I am part of it.
                In expressing his awakening to this, Shinran says, "There is no
                thought that penetrates it completely, no words that express it






                fully. " In other words, surprise, surprise! it's inconceivable!

                     The shocking astonishment of experiencing this gift of what
                was not here, and yet has always been here, and is now here,
                is-literally-"no-root shinjin."

                     When we meet the Buddha here and now in this experience
                there are no roots of bonno in this gift that is given me
                although having received it I am still a person rooted in bonno
                But when I have received this gift that was always there, my







                44     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                ego-centered life is no longer the focus. My focus now becomes
                non-ego centered life.

                     Tariki no shinjin does not mean "believing in the Other
                Power." Shinjin is itself the Other Power. To clearly awaken
                to and experience the world of nembutsu is to realize that
                everything we have is given to us. From our side all is received
                - even the awakening itself is not mine, is given to me, is in
                itself Other Power.

                     In regards to this gift of shinjin given by the Buddha and
                received by us, Shinran urges that we seek it out wholeheartedly.
                There is, in his letters to his followers after he left
                Mito-Kanto and returned to Kyoto, a constant admonition to raise
                the wish to live so as to become Buddhas. Unless this wish
                emerges in our life, shinjin will not be realized by us.

                     There is a saying at the end of the Larger Sukhavati Sutra:
                "Though fires may envelop the totality of our universe, we must
                transcend it, work through it, and listen to the Dharma." Again,
                "We must pass through this universal world of fire and listen to
                the teachings." Shinran reiterates this, emphasizing that we
                must pass through the fires of blind passion that envelop the
                universe to listen to the Buddha's Name.

                     Shinjin is the wholehearted giving of the Buddha to me, but
                to fully receive this, I too must fully seek the meaning of my
                existence. There is no 50-50 here, no half-way potential either
                in the seeking or the receiving of the shinjin which is Other
                Power. Shin Buddhism is often called the "Easy Way," but it is
                easy only once you have gotten there! "Easy Way" refers to the
                way possible for everyday people, in contrast to the "difficult"
                path of sages which is the fulltime dedication of the monks.

                     In some sense, no matter which way is followed, the Buddha
                path is "all easy." In some sense, it is "all difficult." What






                is essential is a total commitment. Shinran constantly







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening    45

                stated how truly difficult is this "easy way" of the nembutsu
                path that is open to all-lay people, priests, everybody. In the
                Shoshinge he repeats, "Of all the difficulties none is more
                difficult that this."

                     The point of total commitment is that if you want to truly
                become Buddhas, the possibility for this awakening becomes more
                real. In Shin Buddhism we talk about cho-mon, "Listening to the
                Dharma," as the essence of this commitment. "Listening to the
                Dharma" means listening to oneself, "listening deeply to what
                is happening to oneself." In Shin Buddhism, "to listen" means
                "to listen to what one is truly about."
                     Dogen says: `To study the Buddha's Dharma is to study
                oneself." To study oneself is to forget-or throw away-oneself,
                to have that ego-self crushed so it is no longer the center, the
                focus of one's total thrust in life. When I listen to the
                teachings, and I find my ego-self being taken away, then I know
                I am beginning to truly listen to the Dharma. If I listen simply
                to accumulate knowledge, it is like putting on the clothes I
                wear. This kind of listening manipulates or uses the Dharma for
                my own convenience. This is not truly listening.
                     I do not listen to become "good." I do not listen to make
                possible my entrance to Pure Land. I do not listen in order to
                die better or to live better. These kinds of listening all
                approach the teaching from my own hakarai or self-centered
                calculation. To really listen means the ego-self which is doing
                the contriving is taken away from me, is no longer my focus, and
                is replaced by something True and Real which offers me really
                nothing beyond the affirmation of life itself.
                     For example, if I take home what I hear at a lecture or
                sermon or study class, it will become my crutch. Whatever crutch
                I have-I must leave it at the session, including what I think I
                am listening to and hearing about nembutsu. I, in my daily
                life, have my own treasure chest. Whatever treasures I







                46 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                cling to, as I listen, whatever I think I possess-throw it away!
                My pride, my impression that listening more will become the seeds






                of my happiness, the belief in my being different or better in
                the future, cast it away! When I so strip myself, all that is
                left is my bonno. There, as I am-that is how Amida affirms and
                grasps me. I myself, who is totally incapable of anything but
                selfish calculation, ego inflation,ego gratification.
                     What is this "something" that accepts me as I am, that
                moves me to an illumination of the naked reality of myself, that
                brings me to another focus-myself and yet far greater, far more
                incomprehensible than myself It is tariki, Other Power, the
                awakening of shinjin , the experience that through the nembutsu
                I come to know the unreliability of everything I bank on. I
                constantly live on the razor's edge, constantly create the
                karmic seeds that destine me to hell. To truly listen means to
                cast this aside-to leave it all here, now-to throw away what I
                am grasping in my life because, ultimately, I have nothing to
                take with me into my death.
                     This listening is not simply a matter of listening with my
                right ear but of listening with a sense of having the very
                foundations of my being shaken. For example, when the Apollo
                satellite shot into space, the news of the resonating through
                the world caused me to reflect on the return of the spaceship
                which had to come in at a certain angle, otherwise the ship
                would bounce off the earth's atmosphere. There was no second
                chance. He had to come at the right angle, and not too steep an
                angle or otherwise he would burn up in the descent. This is the
                condition of our way of listening to the teaching. We can bounce
                back into egocentricity. We can burn out in too steep angle of
                descent. The approach of our direction to the Pure Land, to the
                awakening through our listening over and over and meeting
                various teachers is like that return of the spaceship. We must
                constantly correct the angle of our listening so we really
                listen and so that we really encounter the awakening of shinjin.







                     CHAPTER THIRTEEN

                     THE FINGER AND THE MOON

                     One aspect of tariki, Other Power, is paratantra-a Sanskrit
                term which translates literally as "through or in relation ships
                or in conditions, things occur, rise or emerge." For example, I
                went to the summer session in Honolulu not solely on my own
                volition or calculation but because of the conditions maturing in
                my life that made it possible for me to go there. We exist in
                relationships, in conditions from which things emerge. Thus, as
                another example, I am here on this earth through the existential
                cause of my parents bringing me to life. This example brings us
                to an examination of the second aspect of tariki. `to rely,
                depend on, entrust others."
                     As Other Power moves into my life, I become object as well






                as subject. The unreliabilities and unreality of my everyday
                life become part of reality. This is the awareness that comes
                about through Other Power. To throw away the focus of my ego is
                an inexhaustible process. The dynamic of Amida in this process
                is the non-judgmental, non-discriminating, unconditional
                embrace of the ego I cannot throw away.

                     To "throw it away" means throw away your ego-focus so you
                can see your real relationship with your husband, your wife,
                your children, your parents, so you can begin to understand
                your life, yourself. This is the illumination of wisdom and
                compassion.
                     Experientially, the natural movement of shinjin is to move
                outward toward others. In the case of Sakyamuni's enlightenment
                at age thirty-five, for a week afterward he sat in contemplation
                before his decision to share and express his







                48     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                experience. Shinran's was a similar experience of being moved to
                share. Even in old age he wrote, "I cannot see any more and I
                have forgotten many things," but he continued to write to his
                disciples, to share with them his thoughts on his shinjin
                experience. This sharing of religious experience is not
                exclusively Buddhist. It is a universal movement in religions.

                     In Shin Buddhism, to be able to listen, study, learn from
                the teachings, all comes from the predecessors who gave their
                full life to extend their shinjin experience and express it so
                that I, centuries later, could understand. There is, however, a
                gap between the original religious experience and its
                expression-whether that expression be in music, art, or words. For
                example, the sutras were developed 2,000 years ago in the
                Northwestern areas of India. They state that there are flowers
                and birds in the Pure Land, and that the Pure Land is in the
                west. This kind of content developed within the stream of
                mankind's history, as molded 2,000 years ago within the context
                of Indian life.

                     Similarly, we must not forget that Shinran's writings were
                developed within the environment of the experiences of the
                Kamakura period. The historical and societal aspects of
                Sakyamuni's time, and of Shinran's, were each woven in their own
                way into their expression of the teachings. Shinran's
                fundamental religious experience of shinjin, however, transcends
                his historical and societal environment, as likewise Sakyamuni's
                religious experience of enlightenment transcends his societal
                environment. Each expresses the ultimate in words that are
                naturally conditioned by the very different times in which each






                lived.

                     For both, the expression of the experience came directly
                from the pure religious experience itself, but between the experience
                and its expression in language or written words, there
                exists a gap which Shinran described as being between the







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening          49

                finger and the moon. Thus his admonition not to mistake the
                pointing finger of the teachings for the moon of Dharma, the
                pure religious experience itself.







                     CHAPTER FOURTEEN

                     SYMBOLISM AND PARADOX

                     There are, in this perspective of "the finger pointing to
                the moon" two aspects I should now like to discuss. One is that
                of symbolism. The other is that of logic-the Buddhist logic based
                on paradox or contradiction. `A' equals `not A' which I found in
                many of Shinran's writings.

                     The area of symbolism, and the problems in that area, deal
                with what Sakyamuni and Shinran encounter when they try to
                communicate their experience to those who have not had it.
                Symbolism then becomes the vehicle for trying to express their
                experience as one might try to express the pain of a toothache
                to one who has never had an aching tooth.
                     Or, for example, I am given a pencil which belonged to a
                dear friend who had died. For me, the pencil which may have been
                a cheap one in price is cherished because it symbolizes the
                depth of my friendship, the memories of my friend and all he
                meant to me. This particular pencil thus in itself carries deep
                meaning, and to simply replace it with other pencils, other
                similar objects, does not carry the meaning that lies beyond
                that object and which that object expresses to me.
                     Myogo, the technical expression for the six characters
                Namu-Amida-Butsu can be placed in the category of symbols.
                Symbols communicate the depth of religious experience to those
                who have not yet experienced the world of ultimate reality. This
                communication comes through the use as symbols of that which is
                found in daily life. For example, the symbolism of the Pure






                Land as birds and flowers is symbolism used in the sutras to
                affirm what is in this world and yet beyond it.







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      51

                Cool streams, birds, flowers and trees express and affirm some
                thing simultaneously of this world but there is, at the same time
                in this symbolism , a logic that negates a purely literal
                understanding of these things.
                     The name of Amida Buddha comes from the Sanskrit,
                Amitabha and Amitayus. Amita means "that which is limitless
                Abha means "light" and ayus means "life," thus the
                meaning-"the one with limitless light and life." This expression
                is inconceivable! What is the light that has no bounds and
                yet is light that can be realized because of the contrasting
                conditions of darkness? What is limitless life? Can we realize
                the symbolic meaning of such a phrase? Only when our conditions
                as we understand them are negated, then in this contradiction
                offered by the expression "limitless life and light" can we
                begin to understand the direction in which the finger of the
                teachings is pointing.
                     To entrust one's life in Amida, we must realize that the
                real Buddha lies beyond the symbol of Amida. We must encounter
                that experience! We can't walk around clinging to the symbol as
                if it were the Buddha itself. We must go beyond the symbol, just
                as in the sutras we go beyond the symbols of cooling water,
                cooling wind, which were used to give a contrast to the hot
                harsh reality of the Indian climate. In terms of the natural
                conditions of that environment, such symbols took the mind to an
                experience beyond the limits of one's own actual experience,
                pointing beyond their literal meaning, like a finger pointing to
                the moon.
                     To the question, "Where is Amida Buddha?" the sutra gives
                an answer in two ways. Amida Buddha and his land, viewed from
                here, is far, far away. But, also, in order to get from here to
                Amida is "not far." He is right here! His being at the same time
                both right here and infinite Buddha worlds away is an expression
                of Buddhist logic. This is the same mindtransforming logic
                woven into Shinran's expression of his







                52     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                experience of "awakening," the paradox there being that Shinran






                -the very person creating karma that carries him along on a fall
                into hell-is able to experience Pure Land.
                     The problems of symbolism and paradox come from the meaning
                received from them by this "I" who have not yet awakened to pure
                religious experience. Thus the difficulty with language, words,
                expressions. These two problems: symbol and paradox, are
                encountered in Shin Buddhist teachings. How to get through them
                to experience the truth is my problem , your problem. It is not
                good enough to grasp the finger as if the finger were the moon
                itself.

                     Since Shinran, who lived eight hundred years ago, used the
                words and symbols of his own century to express his experience,
                there may be a gap in our understanding of some of the words and
                symbols he used. In spite of this, shining through those words
                and symbols, bridging the gap in time and societal conditions,
                is the totality of his commitment. His touching of my human
                reality makes the "finger" of his teachings beckon and touch me,
                extend the moon of the experience which Shinran had as
                potential for me, too.

                     It is this experience that Shinran was trying to express in
                his teachings, and through his writings, that we deal with
                today. Through the direction of the symbols and paradox of his
                "finger pointing to the moon," we too may have Shinran's
                original pure experience of shinjin. For this reason, the study
                of Shin Buddhism must be with one's mind and with one's body, a
                total integration of the understanding of our mind into our
                experience.







                     CHAPTER FIFTEEN

                     TASTING THE TEACHING

                     The word sutra originally meant "that which is strung
                together on a string," which in a literal sense describes the
                collections of the teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha, transmitted
                orally for some three hundred years before being written down in
                the form we know today. It is of course likely that over such a
                long period of oral transmission, the content of the sutras was
                transformed.

                     The teachings dealing with Amida Buddha that evolved during
                this period were gathered into three sutras, of which the major
                is the Larger Sukhavati Pure Land Sutra. In it are presented
                various aspects of the teachings concerning Amida-his Original
                Vow, his many Vows, and a description of his Pure Land. Other
                sutras also talk about lay persons becoming Buddhas, but in this
                sutra there is an emphasis on telling lay people how they can






                become Buddhas,

                     The other two collections dealing with Amida Buddha the
                Meditation and Amida Sutras-can be regarded as supplementary to
                the Larger Sukhavati Sutra. It is this Larger Sutra that during
                a period of 2,000 years moved in its development from India,
                through China, Korea, and into Japan. Shinran taught that for
                those who lead an everyday existence in this world, this is the
                fundamental sutra.

                     In a previous chapter we discussed two contradictory
                statements made in the Larger Sukhavati sutra: Amida Buddha is
                far, far away-and, Amida Buddha is right here! We cannot grasp
                Amida with our senses, our touch, our vision. In that sense,
                Amida is far, far away. Yet, he is always with us,







                54     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                surrounding us, grasping us. How do we unify these contradictions
                in our experience of shinjin?
                     Osono, a myokonin in the countryside of Nagoya, lived in
                an area heavily influenced by both Shin Buddhism and Zen. Near
                her village lived a young Zen master. Osono had the reputation
                of being a devout Shin Buddhist, but the Zen master felt that
                because of his training he must be deeper in his understanding.
                One day he went to see Osono and asked her, "What is the name of
                the Buddha you are worshiping?"

                     Osono answered, "Amida Buddha."

                     The Zen master then asked, "Where is that Amida Buddha?"

                     Osono answered, "My oyo-sama (spiritual parent) Amida is
                far, far away in the West."

                     "Ah, your oyo-sama is really far away, isn't he?" said the
                Zen master.

                     "Oh, no!" said Osono. "Though Amida is faraway,right now at
                this moment, he is out of the Pure Land in the West."

                     This answer surprised the Zen master. "If Amida is out,
                where is Amida now?"

                     Osono broke into a smile. "Oh, Master, you ask good
                questions! Amida is right here! Right here! Namu Amida Butsu!"

                     Later, the Zen master told his friends that Osono was deep
                in her expression of the Buddha Way. "Even I could not reply as






                spontaneously as this illiterate old country woman!" he
                exclaimed.

                     For Osono, the contradiction of Amida being far away and
                "out" visiting right there in her heart, was fully integrated as
                a whole into her life. When we listen to the teachings, the
                symbolism and apparent paradoxes must in the same way be







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening        55

                integrated into the depths of our own life. Otherwise we cannot
                say "I am truly listening, truly hearing. "
                     In Chinese there is an expression (homi) which means the
                "flavor of the Dharma." In Japanese, Buddhists often say, "Aji o miru
                - to see the flavor." To study Shin Buddhism and to
                experience the Dharma in one's everyday existence is to "taste"
                the teachings with one's whole being. Shinran used the word
                jin-shin profound heart and mind-as a synonym for shinjin. The
                symbols of Amida and Pure Land, the logic of paradox and
                contradiction, are to be "tasted" in this way.







                     CHAPTER SIXTEEN

                     CHANGE AND GROWTH IN SHINJIN

                     Shinjin is something that grows. It is the awakening to a
                new dimension of existence, an awakening in which there is change
                and growth. This is not a change or growth of objective knowing,
                which is dualistic, but that of the subjective knowing of
                prajna in which subject and object become one.

                     No matter how strong we may become intellectually, that
                strength does not necessarily mean we have grown or become
                changed in an affective way. We may, however, be quite
                uneducated and out of our capacity to love and to be touched
                there can come such an inner transformation, For example, when
                we subjectively understand our parents' love and their suffering
                for us, and we feel gratitude, our heart changes in a subtle
                way. Another example: intellectually, though we may have been
                listening to the Dharma for a long time, we have not been really
                moved. It is only when we become genuinely touched in our hearts
                by the Buddha Dharma that we grow and change in shinjin, that we
                awaken to this reality and experience the transformation






                Shinran described as "to die to oneself and to be born anew to
                the life of the Buddha." To experience shinjin means to become a
                person assured of Buddhahood. This also has that sense of
                growth and change in my life.

                     To meet the Dharma itself is to be nurtured, to grow,
                because it is something we receive, a transformation that comes
                to us naturally, spontaneously. In Kyoto there is a women's
                college founded by Wariko Kai, who died a few years ago at the
                age of ninety. She said, "After listening to Shin Buddhism,







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     57

                my life and I have changed. Because of the Nembutsu I was
                transformed and changed as a human being. This, to me, is due to
                Amida Buddha."

                     It is truly difficult for us to change since we are constantly
                creating karmic evil which destines us for hell. Yet, I
                constantly meet the Buddha just as I am. This change of waking up
                to my reality is a great transformation that occurs through my
                awakening itself-not from any change coming from me but from
                Sodatsu "leaving it up to the power of sustenance itself."
                Sodatsu means "to grow, to nurture" and thus its meaning in a
                religious sense that through listening, a person grows and
                develops. This process is also expressed as ten-jo , "to turn,
                to revolve, to become." It is not a straight line change. Our
                solid core of bonno, which we carry just as it is, is turned
                about and ultimately transformed into Buddhahood by Amida's power.

                     A century ago , a famous Shin scholar was visited by an old
                woman whom he asked, "Did you bring me any gifts?"
                     "No," she answered, "I decided to come so suddenly I didn't
                bring anything."
                     "You must have something with you ! " he pursued. "Give me
                that something!"
                     "No. I'm sorry. I have no money, nothing like that to
                give you."
                     "Ah!" he said. "But you have your bonno! Leave some of it
                here!"
                     "No, no! " said the old woman. "If I give you my bonno,
                then I don't have anything to go to the Pure Land with!"

                     This is the essence of shinjin , expressed with direct
                simplicity. The old woman well realized that to be saved by the
                Buddha is to realize that her only direction is hell, but moving
                in that direction which is created by her evil karma, her bonno,













                58 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                she has become the being destined for the Pure Land, the being
                through whom Amida's Vow is again being fulfilled.
                     In a number of his poems, Shinran uses the metaphor of
                bonno being like ice which the power of the Buddha melts into
                water. I, who am full of the ice of bonno, am embraced and
                enveloped in the warmth of the Buddha's compassion. Beginning to
                melt in this awakening, yet full of karmic evil as I still am,
                having "died" to my old self, my new life becomes intimately
                connected to the life of the Buddha. I am not yet a Buddha, but
                I am being led to Buddhahood. Shinran states: "The person of
                shinjin is equal to the Buddha, but not the Buddha. " This is a
                delicate point, one to taste, to settle into.
                     How astonishing this process! The more our defilements, the
                more we are sustained by the Buddha. I ask you, please integrate
                this into the depths of your life, not on the surface of your
                existence!







                     CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

                     BUDDHIST SALVATION

                     The Larger Sukhavati sutra expresses salvation within the
                nembutsu as "each and every person stands tranquilly,
                peacefully'-that is, everyone is okay living tranquilly in the
                present as such. The late Professor Soga of Ohtani University
                was once asked by his students, "What is the nature of salvation
                in Jodo Shinshu?" His reply, after a moment's pause, was
                "Salvation is just like this,just the way I am standing here.
                Just like this." This is "tranquilly, peacefully standing right
                here in the present, in the here and now."

                     To die to one's old self, to be born to the new self, is
                "just like this." My new life is centered in Amida's life. I too
                become an active part of compassion. To be saved by the Buddha
                means no matter what the circumstance of my life, I am able to
                stand in that circumstance tranquilly, and at peace.
                     In the various religions there are generally two types of
                salvation offered. In the first, not the self but the
                environment and society become the problem. The changing of
                these becomes the focus of being "saved"-not my personal
                questioning and problems but the surroundings of my physical
                an"d societal environment. For example, when we become ill, or






                our work experience is one of failure, or we have family
                problems-any and all of these affect our surroundings so that many
                resort to supplicatory prayers to alleviate these problems.
                Salvation is equated with some answer to this prayer perceived as
                having taken place. Such a kind of prayer for relief to a god
                who is seen as a divine intervener, a controller of destiny, is
                an ancient human dependence. This literature of cure and







                60     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                change through supplicatory prayer ranges from ancient
                primitive societies to modern religions.
                     The second general type of salvation stands in sharp
                contrast to such a focus on miraculous change in one's condition.
                It is not simply an alteration or cure of surroundings but instead
                goes deeply into the personal dimension, the inner environment,
                seeking out a change in one's personal life. This
                second kind of salvation in itself divides into two differing
                kinds. In the first, there is acknowledged a supreme being, a
                god that controls one's destiny, judges, and punishes or for
                gives. In the second, which is the salvation of Shin Buddhism,
                the "just like this, standing peacefully tranquilly here and now
                in the present" of Professor Soga is the salvation of the
                nembutsu,

                     Salvation in terms of a supreme being perceived as the
                controller of one's destiny is acutely illustrated by an
                incident that happened in my village when a motorcycle rider
                fell from a high place and so injured his leg that he was told
                amputation was necessary. After this was done, and he had to
                walk with a crutch, he began to contemplate suicide because of
                his condition. While in this despair, he was encouraged to join
                a religion and after going into that religion, his life
                changed. The response of this religion to him was: "the accident
                you were in was so severe that you were supposed to lose two
                legs, but because of God 's intervention you lost only one and
                should therefore be grateful for this one leg you have left."
                The accident victim was finally able to believe this
                explanation was right and by accepting this, he experienced the
                salvation of that religion in his life.

                     In this example there is a personal change in his life-no
                miraculous cure, his leg is still gone-but his acceptance of it
                on the terms of that religion is very different from the
                personal change that occurs in the salvation of Shin Buddhism.
                In Shin, personal change does occur, but a personal change of a
                very













                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      61

                different nature. There is not a change in terms of stopping
                crying over the loss of one leg to experience happiness over
                still having the other leg. Rather, it is a change that occurs
                at a deeper dimension in life. If I were that amputee, I would
                find it difficult to be grateful for the loss of that leg. I
                would carry that loss in my memory as pain and sorrow at my
                suffering. To be able to accept my suffering tranquilly as such
                in my life, to stand peacefully with all that burden of pain and
                suffering is the inner change, the salvation of Shin Buddhism.
                     No matter what the condition of our daily life-if we face
                that condition directly, not running away from it but moving
                forward in our life, we transcend suffering and in this transcendence,
                we tranquilly peacefully stand right here in the present
                no matter what the circumstances of our life.

                     The three Chinese characters meaning salvation are expressed
                in Japanese by the words tasuku, sukui and wataru.
                Tasuku designates strength. The ideograph is one box placed on
                another, so that power is supplemented, as for example, in
                illness when you add medical power so that the illness is cured
                and you are "saved." In sukui the left portion of the character
                symbolizes a water bag tied at the top. The character at the
                right denotes action, or movement. An illustration of this would
                be a sense of stopping-you move something to stop something as,
                for example, when you pour water on a fire, the fire stops.

                     The third, wataru, is Buddhism and Shinran's type of
                salvation. The ideograph illustrates the span of a hand, which
                was the original Chinese form of measurement across an area *a
                movement step by step like an inch worm. It is this sense of
                crossing step by step that is the sense of salvation in Shin
                Buddhism. In Sanskrit, uttarana means "crossing over." It was
                from this word that the Chinese sai-do and from it the Japanese
                wataru were derived. Since the basic meaning of salvation in
                Buddhism is "crossing over," the use of the English







                62     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                word "salvation" may present a problem, for this "crossing over"
                of Buddhism does not mean we get to our destination immediately,
                but implies there is something we must cross over and that there
                is something that pulls us over. In Shin Buddhism we "cross






                over" pulled by the nembutsu and the multitudinous obstacles
                and suffering in our life. In terms of this, each person must be
                able to be centered at the point where he is. By receiving the
                new life of the Buddha, which makes our basis tranquil and
                strong, we can truly grow and cross over. We are nurtured ,
                developed , sustained , enabled to cross over, to stand
                tranquilly in the breath-to-breath circumstances of our life.

                     Shinran explained salvation by the word osho, our being
                enabled to move straight forward in our life toward Buddhahood.
                The technical term for this is "lateral transcendence."
                Something inconceivable, beyond our reasoning-a transcendence
                made possible by the Buddha's power.
                     In the first line of Kyogyoshinsho, Shinran says that in
                the nembutsu teaching we are able "to cross over the ocean that
                is difficult to cross." That ocean is his symbolism for the
                existential suffering in our life. In Shin Buddhism, "moving
                straight forward in our life towards Buddhahood" holds the
                meaning that in saying the nembutsu, and in living it in our
                existence, through the power of Amida we are made to "cross
                over" our sufferings, to stand moment by moment bearing that
                burden tranquilly in the present.







                     CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

                     THE PROBLEM OF DEATH

                     The symbolism of "crossing the ocean that is difficult to
                cross" poses a critical question. On the "other shore"of this
                ocean of life is death. The critical question in Shin Buddhism
                is: have you resolved the direction in which you are moving in
                terms of your own death?
                     Death is the problem that surrounds the very being who is
                going to die : the "myself" who thinks about the problem will
                one day or one night-how or when I cannot know-experience that
                problem as my terminal conscious awareness. Only humans can be
                conscious of their death. We are probably the only species that
                can be aware of our last moments. How has man throughout the
                ages viewed death?
                     First is the focus of how to escape from death. Hospitals
                in Japan have no room numbered "4" because the character for
                shi-"4-"-has the same pronunciation as that of the character
                for "death." There is at the basis of mankind's view of death
                this kind of aversion to reminders of it, and a wish to be able
                to escape it. Last year in California I read a news commentary
                written by a mother: "I don't want to show my child the sight of
                a funeral because it will create dark images in its mind and be
                psychologically damaging."
                     Intuitively speaking, my first reaction is that this






                expresses the fact she herself is escaping from death. Many people
                today look upon death as a dark intruder in life, an intruder
                which we wish to escape. This is a very shallow viewing of life.
                Is keeping the child from funerals truly educating the child
                himself?   Why not teach him that one day all beings must die,
                even his own parents.







                64 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                     The Chinese word for "forgetting" is composed of two
                characters, one meaning "to lose" and the other "heart and
                mind." Today we "forget" this dimension of death. How often do
                we reflect on the problem death poses us: that there is no
                guarantee there may be a tomorrow for our husband , wife,
                children, ourself, We keep that at a distance, thus losing a
                problem that, essentially, we ought to reflect upon within our
                heart. Forgetting, being busy, are forms of escaping from
                reflecting on this great problem of death-a problem we cannot
                escape since eventually each of us must die our own death.
                     Another attitude is : "If I have to die anyway, then I'll
                leave some kind of substitute for myself here in this life." For
                example, even if I should die-whether it's my writings, my own
                children, my grandchildren, or something I've built, all these
                give me an illusion of immortality to which I can cling. In
                Japan there is a new custom becoming quite popular in this
                respect. The living person tries to select a beautiful
                gravestone for himself before he dies. In America, there are
                beautiful "pre-need" grave sites you can choose now. If you
                think you are going to be under such a site, isn't your heart
                eased a little? People say, "Now I have completed my house I
                will go ahead and build myself a grave site." In Japan,
                department stores even have sales on grave sites! Does this
                really become a resolution to one's death? To a friend who
                offered to build the dying Shomatsu a fine grave site, myokonin
                Shomatsu said, "No thank you! I won't be living there."
                     From ancient times another form of escape from death has
                been the view of reincarnation. This is an escape which says
                since we're going to be born into this life again, death should
                not be feared. In the pyramids of Egypt were many mummies, a
                physical preservation that was the result of a belief that at
                death, the soul leaves the body, wanders, but needs a body to
                which it can return. This is a simple way of viewing
                reincarnation and a kind of belief that persisted strongly in
                the past.













                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      65

                     The fourth attitude towards death is that of transmigration
                into another kind of world, another kind of life, and
                therefore, again, a reason not to fear death. In the east, this
                view of transmigration is prevalent. The hope is that man can be
                born again to another life as a human being, but perhaps also as
                an animal. In Shin Buddhism, the salvation that occurs in
                shinjin effects our birth into the Pure Land, but we do not go
                to be born in a Pure Land because it exists as another world,
                another life. To be born into the Pure Land is not to posit a
                Pure Land which is in the distance. When I die, the very point
                at which my death occurs: that is the Pure Land. It is not a
                place, not another world.
                     Rennyo Shonin, the great fifteenth-century Shin Buddhist
                leader, emphasized "the great matter of the after-life. " This
                focus on after-life is not on talking about what happens after
                you die, but on your crossing the ocean of this life. To bring
                the consciousness of death into the great matter of the
                after-life is the major thrust of Shin Buddhism. When we look at
                death it is very dark, but when we look at it-we are carrying so
                much baggage. We don't know when, but we must cross over and in
                our daily life, things such as health, money, inheritances, can
                all seem to be aids. We can fool others as well as ourselves by
                our blind attachment to these things. Yet crossing over becomes
                clear only when we are stripped to the very being we were when
                we came into this world. If I bring the problem of my own death
                into focus right now-whether I am sustained, focused, whether I
                am saved or not should become clear to me.
                     In Japan, the general mode for cancer patients is that most
                doctors do not let the patients know they are terminal. In the
                United States, they are told, and the doctors and nurses are
                much involved in the battle the patient wages against the
                disease. If this happened in my life, how would I cope? Before
                it happens, while we are still healthy, this is a problem we
                ought to think about. For those who live in shinjin, how do







                66     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                they respond to the problem of their own death? In the process
                of working this through, where one stands in one's faith will
                become much clearer.

                     In my own life, at age thirteen, my home life was filled
                with darkness due to the death of my mother and grandmother, the
                illness of my brother, and my negative reaction to my father's
                remarriage. A few years later my brother died. I myself was so






                sickly it was predicted I would not live to age twenty. My
                family life was engulfed in a kind of personal darkness, a dark
                confusion. I ran away from home several times in my negative
                reaction to my father and stepmother. I entered college in
                1945 but was soon drafted and at the end of June of 1945 was
                sent to Hokkaido. Within a month the war ended and I went back
                to school-again it was a very confusing time not only in terms
                of my personal life but how I felt about my allegiance to my
                country as well.

                     At the end of the following year I transferred to Kyoto to
                study Shin Buddhism and in the search to find some kind of
                personal stability, I met my teacher, Professor Tada. It was
                about a year after my transfer that I came across the Meditation
                Sutra and the story of Ajatasatru, the young king of
                Rajagriha who murdered his father and tried to also kill his own
                mother. I was truly struck by this story, by the weight of karma
                piled by Ajatasatru's acts, an awful weight and yet one that led
                him to seek the teachings of the Buddha and caused him to be
                saved. Then, during my twenty-first year, one night during
                autumn I was struck by the nembutsu in my life. It was an
                experience I cannot forget, At that time, I wrote a long letter
                to my father and my stepmother. This was truly an awakening to
                me-to be touched by the Dharma and to begin to see myself. From
                that experience I feel my life changed-a change within me,
                coming through my family, through my stepmother, through my
                young sister and brother, a change coming through Professor
                Tada, my teacher who,







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     67

                years afterward, gave me a profound teaching in the way he
                resolved the problem of his own death.
                     Shortly before Professor Tada died at age seventy-five, the
                doctor told Mrs. Tada that her husband had only a few days left
                to live. When the doctor left, Professor Tada asked her, "What
                did the doctor tell you? If there's something that needs to be
                known, let me know completely!"
                     "Death is close at hand," she replied.
                     "Is that right!" said Professor Tada. "I guess I can just
                let go of everything now"-and he died soon thereafter.

                     To be able to accept in terms of "I guess I can let go of
                everything now" was his way of accepting the moment, but his
                accepting was also due to his wife's being able to freely open
                the truth of his condition to him. There is much to learn from
                the attitude of Mrs. Tada being able to tell her husband so
                directly what his condition really was. All of us are humans
                involved in relationships which are not easy to yield to death,






                but when death comes-can we speak our heart openly? Can we relay
                whatever direct information needs to be relayed as such? With
                the Tadas, the relationship was such as to indicate the depth of
                Professor Tada's faith, and that of his wife. When we think of
                our own death, we suffer our own suffering, but at the same time
                there is much suffering by those who love US: family, friends.

                     We describe shinjin as an experience of awakening but at
                the same time it is an experience of shinjitsu - t rue mind and
                heart in our life, In this dimension of the truth of shinjin is
                the receiving of the Buddha's life in our life. In this
                receiving, our birth in the Pure Land is assured. We are one
                with the Buddha. If so, and we understand shinjin in such a way,
                there is always a way to transcend death, to cross over death, to
                be enabled, like Professor Tada. to "just let. go of everything
                here." Shinjin means to experience truth as it is-that we be







                68 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                come one with Amida in this here and now which means the
                Buddha always sustains this hellish ego world which we create.
                     So when you die, simply die. It's okay to die. At that
                point is the Pure Land.









                     CHAPTER NINETEEN

                     OJO

                     There are two aspects of ojo, a word that means "birth to
                a new life." The first aspect is that in this very life we live,
                we experience birth to a new life in the experience of shinjin.
                The second aspect is that of birth in the Pure Land at the
                moment of death. Over and over in his writings Shinran repeats:
                "Life is very short. I will be in the Pure Land. Be sure you
                meet me there." What he is saying is that in the life of shinjin,
                the Pure Land is real.

                     An old haiku says: "O snail, wherever you die, you are
                home!" This is Shinran's view of ojo. It is in this world of
                defilements and illusion we become human beings bound for the Pure
                Land. When our death occurs, sad and lonely through we may be,






                at that very moment, the Pure Land occurs. Technically, the two
                aspects of ojo are "not-body-losing-birth" and
                "body-losing-birth." In order to experience the one at the time
                of death, the other must be settled during my life. Thus the
                problem is the awakening that occurs in this here and now. We
                must be clear on this point of ojo, having shinjin settled in
                this life, here and now, clear in our understanding that the
                awakening experience of shinjin takes place within the time we
                call our life.

                     Time, in this Buddhist view, differs from the ordinary
                concept. Generally, our idea of existence is that it takes place
                within time, that all things existing happen within "time."
                However, Buddhism thinks in terms of existence per se as "time."
                Thus, the very point of my life, that is the fact I am living
                now, already indicates history and time itself. "I am







                70     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                born," "I die" shows the process of history. Because I am, there
                is in relation to my own existence history and "time." The
                Japanese term Gen-zsi conveys the meaning of Now the present-in
                this way. Gen refers to "this present moment." Zui refers to
                "living" or "existing." This "now" of genzai forms the basis of
                the Buddhist notion of "time"-not an objective appraisal of time
                but "time" as a strong subjective element,

                     Ordinarily, time is seen as moving lineally from past into
                future. But in Buddhism, time is real in the "now." From the
                present you see the past as well as the future, The Chinese
                character for "past", used in Buddhism, means something past and
                gone, seen from the vantage point of the present in which we
                really exist. The future - mirai (not yet, not yet come)- is seen
                also from this vantage point of ima, now, the present - my
                present.

                     In the Buddhist view, we live in a world of illusion
                created in timeless past, but we say this in the depth of the
                realization of what we are in the present, The act which is
                propelling us into hell in terms of the future is rooted in the
                present realization of the depth and weight of that karmic
                burden which we carry from the timeless past. Both in our total
                human and our unique personal condition, this is a problem in
                the "now," my "now," a now in which the problem is to resolve
                the self for what it really is.

                     Objectively speaking, because of this subject, this "self,"
                there is time. Because there is time, there is this self. There
                fore the ordinary perception of time, an objective time that






                exists before our birth and after our death, a time determined
                by calendar year and watch, a "time" that is outside us, is
                totally different from the Buddhist perception of time, which is
                subjective. In the "here and now" of Buddhist time, subject and
                object are united in the vantage point of this present moment
                in which I resolve the problem of "myself."







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening     71

                     The awakening experience of shinjin is fulfilled at this
                point, which we call the Absolute Now. To realize the Buddha in
                one's life and simultaneously to realize oneself as a being
                creating the burden of karma that leads us to hell, can only
                take place in the absolute of Now, the Absolute Now. In terms of
                our daily life , the realization and experience of true
                gratitude happens always in this present moment of "now" for it
                is in the urgency of this present we feel the lives, the
                influence, of our parents, of our teachers, of our mates or
                former mates, our children, our friends, our adversaries, and
                awaken to a real understanding and appreciation. In terms of the
                evils we have committed in the past, this is often objective,
                left in the past. But when we truly awaken to our negative acts,
                the impact of that realization is always in the present : This
                very moment! Now!







                     CHAPTER TWENTY

                     THE PROCESS OF SHINJIN

                     For those who have already experienced shinjin, I hope these
                writings will help to deepen it. For those who have not yet
                experienced this awakening, I hope it will make the process more
                clear. The key is that shinjin is an experience, one that goes
                beyond the meaning of the English word , into the Japanese
                tai-ken or tai-ge. Tai is "body." Ken is "test." Ge is "understand."
                Experiencing shinjin means it must be tested with the body,
                understood with the body. It is not just a psychological
                condition, nor just a physical condition. One's total being is
                involved in this experience based in true mind and heart

                     One sees the Dharma, one shares it, extends it, and must
                discuss it in terms of one's personal experience of shinjin.
                Whether one has been saved by the Buddha or not must become clear






                in one's life. If we are not sure, then our sharing and teaching
                of the Dharma will not be clear. For myself, I like the metaphor
                that shinjin is the entrance and the exit of "crossing the river.
                " The starting point of the nembutsu as the entry into the
                Buddha's way is not entry into shinjin. But, at this starting
                point of nembutsu, is where it is important to meet a teacher
                who is a "good friend of the way" for in studying the teachings
                of the Buddha, it is important to be able to walk a path tread by
                a person whose footprints were deep in shinjin.

                     Where does this process begin? To be able to stand at the
                point where you choose to study and to live the nembutsu this is
                the starting point both of the life of nembutsu and the







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      73

                shinjin process. From this starting point it is urgent to listen
                with one's total being in order to awaken shinjin , an
                experience which transforms one's life. Though I am not
                initially full and complete, this total listening opens within
                my life a clear direction towards Buddhahood, towards the Pure
                Land.

                     What was Shinran's process? At age nine he was sent to Mt.
                Hiei. He practiced the monastic disciplines with diligence there
                for twenty years. His search was harsh, disciplined as far as
                looking into the inner working of his bonno, his burden of
                karmic evil, was concerned. During this period he lived the life
                of a celibate monk, but in spite of that life he saw more and
                more acutely his own blind desires and defilements. At age
                twenty-nine, he encountered the nembutsu teacher Honen and came to
                realize there is a true way to become Buddha though there are
                these defilements in one's life
                     With his teacher, Shinran had the real awakening experience,
                the experience of shinjin. It took him twenty years of
                perseverance to arrive at this. At the age of twenty-nine, he
                threw everything away and returned to Amida Buddha or, in other
                words, Shinran "died to his old self and was born to a new
                self." It was a deep experience in his life, which he expressed
                through the phrase "one single moment of shinjin ," meaning that
                the experience of shinjin is fulfilled in a single moment.

                     It is here, at this single moment when the experience of
                shinjin is awakened in our own life, that we can truly discuss
                and see the world of shinjin, of illusion, as well as the
                world of enlightenment (Pure Land, Nirvana). Without this
                experience, there is not true listening, true hearing, but only
                listening with one's brain. Such listening is not "testing with
                one's body. " It is superficial and unclear.






                     William James' Varieties of Religious Experience deals with
                two types of conversion: one gradual, one abrupt. James
                describes two factors as bringing about an abrupt conversion.








                74    The  Buddhist World of Awakening

                One is the type of personality and the other is the kind of
                situation-for example, much anguish and suffering in a person's
                life. Though James spoke of this area in terms of Christianity, I
                feel it is also valid in terms of Shin Buddhism. For example,
                myokonin Genza's experience of faith was very abrupt. Genza was
                only eighteen when his father, working alongside him in the
                field, died, saying at the last, "When I die, rely on the
                Buddha!"
                     Shocked by this, Genza began to listen to the teachings.
                The following summer, at nineteen, he experienced awakening. At
                that time, farmers used to go up into the mountains to gather
                grass. They would load the grass on cows or horses and bring it
                down from the mountains in such loads that often one could
                hardly see the animal under its burden of grass. It was while
                Genza was loading grass on his cow, in that very moment, that he
                realized-experienced with his body-the meaning of Amida's
                compassion in his life. "Just as the cow carries grass down the
                hillside, Amida carries that bonno I am always creating . Amida
                carries it and has always carried it!"
                     In contrast to such an abrupt conversion is the gradual,
                slow ripening illustrated in the life of another myokonin, Saichi.
                Saichi's father, though not of a temple family, became a
                Shin Buddhist priest in Shimane, a devoutly Shin Buddhist
                prefecture. Saichi then began listening to the teachings at
                about age eighteen, listened but did not understand and so quit
                for a few years. At age thirty he began listening again, but
                only after the age of fifty did he ripen to an experience of
                shinjin.
                     In the past, the question in Shin Buddhism used to be,
                "When did you receive shinjin?" But, based on this categorization
                of William James, it may not be necessary for everyone to
                have such an abrupt awakening-a gradual awakening may happen.
                The point is, whether abrupt or gradual, the awakening must be
                clear in one's life, a transformation in one's life







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      75







                in which the dark shadows of bonno and the light of Amida stand
                out distinctly.
                     Shinjin is complete in itself, but it happens over and
                over again and deepens one's sensitivity to the joys and sorrows
                one experiences. The Buddha is always embracing us and yet, only
                at times do we realize we are being embraced. The "absolute" of
                awakening, the experience of shinjin which is Other Power, the
                working of Amida's Vow, is always-without interruption-the
                environment of myself. It embraces the "time" which is my
                process of history from birth to death. Only in my awakening to
                the paradox of my inescapably defiled self-the self who is
                always contriving, justifying, selecting, discriminating,
                trying to organize the world of experience around myself-as
                being this very self that is embraced by Amida-do ] realize this
                ever-present environment of shinjin.







                     CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

                     THE ESSENTIAL INTEGRATION

                     If, in your mind, as you read and reflect, you are spreading
                out a map of the process of the Buddha way of nembutsu, let
                me caution you against simply carrying around such a map! Rather,
                from this map, find your own path in the process.
                     Historically, before Shinran, there are descriptions of the
                Buddha Way expounded in the sutras based on the original
                teachings of Sakyamuni: the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold
                Path. The Four Noble Truths describe four truths that are
                inherent in reality. The first two describe our delusory
                condition, our real condition as it is: samsara. Human life in
                its illusory condition is described as the result or
                responsibility of my karma creating the delusions and suffering
                in my world, By this I mean not my family, not my social
                environment, etc., but my personal karma. Samsara has this
                direct personal meaning.

                     The content of the third truth points to the urgency for us
                to attain enlightenment to realize the ideal condition in our
                life. The fourth truth also deals with us. Thus the four truths
                express the real condition of our daily lives: suffering, joy,
                sorrow, and the way to true happiness which is what we foolish
                beings seek. The Buddha Way, as Sakyamuni preached over and over
                again, is the way of the Eightfold Path, the way by which a
                common ordinary being can become enlightened. Within it is right
                speech (verbal action) ; right action (bodily expression, right
                karma); right thought (our own mental process). These form the
                totality of our human existence. To direct this totality of
                ourselves toward Buddhahood is the













                     The Buddhist World of Awakening    77

                thrust of the Buddha's teaching through this path. This is primary,
                but in the sutras there are also preached many other ways,
                In the Larger Sukhavati sutra there are described three ways in
                which one can become a Buddha. One is the way by which monks can
                attain the Pure Land. Second is the way in which the ordinary man
                or woman can attain the Pure Land. Within this second way are two
                possibilities: the first of which is offerings by those who can
                give them and thus accumulate merit. But for those poor both in
                wealth and poor psychologically, spiritually, there is the way of
                the Original Vow, whereby the ordinary being, carrying heavy
                karmic burdens of evil, simply by saying the nembutsu, listening
                to the Buddha's name, becomes a Buddha. This is the original Shin
                Buddhist way.

                     Concerning this nembutsu path, Shinran says in Tannisho:
                "Even if I should be misled by Honen and fall into the depths of
                hell [ will have no regrets"-but at the same time, he relied
                implicitly on the teachings of Sakyamuni, and sought refuge in
                the power of that teaching. Thus the "belier' or "faith" which
                Shinran expresses as shinjin, the experience of awakening, is a
                world of enlightenment, of awareness, that opens only through an
                experiential integration of belief and practice. To emphasize
                once again, shinjin is taige, understanding with the body,
                the experience at the point where awakening occurs: a result both of
                belief and practice.
                     What you truly have to listen to is the heart of what
                Sakyamuni and Shinran are saying about the true and real in
                life, in your life. The act of doing, of practicing in our daily
                life is important for if we cannot connect the teaching we hear
                into our daily life, the effort is incomplete. Simply
                "believing" is not Shin Buddhism. Unless experience has been
                integrated into one's commitment and understanding, unless there
                is this sense of process, it is not Shin Buddhism.

                     The transmission of these teachings was neither fast nor







                78     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                easy. From India to China to Japan, the way was beset with
                hardships: the Gobi desert, tigers, rough ocean, lives lost.






                Similarly, difficulties accompanied the transmission of Shin
                Buddhist teachings from Japan to Hawaii and the mainland United
                States over the past hundred years. We must listen to the
                history which evolved out of many people's selfless, whole
                hearted effort to share the dharma, for it is out of these
                conditions we today can take the first step of listening to the
                teachings. This nearly 3,000-year process of transmission in
                order for us to meet what is difficult to meet, was all made
                possible by nearly 3,000 years of commitment, of believing and
                totally living in this Buddha Way.
                     Shinran expressed this historical process in hymn of True
                Faith, Shoshinge, wherein he praises the seven patriarchs
                through whom he traces his spiritual lineage. For Honen, the
                seventh of these patriarchs (the nembutsu practicer whom
                Shinran always regarded as his teacher), the Buddha Way was mind
                and heart plus practice (gyo) leading to ojo - birth in the Pure
                Land. Mind and heart corresponds to the original point of
                "believing." Gyo, practice, is the recitation of Nembutsu. For
                Honen, by believing in and relying on nembutsu, one is able to
                meet Amida at the point of Raigo-the "welcoming." This point,
                of welcoming and meeting the Buddha in one's life, is the point
                of experience at which one is able to be born in the Pure Land.

                     Honen taught Shinran that the way of nembutsu was the way
                of the Eighteenth Vow. Yet, among Honen's students a great
                problem arose-a difficulty in terms of the practice. How many
                callings were necessary? Honen said, "Don't get stuck on the
                number of times. Just throw yourself wholeheartedly into the
                utterance with total involvement."
                     After Honen's death, his various disciples began to form
                their own branches based on his teaching. Shinran also dealt in
                detail with this problem of "how many times?" Through







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening      79

                following Honen's way , he explored the teaching of Honen and
                that of Sakyamuni in an academic and scholarly fashion, as his
                writings attest ; but most importantly, he explored their
                teachings by totally integrating them experientially into his life,
                Thus in his writings, Shinran left us both a scholastically and
                an existentially clear map of the path he followed.







                     CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO







                     ONLY NEMBUTSU IS REAL

                     Honen says, through the calling of the name one can be born
                in the Pure Land, but Shinran goes on to say that simply calling
                the name is not enough. This differentiation between their
                teachings remains a problem today, making it necessary to be
                very clear in our understanding of Shinran's way to nembutsu.

                     The character nen (or nem) originally referred to
                "thought," to "thinking of." Concretely, it was translated as
                "thinking with the body," which in turn was translated as
                "calling" and thus the Nembutsu has come to be translated as
                "calling of the Buddha name. " This was the way opened by
                Honen, a way embracing all the original and translated meanings
                of this character nen. In the thought, and in the calling also,
                there is really an encounter, or at least a yearning of
                encounter with the Buddha. That yearning points me toward the
                Buddha Way.
                     D.T. Suzuki's translation of gyo (practice) as "living" is
                a more precise expression of the union of shin plus gyo which
                Honen teaches. This practice of Nembutsu is expressed in our
                daily life as we place our hands in gassho (palms together in an
                attitude of reverence) in front of the household altar, Nembutsu
                permeates our lives as we live daily activities with
                awareness of the "thought of Amida Buddha," of the reality of
                Amida, of the reality of myself. For Honen, this was senjaku -
                nembutsu , the nembutsu as the "selected" practice of one's
                life, and so it became for Shinran.
                     Senjaku-"selecting"-has both the aspect of "to take or







                     The Buddhist World of Awakening         81

                receive" and, at the same time, the aspect of "to throw away."
                Honen says that uttering nembutsu is the only treasure, the only
                virtue in life. Throw away your reliance on worldly treasures and
                possessions for only the Nembutsu is true and real. Only it can
                usher you with peaceful heart through the gates of death.
                     When you die, you cannot take your money, your family, your
                fame, with you. When you die, you die just as you were born:
                stripped, naked, alone. The reality of my life is that
                everything I have now is borrowed. There is an ultimate aloneness
                in my life. Only Nembutsu sustains me. I must throw away
                these attachments to my possessions, my family, fame,- not throw
                them away but throw away my dependent clinging, my reliance, my
                attachment to them in order to see the compassion that envelops
                my life.
                     Honen said, "If you can recite the nembutsu better by
                getting married, then get married. But if marriage becomes an






                obstacle, then get rid of the marriage." Whatever the conditions
                of your life, live in a way that you can say the nembutsu and
                say it thoroughly. Nembutsu then becomes your only treasure in
                life, and becomes real in and through you,
                     Shinran's view extending this "selected nembutsu" as the
                sole real treasure is expressed in Tannisho as "All things in
                this life are vain and empty, only the Nembutsu is real."
                Really, what Honen's teaching allowed Shinran was to be him
                self, see himself, to become aware as a bombu-a foolish, ignorant
                being embraced by Amida's Vow. Shinran married, had a
                full family life-six children and later grandchildren. In that
                warm full environment he said, "Only the Nembutsu is real!"
                     This was his point of definite choice. In spite of his deep
                relationship with his wife Eshinni, with the children-facing the
                temporariness of all such relationships, he selected nembutsu
                as the only dependable reality, as the expression of his
                relationship as a human being with Amida Buddha.







                82 The Buddhist World of Awakening

                     For me, there was a period in which I both rejected and, at
                the same time, was drawn to the Nembutsu that had come from my
                mother's mouth as she lay dying. When she died, the winter of my
                thirteenth year, all the family was there watching her die. She
                had long been ill. All through my childhood, my only recollection
                is of her being in a dark room at the back of the house. Shortly
                before her death, she had asked to see me, but when I came home
                from school, she had lost consciousness. She did not respond to
                my anguished call, "Mother! Mother! "
                     In the moment of regaining consciousness as she died, she
                spoke not my name-which I yearned to hear her say-but she
                uttered the nembutsu and died. This is not to say my mother was
                a person of deep faith, but as all around her were reciting
                nembutsu, so she too-perhaps as a response. In my teenage years
                I often thought, if my mother had been waiting for me to return
                to her deathbed, why didn't she call my name rather than that of
                the Buddha's for I yearned to have heard her recognize me one
                last time. Yet through this nembutsu that had been my mother's
                dying utterance, I came closer to the Dharma and was able to
                learn the teachings. Thus it was through my mother that the
                meaning of the reality of the nembutsu filtered into my life. I
                reflected then. Had my mother held my hand and said my name at
                death-truly what could I have done? Instead, her dying utterance
                of nembutsu gave me the understanding that she must cast me
                aside as she dies. Somehow, I became able to see through this
                lesson of her death, able to see that the nembutsu is true,
                that she is all right as she is now.













                    CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

                    THE ESSENTIAL GATE

                     I feel it is important here to distinguish between the
                nembutsu which is false, the nembutsu which is temporary, and
                the nembutsu that is true. Concretely speaking, false nembutsu
                is the nembutsu used to gain present benefits in this
                world. It is like trying to add something to my life by using
                nembutsu - as, for example, like using nembutsu to cure illness
                or family problems.

                     True nembutsu basically cuts the blind thinking one does.
                False nembutsu does not cut, but merely helps inflate the ego,
                puffs it. In the case of nembutsu used merely as a prayer for
                one's own benefit, Shinran says that should a thousand persons
                do this nembutsu, not a single one will be born in the Pure
                Land. Likewise, the nembutsu recited only for the deceased -
                that too is false nembutsu. This is because the nembutsu
                is for those who are alive, to show the way to the Pure
                Land. Nembutsu is not ritual or ceremony. It is a teaching, a
                pathway towards Buddhahood, a pathway towards the Pure Land.

                     "Temporary" nembutsu is that condition which lies in
                between, which is neither false nor true. While this is not true
                nembutsu, it is however still directed towards it and is that
                process by which one arrives at true nembutsu. The technical
                expression used for this by Shinran, and in the Shin Buddhist
                tradition, is yomon - essential gate, Shinmon is the technical
                expression used for the true gate of true nembutsu.

                     Temporary nembutsu contains the two aspects of the
                essential gate and the true gate. It is through this that
                Shinran's







                84     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                process points to the essential and true gate of true nembutsu,
                through which the Great Vow is experienced. yomon is the kind
                of nembutsu expressed in the Meditation Sutra, one of the many
                good deeds which that sutra encourages. The Meditation Sutra
                does not express the completeness of nembutsu, but it does
                describe the process by which one moves through nembutsu
                towards the Pure Land, saying that the nembutsu is the






                essential step in moving in that direction.

                     In Shinmon, the true gate, there is no mixed practice, one
                stands on the nembutsu alone-sifting down to selecting this
                single choice as did Shinran. Nembutsu generally means, "I
                call the Buddha's name." In its fullest realization, nembutsu
                expresses cutting aside all roots, but still it is like a
                crutch, and "temporary" since it is still my addition. It
                becomes my good, my virtue, by my saying it. By throwing all
                aside however, we are able to meet the Buddha's compassion in
                our life, to encounter the transformative power of the nembutsu
                that is true and real, the nembutsu that is Gugan - Great Vow. In
                this, the Buddha is calling me, and because he is calling me, I
                am able to utter his name!

                     My father is eighty-eight years old and yet, he writes to
                me. Even if I forget, my father is constantly thinking of me.
                Thus, often our calling as a child is a response to that which
                comes from a parent. In this way, to be able to accept the heart
                of the Buddha-to know the Buddha who is constantly calling us,
                ceaselessly thinking of us, focusing on us-is the "turning
                over," the transformation of true nembutsu in which my calling
                of the Buddha's name is to hear at that very same moment the
                Buddha calling me. This kind of turnabout or transformative
                experience is what is called shinjin, and therefore we can say
                that true nembutsu equals shinjin which in turn equals
                awakening.







                     CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

                     GUGAN-GREAT VOW

                     The Buddha's power effecting a transformation in my life is
                the nembutsu of Great Vow (Gugan), the "true" nembutsu taught
                in the Larger Sukhavati Sutra. The three "Pure Land" Sutras, all
                of which point us in this direction, are called Vows or "gates"
                by Shinran. For him, Meditation Sutra is the nineteenth Vow, what
                he calls the essential gate - Yomon. The Amida Sutra, the twentieth
                Vow, is the "true gate," Shinmon. The Larger Sukhavati Sutra,
                the eighteenth Vow, is for him Gugan, the gate of Great Vow. All
                three constitute the process culminating in shinjin, the
                process selected, experienced, and taught by Shinran. The meaning of
                the last one, the transformative "true nembutsu" of Gugan is
                that there is no gate, there is no process, there is only the
                Great Vow.

                     Today, in my life as a scholar and professor of Shin
                Buddhism at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, I often tell the
                students I am able to teach that Shinran and the nembutsu offer






                a real sense of decision , a decisiveness in one's life. To put
                it in words from Tannisho, ultimately all deep loving
                relationships are unreliable. You can't hang on to anything. To
                be able to throw away those relationships, to stand on a point
                of real choice, means that nembutsu is not a matter of vague
                acceptance but a personal decision. To clarify this sense of
                choosing, you have to know what to throw away. If your cup is
                full, nothing else comes in. If you're clinging, you can't
                accept anything else. Only when you throw all else out, is the
                nembutsu able to strike you. "All things are empty." All
                things wealth, prestige, relationships-are ultimately unreliable.







                86     The Buddhist World of Awakening

                That realization, and the realization that only the nembutsu is
                real, is a reality that is made the decisive choice in the
                meaning of life.

                     Shinran's teacher Honen said we should live in such a way
                that we can say the nembutsu through these essential gates, so
                as to touch with our life the fullness of hearing the nembutsu
                which the Buddha directs to us. This is existentialism beyond
                the Absolute of Camus and Sartre's absurdity and despair. The
                Pure Land is an Absolute of acceptance of life as it is, and of
                myself as an interconnected part of this. Gugan - the Great Vow
                which is "no gate"-opens to me this Absolute which I can share,
                perceive, live in, in the vantage point of my awakening in this
                here and now to this reality.

                     The areas of death and karmic evil are often emphasized to
                lead to this insight. However, I feel the sense of secularism
                alluded to in Tannisho, "all things in the world are empty and
                vain," becomes more pointed in our modern secular world. We see
                this finite, nihilistic dimension of life pointing to the
                reality of the nembutsu. To be definite and clear about this
                reality is to arrive at the clarity of Gugan, the "true"
                nembutsu. The stark finiteness of this realization in itself
                then leads to our seeking the teachings more in our life.

                     The teaching is like a mirror which reflects oneself. By
                looking into the mirror of the teachings we can look into our
                daily lives. The starkness presented is part of the teaching. To
                listen is always to focus on the reality that is existence
                itself, to deeply seek the self with all its meaning and thus to
                choose the nembutsu as the meaning for our lives.

                     My effort in writing of all this has been like a map, like
                a finger pointing to the moon. What you do to walk this path, to
                point your life in the direction of the Buddhist world of
                awakening is your choice.