Hell (1)

The subject of hell and its roots in universal human experiences of suffering has long occupied a central position in Jodo Shinshu doctrine but hasn’t received too much attention in the West. I discovered an article in a back issue of the Eastern Buddhist(Vol. X No. 1 May 1977) by Iwamoto Yasunami entitled ‘The Salvation of the Unsaveable’ that looks at the subject through the words of Shinran and the sutras accounts of Devadatta and Ajarasatru. An incident from the story of Devadatta is I think worth repeating which I would like to reflect very briefly on.

Having tried to kill the Buddha through scratching the surface of his skin with poison soaked fingernails, Devadatta is engulfed with fire that is said to have issued from his own evil karma. His cousin Ananda tries to save him by urging him to take refuge in the Buddha. Devadatta tries but it is too late and he plunges into the deepest level of hell to undergo incessant suffering for an entire kalpa.

 Taking pity on Devadatta, the Buddha dispatches Maudgalyayana down to hell to bearing a message to him. Arriving there Maudgalyayana calls out ‘Come Devadatta’ Whereupon out of the extemities of the deepest, darkest hell realm, thousands of Devadattas appear to answer the summons.

Yasunami points out here that Devadatta is shown in this incident to represent ‘the ultimate image of our own evil karma’. Devadatta is no longer a person from the past who committed various evil deeds which lead to his downfall but a figure who embodies the darkest side of mankind’s collective karma. Devadatta’s descent is simultaneously our own fall  in our very lives into the darkest recesses of the state of suffering we call ‘hell’.

The message that Buddha wished to deliver to Devadatta was that after one kalpa of suffering he would attain Buddhahood.  Having heard this news Devadatta spontaneously brought forth the mind of deep joy and profound happiness. He then declared that he could easily endure the whole of his time in the hell of incessant suffering knowing that his salvation was assured.

It can be said that at this moment Devadatta was born into the Pure Land.

 

Falling and Arising

For various reasons I ended last week carrying around a lot of anger and frustration, and feeling quite unhappy. I think that, as I have been engaged in a lot of Dharma study and discussion recently, I fell into yearning for a pure space to step into where I could construct some kind of illusory theoretical foundation for myself to wield as a talisman against life’s dukhka. Consequently I was going around getting riled up by people who impinged on that fragile, mentally-constructed mandala.

As it was, on Saturday morning, I stepped out of my house to go to the shops and promptly slipped on some black ice; falling flat on my back and wrenching my knee. Picking myself up off the road the thought, “Who are you going to blame for this?” popped into my head. Immediately it was like a bubble bursting. In the end the actions of all the people that annoyed me in the week had been just as impersonal as the patch of ice and just as outside of my control.

I was interested recently to read in Dzongar Jamyang Khyentse’s What makes you not a Buddhist that:

[In everyday language] Tibetans use the words rangwang and shenwang to represent “happiness” and “unhappiness” … rang means “self” and wang means “power”, “rights,” or entitlement,” while shen means “other”. (p.52)

Of course the Buddha taught us that everything changes and thus happiness of this kind is not only fleeting but turns to suffering. The Stoics solution to this problem was to try and see some kind of Providence in Other-power / shenwang and thus experience it, if not happily, at least with equanimity. There are various merits and problems inherent in such an approach but I think the main flaw from a Dharmic point of view is that it is too objective and eschatological. Substituting an objective belief in self-power for one in other-power is just switching from egotism to fatalism.

In Buddhism the corollary to all compounded things are impermanent is that all compounded things have no inherent existence. In other words entrusting or faith in Buddhism is to enter into a dynamic, liberating relationship in which self and other continuously illuminate one anothers’ contingent natures. Further more the fact that this takes place in real time, rather than an abstract or eschatological conception of time, means that it works against the encrustation and petrification of thought and feeling - and gives us faith in the Other that is beyond self and other; Nirvana.

Nature is what will destroy us, but nature is also what allows us the possibility of waking up. We have Buddha-nature and Mara-nature, at any moment we have the capacity to open up or close down. It’s the same with this world in which we’re embedded; it’s both good and bad, it’s not reducible to either good or bad. The habit of making the split, cutting off from nature, is part of our suffering.’
- Stephen Batchelor (Dharmalife, Issue 25)

To practice by pushing ahead, meeting the numberless experiences as a self and witnessing them thus, is delusion. When the vast expanse of experiences move forward and practice and realize the self, this is Awakening.
- Dogen Zenji (Genjokoan)

Grey clouds flow towards the horizon, running before a cold wind that rattles the branches of the pollarded trees like skeletal fingers. A new week approaches, and already, constantly, a new self, new other … new being-time.

 

Tannisho 16: The arising of karma

“… when we think good thoughts, we think we are good; and when we think evil thoughts, we think we are evil, not realizing fully that it is not these thoughts but the inconceivable power of the Vow that makes our salvation possible” (Tannisho 8).

Sometimes everything in life seems to be flowing along nicely, and you feel in control, and then suddenly you are blindsided by some random blossoming of nasty conditioning and cause-and-effect. It happened to me just the other day when, very uncharacteristically and out of the blue, I got in a huge argument with someone. In hindsight, once the fight had blown over, it was possible to see some of the misunderstandings and miscommunications that brought it about. However hindsight tempts us to assume that we can avoid such situations in the future. I wouldn’t like to say that this is never true, as certainly we can learn from our experiences. In the end though we can never fully anticipate what will come our way. As such whatever our efforts towards self-improvement, harmony and so forth - we are never immune to the unpredictability of the co-dependently arising world.

This was driven home to me all the more on this occasion as, during the very fight itself that I was involved in, I heard that the decades long marriage of some people I know is breaking up. Such news, recieved in a moment of totally unexpected interpersonal strife, very much made me feel a kind of shadow over the future and an awareness that the dearly held anticipations of the future held in my heart are far from in my own power. At the same time though such feelings, which once would have scared me, were almost immediately followed by a flood of peace throughout my being as the utter finitude of my foresight and moral power was dissolved in the oceanic awareness of Otherness.

At that time, I recalled the words of the Tannisho, chapter 16, which by chance or synchronicity - who knows - I had read during my daily devotions (gongyo) only that morning:

On the assertion that whenever practicers of shinjin happen to become angry, or commit some misdeed, or dispute with fellow practicers, they must without fail go through a change of heart. This appears to reflect an attitude of seeking to attain birth by desisting from evil and performing good. For the person of wholehearted single practice of the nembutsu, change of heart occurs only once. People who have in ordinary life been ignorant of the true essence of the Primal Vow, which is Other Power, come to realize, through receiving Amida’s wisdom, that they cannot attain birth with the thoughts and feelings they have harbored up to then, so they abandon their former heart and mind and entrust themselves to the Primal Vow. This is what is meant by “change of heart.”

Suppose that attainment of birth were possible only by going through changes of heart day and night with every incident that occurred. In that case- human life being such that it is ends even before breath exhaled can be drawn in again- if we were to die without going through a change of heart and without abiding in a state of gentleness and forbearance, would not Amida’s Vow that grasps and never abandons us be rendered meaningless? Some claim with their lips that they entrust themselves to the power of the Vow and yet harbor in their hearts the thought that, even the though the Vow to save the evil is said to be beyond conceptual understanding, after all it saves the good person in particular; thus, doubting the power of the Vow, they lack the mind of entrusting themselves to Other Power, and are destined for birth in the borderland. How lamentable this is! If shinjin has become settled, birth will be brought about by Amida’s design, so there must be no calculating on our part. Even when we are evil, if we revere the power of the Vow all the more deeply, gentleheartedness and forbearance will surely arise in us through its spontaneous working (jinen). With everything we do, as far as birth is concerned, we should constantly and fervently call to mind Amida’s immense benevolence without any thought of being wise. Then the nembutsu will indeed emerge; this is jinen. Our not calculating is called jinen. It is itself Other Power.

It seems, however, that there are people who knowingly declare that jinen has a different meaning. This is deplorable.

—————————————————————————

* As is traditional in (Japanese) Jodo Shin daily services I usually read out a letter from Rennyo’s Ofumi each day. However from time to time I also include other texts in the rotation of readings; such as Yuien’s Tannisho, and Shinran’s Mattosho.

Namuamidabutsu.