By the Rev. John Paraskevopoulos

The practice of Dharma consists in having kindness, generosity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness and goodness increase among the people.

King Aśoka

In the final part to this series of short essays, we will explore how Shinran’s vision of reality is applicable to us in everyday life and the way in which its teachings can enrich our existence — even when our daily circumstances are fraught and distressing. In doing so, it should become clear as to what Jōdo Shinshū isn’t, as much as what it is, given the plethora of misconceptions that plague it.

It has often been remarked that Shinran’s outlook on the world was quite severe and that he tended to neglect social issues. Indeed, the Pure Land tradition, as a whole, has been accused of not being sufficiently concerned with the problems of this life. This is hardly a fair or accurate criticism but, in any case, Rennyo would retort that we’re nowhere near concerned enough about the more important matter of the next life either.

In the Dhammapada, we are reminded to:

Overcome anger by peacefulness; overcome evil by good. Overcome the mean by generosity; and the person who lies by truth.

Even in our Pure Land scriptures, we find plain wise advice regarding how to treat others:

People of the world, parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and other family members and kinsmen, should respect and love each other, refraining from hatred and envy. They should share things with others, and not be greedy and miserly, always speak friendly words with a pleasing smile, and not hurt each other.

Sutra on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life

Of course, there is nothing remarkable or original about such guidance but this makes it no easier for us to put it into practice! Needless to say, Shinran would concur with those sentiments. However, his solution to the predicament of our human condition was to neither ignore manifestly obvious cases of injustice nor to rush out and hastily ‘change the world’ on a whim. Rather, it was to first transform our own hearts and minds, without which no amount of worldly activism will make any enduring difference. In one of his letters, he states:

Formerly you were drunk with the wine of ignorance and had a liking only for the three poisons of greed, anger and folly but, since you have begun to hear of the Buddha’s Vow, you have awakened from the drunkenness of ignorance, gradually rejected the three poisons and have come to prefer, at all times, the medicine of Amida Buddha.

Notice that Shinran is suggesting that it’s only through a living encounter with the Dharma that we can undergo a shift in our habitual orientation. In other words, we assume a new way of being in the world that is determined by something other than the darkness of our bonno. This requires the intrusion into our hearts of the timeless, which doesn’t have its origin in our thoughts, feelings or ego. Elsewhere, Shinran says:

When people’s trust in the Buddha has grown deep, they … seek to stop doing wrong as their hearts moves them — although earlier they gave thought to such things and committed them as their minds dictated.

That which makes us want to manifest good will and concern towards others is none other than the working of the Primal Vow that seeks the liberation of all beings. This spiritual force is the embodiment of pure unconditional benevolence which is given to us when we entrust to it. We can never create this ourselves as a virtuous achievement for which we then proudly take credit. And how could we do so anyway, if we’re being honest about our limitations? Honen once remarked:

Upon introspection, I realize that I have not observed a single Buddhist precept or succeeded in the practice of meditation … In addition, the mind of the common man is easily distracted, confused, vacillating and unable to concentrate … Without the sword of undefiled wisdom, how will we extricate ourselves from the fetters of karma and harmful passions?

This is our reality as bombu, ordinary people who flounder in the ocean of samsara. How can we possibly expect to ‘reform’ others, whom we may regard as stupid or wicked, when we haven’t got our own house in order, being full of unacknowledged hatred ourselves? In the torrid culture wars that are tearing societies apart at the moment, how many of the self-proclaimed ‘virtuous’ can sincerely claim that they have observed the following injunction in a true spirit of compassion towards those with whom they disagree?

For hate is not conquered by hate; hate is conquered by love. This is the law eternal.

Dhammapada

And let us not forget that compassion doesn’t mean just pity (which is condescending) but the capacity to ‘suffer with’ others in their anguish and adversity. Before doing anything else, we need to take refuge in the unhindered light and life that is Amida, so that we may be given the Buddha-mind necessary to ‘dispel the long night of ignorance’ as Shinran would say. This is shinjin which, according to Wasui Tatsuguchi, is:

The one and only foundation upon which we are enabled to find a purpose greater than our own petty self-interests, a meaning beyond the mere satisfaction of our selfish physiological and psychological drives. It is that which saves us from ego-centrism. It transforms primitive desire into a desire that is universal.

Without wisdom, we are lost and blind. In such a state, we become slaves to disordered desires (bonno) that are severed from what is ‘true and real’. This can only create subjective distortions of reality in which we project our fears in a posture of denial. Such spiritual myopia imposes — often violently — our benighted views onto others; beliefs that are no less toxic than those we deem to be ‘heretical’ or politically incorrect, especially when they’re fuelled by anger and hostility. The Australian Shin poet Harold Stewart (1916—1995) made the following astute observation:

The ultimate aim of Buddhist doctrine and method is to enable us to transcend our humanity, not wallow in it. For sufficient unto our own egotistical self and ignorant of our innate Buddha-nature, we remain trivial and pitiful things … The conscious effort to be good or do good, is foredoomed to failure because, no matter how cleverly disguised by mankind’s talent for personal deception or public hypocrisy, it is really motivated by the vested interests of the self and inadvertently betrays a lack of faith in any power higher than the human.

It is very important to understand this point. A society populated by flawed and confused human beings, who are usually lacking in self-awareness, can never be transformed into a paradise of saints. Stewart goes on to say that:

Buddhism does not share modern Western man’s restless and aggressive attitude of self-assertion, an extroverted optimism scarcely supported by the actual conditions of worldly existence.

This is echoed by Marco Pallis (1895—1989), the Anglo-Greek scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who became drawn to Jōdo Shinshū towards the end of his life:

The pathetic hope, fostered by the mystique of ‘progress’, that by a successive accumulation of human contrivances, samsara itself will somehow be, if not abolished, permanently tilted in a comfortable direction is as incompatible with Buddhist realism as with historical probability.

It is crucial, therefore, that we begin to put first things first. What we need is an objective light to be cast into our hearts so that the stormy clouds of resentment, greed and delusion no longer impede our vision of the bright blue sky of truth. This is not to say that our bonno is eliminated; indeed, it becomes even more vivid because we see our reckless passions for what they really are when exposed to us by Amida’s working.

This realisation needs to be faced unflinchingly, even though it can be a very confronting encounter with our ‘shadow’ self, but it need not be dispiriting or melancholy. Paradoxically, it’s also an occasion of deep joy as we come to appreciate that the awareness that makes us see what we really are as unillumined beings — in all our potential cruelty and malice — is the same awareness that shows that we’re “always grasped, never to be abandoned” despite our wayward and unruly natures.

Rennyo says that this leads to a happiness that makes one ‘dance with joy’; an elation, he tells us, that is more than we can bear because it’s accompanied by a faith that’s indestructible like a diamond (kongōshin), along with the indubitable awakening that one has joined the ranks of those who are truly assured of attaining Nirvana.

Any good that we wish to do in the world will be a natural expression of this mind that is given to us by the Buddha. Our efforts to embody this joy in our relations with others may often fall short of perfection but our motivation will, spontaneously and without calculation (hakarai), be infallibly grounded in a desire to help others in a spirit of good will, kindness and concern. This is what Shōkū (1177—1247), a follower of the Seizan school of Jōdo Shū, meant when he said:

As soon as we realise our weakness in doing good, real goodness is performed.

In the end, we cannot divorce an aspiration for the sacred from our altruistic impulses. They form a bond that is mutually sustaining, which ensures an integrated life of moral well-being and spiritual health. In the words of Myōzen (1167-1242), another follower of Hōnen:

You may not go to great lengths to aid others but, if you truly aspire to part from samsaric existence, there is certain to be appropriate benefit for every other being.

◀ Return to Part Three