Category Archives: Reflections on the Faith

Is Jodo Shinshu Pessimistic?
Notes on the nature of our faith

Reflections on the Faith

Some people assert that Jodo Shinshu is a pessimistic faith. We can break down the grounds on which they do so into four different categories, two of which are common to Buddhism as a whole and two of which pertain especially (though not exclusively) to Jodo Shinshu.

Pertaining to Buddhism as a whole:
Pessimism about the world and human life
Pessimism about our ability to radically change the situation

Especially pertaining to Jodo Shinshu:
Pessimism about our ability to save ourselves
Pessimism about our moral character and about the afterlife

So let us tackle these one at a time.

Pessimism about the world and human life

This is the absolute starting point of Buddhism and the teaching of Shakyamuni (the this-world historical Buddha).

This world is characterized by dukkha – suffering and lack of satisfaction. This is not pessimism, it is realism. We can ignore the facts of human existence and that is how most people get by. But the facts do not cease to exist.

Every one of us is subject to sickness, old age and death. Even if we manage to escape any serious form of the first, we will certainly not escape the other two.

And neither will those around us. Whoever is precious to us, whoever we love will be lost to us. Not may, will. Each of us will die and leave our survivors grieving.

So there is no “happy ever after” in this world. There is only “happy for a while”.

When we want something, we are desperate to have it, but when we acquire it, normally it only makes us happy for a short time and then we move on to our next craving.

Permanent satisfaction is impossible in this world because of death, and temporary satisfaction is usually very short-lived.

These are the facts of human existence that began Shakyamuni’s quest to find true happiness for all beings.

This is why our stories must always have villains or conflicts. We are not even entertained by ever-after happiness. Such a story would seem boring to most adults. In other words, on some level we don’t even want ever-after happiness in its this-world form.

Some (especially Western) Buddhists attempt to ignore the very foundations of their faith and remodel Buddhism as a psychological self-help system or a model for reforming this world, or to miscast Buddhist meditation as a “mental technology” for improving our lives in this world.

All of this is a travesty of Shakyamuni’s real teachings, which are not concerned with this world. Shakyamuni specifically instructs us to ignore speculations that have no bearing on lifting ourselves out of the dire predicament in which we find ourselves.

He did this partly because self-power Buddhism (which is the subject of the early Buddhist teachings1) and its onerous disciplines and practices leave no time for such speculations or for addressing this-worldly issues.

Pessimism about our ability to radically change the situation

This question is hardly discernible from the first. If dukkha is the fundamental fact of human life, we are clearly never going to be in a position to change it. Shaka-sama described this world as a burning house from which we must find our escape route.

Western modernists may balk at this fact, dismiss it as pessimism, and try to redefine Buddhism as something entirely different from what it is – a means of making this world and human life better. But in doing so they are merely attaching the name “Buddhism” to a relatively recent Western progressist view of the world that is in fact completely antithetical to real Buddhism.

Pessimism about our ability to save ourselves

The criticism of Jodo Shinshu made by many practitioners of jiriki (self-power) Buddhism is that it belittles the ability of people to attain Enlightenment.

It does so because Jodo Shinshu is directed toward bonbu – ordinary people.2

We are not able to open satori for ourselves. We do not have the fortitude or dedication to undertake the rigorous disciplines of the Buddhist monk.

We are enwrapped in the desires and aversions of this world, only thinking occasionally of higher Truths. We are the akunin or bad person (bad from the Buddhist perspective of total dedication) that Shinran talks of – and a word that he used to characterize himself.

But we are not offended by this characterization. How could we be when our Shinran Shounin applied it to himself? We know that we are bonbu – foolish children playing pointlessly in the world. We know that the only points in our lives that really matter are those when we turn our foolish minds to Amida-sama.

We are small, silly children of the Great Parent who watches over us, fulfilling the Primal Vow to hold us tightly, never to let us go.

We are happy whenever we turn our childlike3 minds fully to the Great Parent – not least because we realize that all the happiness in this world is short-lived.

The descriptions of the Pure Land may seem fantastical and perhaps somewhat alien, but whatever may be our true heart’s desire is present in the Pure Land.

Frithjof Schuon speaks of “the uncreated Bliss that is none other than the positive content of Nirvana”. He also explains on the same pages, that:

if Paradise4 is regarded as an intensification or exaltation of all that is perfect and lovable in this lower world, then the “supreme Extinction” must also be regarded as an intensification or exaltation of what is positive and perfect, not only in the earthly world but in the entire universe.5

Since Shinran equated the Pure Land with Nirvana itself, I think we would not be wrong in suggesting that the term “Pure Land” means nothing other than “the positive content of Nirvana” – which is to say the fulfillment of every possible True Desire.

Some may object – very reasonably – that much desire is impure and tainted. I believe we can go further and say that all earthly desire is impure because it belongs to the manifest world which has impurity woven into the very fabric of its existence.

That is why the Pure Land is “pure” – it is void of everything that is tainted by the perpetual flux of “this world” – which includes the whole of samsara.

Consequently, the desires that are fulfilled in the Pure Land are not our old earthly desires, but the pure Archetypes of those desires purged of every taint of samsaric existence.

Pessimism about our moral character and about the afterlife

While the first criticism of Jodo Shinshu is typically made by practitioners in some other Buddhist schools, this one is more typically posed by non-Buddhists and is to some extent applicable to Buddhism as a whole.

The Buddhist teaching on the afterlife is the doctrine of the cycle of birth and death and the six courses. The six courses inevitably entail terrible fates because if better karma leads us to better lives, inevitably bad karma will eventually plunge us into one of the many hells.

This is the Buddhist view, but what other views of the afterlife are possible? They break down into four types:

The four views of the afterlife

1. The Abrahamic doctrine of Heaven and Hell

2. The Dharmic doctrine of the cycle of rebirth and the inevitability of horrible fates until one is reunited with the One.

This differs somewhat between the four Dharmic religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, but essentially they all teach the stark alternative of reunion with the One or recurring evil existences on the wheel of rebirth.

Shinran Shounin often said that if he was not saved by Amida-sama his only destination was hell. He was right, of course, because unless one is reunited with the One, one must inevitably spend time in at least one of the hells unless one is lucky enough to be born human (or human-like) again for another chance before that happens.

The human-like state is the only one of the six from which one can escape the flux of samsara.

Shinran is giving us a much-needed warning. Hearing Shinran’s words we cannot help but think “If Shinran-sama himself is destined for hell if he is not saved by Amida-sama, what will be my fate?”

Our Shounin must have intended this reaction. In his usual unique way he was finding a way to bring us face to face with our peril.

We are perhaps beginning to see here that the Abrahamic and the Dharmic religions are essentially saying the same thing in their different Spiritual “languages”.

We are faced with two straightforward and stark alternatives: re-uniting with the One or facing horrors on the wheel of samsara.

3. Modern “reincarnationism”

This has its origin – at least as currently developed – in the work of Mme Blavatsky and her circle and is deeply influenced by the Evolutionist explosion taking place at the same time in the West.6

The postulate of this new theory is that we roll relatively comfortably through a long series of lives, “learning” and thereby slowly “evolving”. We cannot be reborn as an insect or animal or anything else (except perhaps some imagined this-worldly “higher life-form”) because we have “evolved” to human status and cannot de-evolve.

All this is pure invention of relatively recent origin. It has no basis in any form of Tradition and obviously no basis in real science either.

4. Death is the end. Our consciousness ends with the cessation of our bodily functions and brain activity.

This is perhaps the most widely-held view in the modern West because it is considered “scientific”.

However, it can have no basis in science because real science restricts itself to measurable and quantifiable this-world data.

There is no data about the afterlife, which cannot be observed and is not part of the material realm studied exclusively by genuine science.

If science steps outside this most basic parameter, it ceases to be science and becomes imagination.

Scientists hold various opinions of the afterlife, but none (either “scientistic” or religious) can be called “science”, only the non-scientific opinions of scientists.

These are the only four widely and seriously held theories of the afterlife.

Of the four I would say that the most optimistic is Jodo Shinshu.

Jodo Shinshu tells us that all we have to do is trust in Amida-sama and the terrible dichotomy at the end of life is solved for us by other-power (tariki). We can be at ease in this world and happy in the next.

So to return to the question of the title: Is Jodo Shinshu pessimistic? No, it is perhaps the most optimistic of all outlooks on the world except for those based on self-deception.

Some people call the “extinctionist” position of no life after death a happy one, but who really wants to be extinguished along with all her loved ones?

Reincarnationism really offers no “happy ever after” unless it is combined with some pseudo-religion or pseudo-“spirituality”, for which there is no Traditional basis since no real Tradition accepts it.

Jodo Shinshu begins by giving us stark teachings on the inevitability of old age, disease and death. We can bury our heads in the sand and pretend this is not true, or just decide not to think about it, but who can deny that this is self-deception?

Our faith teaches us some home truths about our own character and warns us of the perils of the wrong afterlife. All this is necessary.

But looking at all reasonable theories and positions, what is more optimistic than our Jodo Shinshu?

Notes:
1 The first turning of the Dharma Wheel
2 See The “Easy Path”: A Way for “ordinary people”
3 “Intellectuals” and the Great Ones of this world – and indeed any persons not in a state of satori – are childish from the ultimate perspective.
4 Paradise: The Abrahamic term for the Uncreated Bliss, or Nirvana, equivalent to the Indian ananda, of the formula sat chit ananda translated as “being, consciousness, bliss”, which represents the unchanging reality called Brahman.
It is also interesting to note that the concept of “consciousness” (chit) here is closely related to the concept of bodhi – precisely the quality represented by the term Buddhism itself, and meaning the state created by having Awakened.
5 Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, pp. 83-84
6 See Evolution in Western, Vedantic and Buddhist Traditions

Endless Golden Summer: Jodo Shinshu in the Light of the Anime “Air”

Japanese Culture, Reflections on the Faith

Writing about an anime may seem a little surprising to readers of this site, but anime (despite its “lowbrow” image in some quarters) is in fact a powerful and artistic medium that can explore the deepest of human experiences and sentiments.

The anime we are going to consider here is, in my opinion a true work of art. That is merely a personal opinion, of course. Others will form their own opinions.

But whether it is or is not classed as a work of art, it undoubtedly explores the depths of the human psyche and of worldly existence.

The anime series Air is one of the “Holy Trinity” of anime produced by Kyoto Studios, a high-quality anime studio and sometimes light novel publisher.

Kyoto Studios was brought to everyone’s attention in 2019 by a horrific arson incident which killed 36 staff members.

The Air anime series, however, was published long before this in 2006 and was one of the first anime series ever to be released on Blu-Ray.

As the first of the Kyoto Studios “Holy Trinity”, Air explores many of the themes that were explored further in the second two series, Kanon and Clannad.

The “Endless Golden Summer” (my phrase) refers to the hugely sentimental (懐かしい) concept – deeply rooted in modern Japanese culture and sentiment – of a golden summer of infinite promise.

In more mundane terms, it is based on the long summer vacation enjoyed by Japanese schoolchildren during their “uniformed years” from first entering public school at the age of five or six to leaving it for University and/or the world of work.

This later – post public school – stage of life may hold promise and excitement of various kinds, but endless golden magic for only a few.

In purely sound terms the name of the series’ protagonist, Yukito Kunisaki, can be read as “snow-rabbit” + “country’s end” – indicating the onset of winter and the end of the Golden Summer dream.

This refers in practice to the fact that for many fans of the series, their chance at fulfilling the Golden Summer dream is already over for this lifetime.

And on a lighter but still psycho/culturally significant note (particularly inb Japan, where the image of Alice has a huge presence in the mass psyche), her name also refers to the White Rabbit of Alice in Wonderland.

Yukito is at an age where this will be his last, or last-but-one, chance to make the Dream any kind of lived reality this time around.

This sense of the fleeting evanescence of the Perfect Dream fills the series in many different ways.

Yukito is seeking the Lady in the Sky for reasons connected with his this-world past – a story in which he gains from his mother the power to animate dolls and use them as makeshift theatre.

This is how he manages to finance his travels through this fateful attempt at the Golden Summer.

He becomes involved with one of the main female protagonists, a sick and very emotional child who is also seeking the Lady in the Sky.

Many of her characteristics are deeply significant of this psycho/cultural search. For example, she is obsessed with dinosaurs – constantly using the exclamation “Gao!” which she explains as representing a dinosaur’s roar.

When asked why, she explains that it is because they were the Rulers of this World and now are passed away.

This sense of a lost world – not only a present loss, but one stretching back over millennia- indicates that the loss is not merely “accidental” but woven into the very fabric of being.

With our grounding in Traditional philosophy we can step back from this sense of fundamental loss and see how it is a universal phenomenon rooted in the very nature of our human experience.

In the Abrahamic religions this is the loss of Paradise or of the Beatific Vision – unity with the Divine.

In the Dharmic religions this is the illusory loss of our fundamental nature.

In Vedanta Atma (the soul) and Brahman are non-dual. In other words we are not really separate from the Ultimate Reality.

We experience a “hallucination” of separateness but in fact we cannot be separate from the One that we really are.

However, from our present illusory point of view, the One is unknowable. To any definite statement we make about the One, Vedanta replies “Neti, neti” – “not that, not that”.

The One is inconceivable to us in our current state.

Similarly in Mahayana Buddhism, what we truly are is the Buddha Nature. However, the Buddha Nature is not graspable to us in our everyday state of experienced “reality”.

Any statement made about the Buddha Nature is the finger pointing at the moon. It cannot express the moon itself because the One is literally ineffable – inexpressible. Those moments in which some individuals can “see” the Moon of Absolute Reality are called the opening of Satori in Japanese.

In truth, Satori is not a “special” state of mind, but its original and true state. It is simply the state of being awake rather than in the dream of worldly illusion. The term Buddha simply means “awakened” or “aware”, coming from the Proto-Indo-European root *bheudh– “be aware, make aware.”

This word and concept is also etymologically connected to the concept of absolute Wisdom in various European traditions (for example, Woden, the God of Wisdom in the Teutonic Traditions).

Even more remarkable is that, according to René Guénon, this etymology transcends the European locality and has branches in the ancient languages of Central and South America. This would indicate the word’s ultimate derivation from the universal proto-language that underlies all human languages – the pre-Babel language in Abrahamic terminology – that speech that existed in Ages closer to “paradise” – before human language became broken and scattered into different “languages”.

Guénon gives the example of Votan, an ancient name of Quetzal cohuatl, the “bird-serpent,” and the union of these two symbolic animals is also figured by the wings and the serpents of the Caduceus (carried by the Greek Votan, Hermes).**

Guénon comments that “One must indeed be blind not to see, in such facts, a sign of the fundamental unity of all traditional doctrines.”

Focusing back on the two Dharmic Traditions we are considering – Vedanta and Buddhism – all this is important from the point of view of the “Transcendent Unity of Religions”.

Much is made of the “opposite” nature of Vedanta and Buddhism – in Vedanta the Atman (soul) is one with Brahman (the Absolute) while Buddhism preaches no-soul (Anattā) doctrine.

Doesn’t this mean that the two are opposites, absolutely contradicting each other?

Only on a very superficial level.

In the foundational Mahayana Prajñāpāramitā Sutras, Sunya is shown to be ultimately identical with the One.

Despite their “opposite” means of expression (of that which is ultimately inexpressible) they are saying, at the deepest level, the same thing, as Frithjof Schuon has also pointed out in a video interview.

They are also, at the fundamental level of their supra-Traditional roots, saying the same thing as the Abrahamic traditions and of all true Tradition worldwide.

So, returning from the sublime to the local, our anime Air, while clearly not expounding these doctrines, is rooted in the reality that they express.

Our fundamental sense of loss is the deepest thing in us. It is that which calls us back to the One.

In Air, one manifestation of the Lady of the Sky turns out to be one of the more minor characters.

When her real identity (that of a wandering sky-spirit who has attached herself to an earthly “sister”) becomes apparent she has to abandon her physical form and disappear from this world.

Her loss is felt deeply by everyone.

But it is inevitable because the dream of Reality is not the Reality itself.

The drama of love and loss – of deep human relations on every level, whose destruction is always horribly painful but always has to happen – turns out to span a millennium in Japanese history.

All the characters have lived together before hundreds of years ago in ancient Japan and part of the anime explores this period.

In reality, the experience of love, deep connection and deep loss – our root-experience – spans far more than a mere millennium.

Our return to the Endless Golden Summer still awaits us.

But if we are attached to a true Tradition, it does await us.

Some people may be able to reach it through own-power (自力 Jiriki).

Some people reach it through the saving Grace of Jesus or of Sri Krishna.

We shall reach it through the vast and mysterious power of Amida-sama and the Nenbutsu.

The very root of our existence.
_________

* If we take her name as written in Japanese without any sound-play, it would be better translated as Bunny Moonfield

** See Guénon’s article “Hermes” from Studies in Comparative Religion

Originally published in le Voile d’Isis, April 1932. Original version here.