“To give an example of the Shin type of Buddhists … let me quote one or two incidents in the life of Shomatsu, popularly known as Shoma, 1799-1871. He was one of great Shin devotees of the modern age,even within our memory. He was resident in Sanuki, poor laborer working for others. His anecdotes are recorded in a little book, Shoma as He Was and the following are taken from it.
He once visited a Buddhist temple in the countryside, and, as soon as he entered the main hall where Amida was enshrined, proceeded to stretch himself out before the shrine and make himself comfortable. Asked by an astonished friend why he was so lacking in respect for Amida,he said “I am back in my parent’s home, and you who make this kind of remark must be only a stepchild”. This is an attitude of mind which remind me of a child asleep in its mother’s breast. He seemed so happy in the embrace of the Great Compassionate One that a world of physical and social formalities vanished altogether out of him mind
Again,when the same Shin devotee was returning home to Shikoku from Kyoto,he had to cross an arm of the sea. While in the sailing boat with his companions a storm arose, and so fierce was the sea that it seemed the boat would sink. The others lost their all important faith in the Nembutsu and invoked the aid of Kompira, the god of the sea. But Sho- matsu slept on until his friends waked him and asked how he could sleep so soundly in the face of such calamity. “Are we still in the SHABA world?” Shoma queried back rubbing his eyes.
On another occasion, when he had been working in the rice field and was tired, he came home to rest. When he felt a cool refreshing breeze he thought of his Amida-san in the shrine. Thereupon, he took it out and set beside him,saying “You too will enjoy the breeze”. This may seem an extraord-inary act,but in terms of our feeling everything that needs one’s care has life, just as a child makes a living being out of a doll. In the same way, we read in a Chinese story of a son who on a stormy night lay on his father’s tomb covering it from the rain with his own body. In this world of pure feeling there is no consciousness of a process of personification. It is only the intellect which makes the distinction between animate and inanimate,sentient and non-sentient. From the spiritual point of view,all is alive and the object of affectionate regard. Nor is this a case of symbolism, but a taking of actualities as actualities-this is the life of JIJIMUGE and Buddhist experience.
Incidents like this-Shoma’s sound sleeping in a boat about to be capsized-are often records of deeply religious-minded people such as Madame Guyon, or Hakuin, a great Japanese Zen master,1685-1768. What impresses us most in Shoma’s case is his remark, “Are we still on earth?” We can say that he was not aware of his being in which world, this world of suffering, or that world of perfect bliss-the Pure Land. He was in all probability living in his own world of ideas, not intellectual but spiritual. Life and death were like float-ing clouds in the sky,they were not at all a matter of much concern for him.
When Shoma was ill while travelling, his friends carried him home in a palanquin and told him, “Now that you are back in your own home, be at ease and grateful for Amida’s mercy”. Shoma said, “Thank you, but where I may be lying sick, the Pure Land is always just next to my room”.
A visitor called and seeing him very ill, the caller said, ‘If you die,we will see to it that you have a fine tombstone over your grave”. Shoma promptly retorted, “I shall never be under the stone”.
From these we can say that Shoma’s wold did not necessarily coincide with ours, he did not see things around him in the same light as we did, his eyes were fixed on world beyond ours,though not in the sense of a searate world.
This attitude on the art of Shoma may be explained in terms of Zen, which declares Tao, the Way, to be our every-day thought. “Everyday thought” here means to be on the plane of sprit,not isolated from the physical-intellectual one.
To the mind of Shoma,the Pure Land was not somewhere beyond this world, but here. His life in this world was life in the Pure Land,where the sea is always calm and boats are steady. In the midst of turmoil,therefore, he had no cause to be afraid of anything. When he was sleepy he slept; when he wanted to sit up,he sat up, when the boat was tossed up and down,he too was tossed up and down; for he identified him- self with the turmoil, and accepted whatever came as though unconcerned with consequences. Even in the rising waves he felt the loving arms of the Great Compassionate One, and he slept in the boat even as he laid himself down before the image of Amida in the country temple. This consciousness of the loving arms of Amida meant that his “everyday thought” in the Kegon world of perfect interfusion was never disturbed by outward circumstances.
The following two more sayings of Shoma’s will illustrate where his world was. When Shoma heard somebody complaining about Christian missionaries’ activities, he said, “Nothing could be better than a common man becoming a Buddha.” When asked as to how one could be assured of one’s life after death he said, “Leave that to Amida, it is not business f ours”.
(Salvaged, with apologies and thanks, from the defunct White Path Temple page, through the ‘Wayback Machine‘)
Kyōshin
Jishin
