I’m a person who instinctively likes self-imposed routines and rules (or vows if you prefer). They seem to make life simple and sometimes in my life I’ve found a lot of peace in my life through routines and vows.
There are real dangers in this way of living though. Firstly I can tend to become kind of robotic, the rule running the person, and then when the fact of impermanence disrupts my routine I’m thrown into a panic and get very crabby and sometimes depressed.
Secondly when living in such a way I often lose sight of and fail to attend to the gifts of change. This particularly manifests in a bifurcation between ‘things that need doing’ and ‘things I want to do’. ‘Things I want to do’ start out as pure intentions that aim at vivid life, but they then become abstracted and fixed and cause me to resent the real ‘things that need doing’ that subsequently appear … vivid life itself.
I think that this is the inner substance of what Rennyo Shonin is talking about when he speaks about rejecting ‘zogyo zasshu’ (auxilliary-mixed practice). True simplicity and peace of mind are contained within the Original Vow of Amida whose practice we receive when we simply face and heed the Buddha-dharma with the mind that is single.
There are many people who talk as if they live for the sake of eating brown rice because they have heard that brown rice is good for health. Or someone may say that he will live by eating only vegetables, like a silkworm, because vegetarianism is good for health. For the same reason, people burn incense in front of a buddha statue, bow, chant nembutsu, repent and recite sutras. When we do these things we become calm, and some people say that it is better to practice things like these. But this way of practice clouds the pure value system. When we are involved in those things, we are apt to take them as the purpose of practice, and we should not practice in that way. From the outset we should not engage in such extra activities, because purifying our system of value is important.
Shinran threw away everything except the nembutsu. In the Jodo Shin School, nembutsu is supreme beyond comparison, so they practice only nembutsu. The important matter is to make our system of value pure.
“Simply” means single-mindedly. Practice zazen single-mindedly and drop off body and mind …” (Kosho Uchiyama)
One may seek in every one of the ten directions but will find no mode (hōben) other than the Buddha’s” (from The Lotus Sūtra )
Reading Taigen Dan Leighton’s Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra (Oxford University Press, USA 2007) I came across the following interesting passage (p.28):
[William] LaFleur’s analysis of … discourse in the Lotus Sūtra focuses on its radical nondualism and its embodiment of skillful means. This standpoint of nondualism represents interpretations of the Lotus Sūtra developed in Tiantai and in Japanese Buddhism … From such a nondualistic viewpoint LaFleur suggests translating hōben as “modes” rather than the more common translations of skillful or expedient means [the latter of which both imply] a dualistic and even manipulative aspect of the teaching … [and] a hierarchy of teachings …
