Walking with Rennyo: Thought and Voice are One

(4) Thought and Voice are One

Someone told Rennyo that he did not understand Honen Shonin’s words, Thought and Voice are One. Rennyo answered, “Whatever is mental will cast an external form: If one believes that shinjin’s essence is namuamidabutsu, we have an example of the singularity of thought and voice.”

Zuiken Inagaki Sensei, a beloved priest in the Hongwanji and a favorite teacher of mine, once wrote the following in his classic essay “On Faith”:

Apart from the all power working of namuamidabutsu, there is no faith, no Nembutsu and no peace of mind. We have only to hear Amida's living voice, 'namuamidabutsu', in which our birth, even our faith is accomplished. It calls us unceasingly. We hear the compassionate voice of the Buddha; we hear the Vow Power of the inconceivable wisdom of the Buddha. How grateful I am for the Vow in which Amida resolved, "If sentient beings are not born in my Land, may I not attain Enlightenment." This is my lifeline.

In the teaching of Jodo Shinshu, everything goes back to the Primal Vow. Without Amida’s promise of enlightenment, as Zuiken Sensei states, there would be no shinjin and no nembutsu. And without these, how could we poor miserable beings, adrift in the sea of samsara, ever know true peace of mind? For us, to hear that the Vow assuredly saves us is the most profound joy we can ever experience in this world. This is the joy of Dharma that motivated Master Rennyo to spread the teachings of the Founder throughout Japan. In this dark, sad world of Saha, this is the only everlasting joy that we can know.

Master Shinran states the following in his Notes on “Essentials of Faith Alone” (CWS, p. 468):

Here, in Amida's Primal Vow, even includes "few" in contrast to "many," teaching us that sentient beings who say the Name as few as ten times will without fail attain birth. Know that "thinking" and "voicing" have the same meaning; no voicing exists separate from thinking, and no thinking separate from voicing.

I believe the Venerable Master wrote this passage in order to prevent us from becoming attached to our thoughts or words, as if they could result in our ultimate liberation. Those who suppose, “I believe in the Buddha, and therefore I will be born in the Pure Land” are still operating in the realm of calculation, depending on their own power of mindfulness. Such human logic is perfectly valid in the conventional world, but it cannot be applied to the “marvelously mysterious” working of the Primal Vow. Another mistake is made when people think, “I say the nembutsu, and therefore I will be born in the Pure Land.” Both of these attitudes lead to self-powered attachment to mindfulness or recitation as the cause of birth. However, the reality is that we cannot be saved by any action, whether mental or physical, on our part. By listening carefully to the Primal Vow, we realize that in fact nothing we can possibly do will be sufficient to resolve our grave karmic problem. At that point, all that is left is to give everything up to the loving care of Namu-amida-butsu. If we possess a store of good from the past, then our self-power reasoning, our calculations, our doubts will all melt away in the bright sun of Amida’s wisdom, and we will be grasped, never to be abandoned. This is the realm of “true and real shinjin” that both Master Shinran and Master Rennyo were able to enter, and which we may enter too.

Again, Zuiken Sensei explains this aspect of true shinjin very well in the following quotation from his book The Sound of Ocean Waves of the Primal Vow:

What you call “faith” (shin), is the trust you owe to the compassion of the Tathagata, to trust to the utmost extent. Therefore, this “faith” is the virtue of faith that does not attach to faith.

Master Rennyo likewise wanted to keep us from making the mistake of thinking that the nembutsu is a practice that we do in order to be born in the Pure Land, or that shinjin is something we can generate through our own efforts. Indeed, we are reminded time and time again that we are not even capable of arousing the kind of pure faith that leads to nirvana. This is why, the Venerable Master tells us, “Amida made verbal utterance the essence of the Primal Vow” (CWS, p. 468). From sentient beings such as ourselves who are mired in delusion and distracted by suffering, any depth of faith, however shallow, would be miraculous. How wonderful it is, then, when such beings as we are made to possess the shinjin of the Primal Vow, which is the supreme, diamond-like faith of the Mahayana! Such a marvelous state of affairs can only come about through the Vow-power. Amida Buddha, recognizing that true and real shinjin could not be expected from us, accomplished the practice and realized the faith that would result in our salvation. For this reason, when pursuing the True Pure Land Way, you must not attempt to establish shinjin by your own power. Remember that whatever self-willed conviction (jiriki no shin) you manage to sustain will be just that—a construct, created by your foolish mind. Instead, listen to the wonderful Dharma, say the nembutsu, trust in the power of the Vow, and leave everything else to Amida. He fulfilled the requirements for your Pure Land birth long ago, and now waits to bestow the virtue of His enlightenment on you. This is the highest, most sublime truth of Buddhism, the thing most difficult to hear and accept in the entire world.

Let us then recite the nembutsu while rejoicing in shinjin, mindful that it is a generous gift from our beloved Parent of great compassion.

Myogo

This hanging scroll

Bearing the auspicious Name—

My birth certificate.

September 13, 2013

Walking with Rennyo: A Miscalculation in Chanting

(3) A Miscalculation in Chanting

While chanting wasans during service, Rennyo completely missed his turn at the crucial point in the text. Returning to his southern residential quarters, he said, “I was so absorbed in Shinran’s stanzas, that I’d forgotten to take the lead. There are so few who follow the teaching and attain birth in the Pure Land; I rejoice for those who do.”

Chanting has always been an important part of the Buddha-dharma, ever since it was adopted by the first followers of Shakyamuni to preserve his sacred sermons (the sutras). In the Pure Land Way, chanting sutras is one of the five “right practices,” those centering on Amida Buddha as designated by Shan-tao; these formed the general framework for Pure Land liturgy, and were adopted by all subsequent schools of that tradition. It is essential to note that in Jodo Shinshu, however, we do not seek to generate any merit or virtue from sutra-chanting, either for ourselves or for others. Also, while sutra-chanting with the single-heartedness of shinjin may be properly termed “right practice,” sutra-chanting without shinjin is just another auxiliary (or sundry) practice. As the Glossary of Shin Buddhist Terms in the second volume of The Collected Works of Shinran states, “Without the shinjin of Other Power, all practices, including recitative nembutsu, are nothing but expressions of self-power. Right practice, then, arises from the working of Other Power where all forms of self-willed and self-generated practice have disappeared.” It would be well to keep this in mind throughout our discussion of chanting.

It was Master Rennyo himself who established the daily service of the Hongwanji by compiling the Venerable Founder’s many Japanese hymns (wasan) into the three books familiar to us today: Hymns of the Pure Land, Hymns of the Pure Land Masters, and Hymns of the Dharma-Ages. Together with the “Hymn of True Shinjin and the Nembutsu” and the letters of Rennyo himself, these wonderful works have sustained the heart of Jodo Shinshu faith for centuries, preserving and strengthening it in the tumultuous world that was feudal Japan, right up to the present day.

When participating in services, some followers ask themselves questions such as, “Am I chanting loudly enough? Am I bowing deeply enough? Is my nembutsu too quiet? Too loud?” Perhaps we have all engaged in such scrupulosity at one time or another, particularly in an unfamiliar temple or when conducting a service with strangers. Instead, we should be asking, “Have I truly heard and understood what is being chanted or read?” Chanting in Jodo Shinshu does not perform some magical function, as in other religions. It is merely a means of proclaiming the Buddha’s teaching to those who have not yet heard it, and of gratefully extolling the Buddha’s virtues for those who have. The most important aspect in undertaking any religious duty ought to be whether or not it is performed out of a genuine sense of obligation for the Buddha's benevolence. If we have correctly heard and understood the content of the Name, then we will naturally express our gratitude in whatever we do. It is unfortunate that many today who have not experienced a decisive settling of shinjin often resort to elaborate rituals in order to appease their spiritual appetites. However, when the living heart of religion is removed, all that is left is a corpse of empty ceremonies.

That is why I love this anecdote from Master Rennyo’s life, because it tells us so much about his remarkable character, as well as his keen insight into the perils of ritualism. The Shonin took every opportunity to direct attention away from himself toward the working of Amida Buddha. In this case, he did not view his slip-up as a negative event, as many of us no doubt would have, but as an occasion to reflect on the Primal Vow. I think this is the spirit that every Jodo Shinshu practicer should strive to adopt.

Most importantly, in this passage Master Rennyo recognizes the solidarity that those who have obtained birth in the Pure Land share with those who follow after. When a person follows the teaching and attains birth, Master Rennyo himself rejoices for that person, and joins with all the other Buddhas throughout the ten directions in praising him. This reminds me of a quotation from the Passages on the Land of Happiness, which the Venerable Master Shinran quotes in Chapter 6 of his Kyogyoshinsho:

I have collected true words to aid others in their practice for attaining birth, in order that the process be made continuous, without end and without interruption, by which those who have been born first guide those who come later, and those who are born later join those who were born before. This is so that the boundless ocean of birth-and-death be exhausted.

We are blessed indeed that Master Rennyo has gone ahead of us to the Pure Land. Truly, he continues to guide each and every one of us today.