O-Higan Blog Round-up

“Since he possesses compassion, a Bodhisattva does not become agitated by samsara nor feels weary of samsara; therefore he does not dwell in nirvana. Again, since he possesses the highest wisdom, he is not bound by the faults of samsara; therefore, he does not dwell in samsara.” - Vasubandhu

I hope all of you had a good Easter holiday. Bad weather and my partner catching a virus made ours a little more subdued than was planned but it was good to get some much needed rest. Whilst watching the snow fall and brewing cups of tea I enjoyed re-reading some of the writings of Dōgen whose inspiration and guidance I have not had the opportunity to re-encounter in some time. More on this at a later date perhaps.

A couple of O-Higan messages on the web caught my attention. Rev. Toshikazu Arai writes about people’s motives for participating in the festival and contrasts the merit-producing aims of other sects with that of Shin. Interestingly he writes:

Our deceased parents, grandparents, and sometimes, sons and daughters are already in the hands of Amida Buddha’s benevolence and are beyond the reach of our limited religious virtues. Actually, a person who is born in the Pure Land is a Bodhisattva with the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha. Such a person does not return to this world of birth-and-death again once he/she is born in the Pure Land.

I suspect the doctrinal position Arai takes above is one that is designed to prevent gratitude towards one’s forebears’ spiritual example sliding into mere ancestor worship. However the third sentence above initially appears problematic in that, whilst granting that those born in the Pure Land are no longer what or who they were as we knew them, he seems to be denying the reality of genso eko. The key however is to be found in another of his older posts where he wrote:

Buddhism talks about the coexistence of all times. Amida Buddha established the Primal Vow innumerable kalpas ago, but that Primal Vow is reaching us NOW. That means that every one that has contributed to the transmission of the teaching of the Primal Vow is with me NOW. When I say the nembutsu, Namu Amida Butsu, I am with Amida, Sakyamuni Buddha, Shan-tao, Honen and Shinran among others. The history of the Dharma is always synchronic. Actually all kinds of history is synchronic when the person who studies it realizes that he is participating in the history. I am participating in the history of the Primal Vow.”
(See also The Living Breath of History)

Elsewhere Alan Kita of Gardena Buddhist Church in California reports on Rev. Nakano’s talk Why We Do Not Celebrate Easter explaining the different symbolism behind the festivals of O-Higan and Easter, and The Level 8 Buddhist also blogged a bit of background to O-Higan.

Namuamidabutsu

 

On the death of loved ones

This morning a relation of my partner died, only a few days after her 100th birthday. In the past month quite a number of the elder followers of Shogyoji temple died too. At the age that I am now reaching, an older generation are coming to the end of their ties to this world. Dying is therefore somewhat on my mind today.

When I was at the temple in Japan for Hoonko a member of the Sangha had recently died and I went to his house to pay my respects at the family Buddha shrine. The two priests I was with led a short service and a poem sent by an English friend of the deceased was read out. The atmosphere was extraordinary. There was a sense of great peace, naturalness and acceptance, and also a powerful sense of the continuing relationship between the deceased, ‘SK’-sama, and all his Dharma friends. At the time I assumed that this demonstrated some difference between Japanese and British funeral customs, but I have since learnt otherwise. For the majority of Japanese death and dying is an area of life just as traumatic, upsetting and vexed as for people of our culture. The naturalness and sense of peace I witnessed was entirely the consequence of the faith of those around me. As a Dharma friend at our temple in the UK later told me, for people of the nembutsu dying itself is nothing special, just another part of life.

Another interesting thing happened in relation to this point. Whilst I was at the house of the follower who had died, SK-sama, his daughter-in-law told me that her son reported seeing a stream of origin-less white smoke flow into the Buddha-shrine. She asked him if he had been asleep or day-dreaming at the time and he said no. What was more interesting to me though was that was all that was said on the matter. No one claimed it as highly significant event, nor denied it on the other hand.

Although I wrote above that dying isn’t anything special, there is another sense in which it is supremely important. For the time of physical death marks the stage at which, according to Jodo Shin, the person of shinjin (who has lived in the stage of non-retrogression) is born in the Pure Land and, shedding their last karmic bonds, enters nirvana. Historically in the broader Pure Land tradition therefore many people who didn’t understand how to receive the peaceful, settled mind (anjin) in this life tended to worry a lot about the nature of the moment of death. One of the ways this anxiety manifested was in people looking for some kind of miracle or omen to indicate that a person had been successfully born in the Pure Land. For instance purple clouds or smoke were said to appear at the time of death. Master Shinran however always rejected the need to look for anything special at the time of death, saying:

The idea of Amida’s coming at the moment of death is for those who seek to gain birth in the Pure Land by doing various practices, for they are practicers of self-power. The moment of death is of central concern to such people, for they have not yet attained true shinjin. We may also speak of Amida’s coming at the moment of death in the case of those who, though they have committed the ten transgressions and the five grave offenses throughout their lives, encounter a teacher in the hour of death and are led at the very end to utter the nembutsu. The practicer of true shinjin, however, abides in the stage of the truly settled, for he or she has already been grasped, never to be abandoned. There is no need to wait in anticipation for the moment of death, no need to rely on Amida’s coming. At the time shinjin becomes settled, birth too becomes settled; there is no need for the deathbed rites that prepare one for Amida’s coming (Mattosho, 1).

Despite this when Master Shinran died his daughter Kakushinni wondered about the absence of any miraculous signs and wrote to her mother about it. Eshinni-sama replied, “”I received your letter, dated the 1st day of the twelfth month of last year, shortly after the 20th of the same month. There is no doubt that your father was born in the Pure Land, and there is no need for me to repeat this.” She then went on to tell of a dream she once had in which she saw her husband and Honen Shonin as Bodhisattvas, saying finally, “regardless of how he died, I firmly believe that there is no doubt about his birth in the Pure Land … I understand also that Masukata was at the bedside of father’s death - even though they are bound karmically as father and son, this is an especially significant karmic happening, and when I think of this, I am very pleased and happy.”

Just as with my impression of the sangha’s reaction to SK-sama’s death, it was not the time of death or subsequent events that was considered important by Eshinni-sama but rather Shinran’s life of faith. Regarding this I would like to end this post with two important quotations for personal reflection:

“At a memorial service the Head Priest declared one day, “We usually say that the deceased has gone back to the Pure Land. What is important, however, is that his passing makes us aware of being given the time and space in which to be awakened to ourselves.” - from Fragrant Light, sayings of the followers of Shogyoji Temple

“With the pledges of friendship in this life - brief as a dream - to guide us, we tie the bonds for meeting before enlightenment in the coming life. If I am behind, I will be guided by others; If I go first, I will guide others. Becoming true friends through many lives, we bring each other to the practice of the Buddha-way, and as true teachers in each life, we will together sunder all delusion and attachment.” - from Seikaku-sama’s Essentials of Faith Alone

(The picture at top is of the pagoda at Shogyoji where various relics are stored)

Namuamidabutsu.

 

Reflections on Pure Land birth arising from reading Bodhisattva T’an-Luan’s ‘Ojoronchu’

Sometimes it is possible to hear people agonising or arguing over whether the Pure Land is an ‘actual place’, whatever that means, or some kind of symbol or metaphor. In the Jodo Shin tradition it is generally accepted that the Pure Land is synonymous with nirvana [1], and therefore to perceive the Pure Land according to the artificial, samsaric dichotomy of ‘real or not real’ is a mistake.

Whereas all other phenomena are dependent for their material existence on various conditions, and for their appearances on mental discrimination; nirvana - which is the cessation of the process of co-dependent origination - cannot strictly be said to be either ‘created’ or ‘uncreated’, ‘existent’ or ‘non-existent’, nor can beings said to be ‘born there’ except in the sense of provisional language. Indeed nirvana is ultimately beyond discrimination and is therefore inconceivable by mental calculation [2]:

Even though the size of Buddha in the Pure Land is described in the sutra, it is the manifestation of dharmakaya-as- compassion, appearing for the sake of beings. When one attains supreme enlightenment and realizes dharmakaya-as-it-is, how can size be discussed, since such shapes as long or short, square or round, do not exist; and color is also transcended, whether it be blue, yellow, red, white, or black?” (Tannisho XVIII)

Whilst this seems rather perplexing, however, there are two great things about the Pure Land …

Shinran tells us that we can become assured of the reality of the Pure Land in this very life, and secondly, when we entrust ourselves to Amida - being given shinjin (lit. ‘true mind’, but also known as ‘true faith’) - the condition for our birth there is settled regardless of our own misconceptions about the Pure Land :

(1) On the Assurance of Birth

“The idea of Amida’s coming at the moment of death is for those who seek to gain birth in the Pure Land by doing various practices, for they are practicers of self-power. The moment of death is of central concern to such people, for they have not yet attained true shinjin … The practicer of true shinjin, however, abides in the stage of the truly settled, for he or she has already been grasped, never to be abandoned. There is no need to wait in anticipation for the moment of death, no need to rely on Amida’s coming. At the time shinjin becomes settled, birth too becomes settled; there is no need for the deathbed rites that prepare one for Amida’s coming.”
- Shinran’s letters, Mattosho 1

(2) On Mistaken Views of the Pure Land [3]

“Even though aspirants [of the lowest level] of the lowest grade are ignorant of the principle that the intrinsic nature of existence is non-birth, if they repeat the Buddha’s Name and aspire to be born in his Land while holding the view of actual birth there, the fire of the view of actual birth is spontaneously extinguished, because the land is the realm of non-birth.” - from Ojoronchu by T’an-Luan (Inagaki, p.244)

For the sincere person who takes refuge in Amida - being thus gifted shinjin and saying the nembutsu in gratitude - the Pure Land ‘birth’, also known as the attainment of nirvana, at the time of death is totally beyond the individual’s power or discrimination [4]. As Shinran puts it to one of his closest friends, “though we feel reluctant to part from this world, at the moment our karmic bonds to this saha world run out and helplessly we die, we shall go to that land. “

Taking all these points into consideration, argumentation over the nature of the Pure Land is pointless as it cannot in anyway contribute to birth there, nor to the settlement of the true mind of other-power [faith] (tariki no shinjin) which is its prerequisite.

As such rather than engaging in disputes, or spending my time trying to correct other people’s views through my own intellectual arguments, all that is necessary is to sincerely entrust oneself to Amida Buddha and say the nembutsu, everything else is the working of Other-power. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn but it is certainly true.

Notes:

[1] For example Shinran cites the Nirvana Sutra to that effect in his Kyogyoshinsho, and in his Notes on the ‘Essentials of Faith Alone’ he states: “The land of bliss is the realm of nirvana, the uncreated“.
[2] See also Shinran’s Kyogyoshinsho; KGSS II: 19 (passages from T’an-Luan’s work)
[3] The authority of this quote is very great when one considers that Shinran Shonin viewed Master T’an-Luan (Donran) as a Bodhisattva and took part of his name (’ran’) as his own.
[4] Shinran’s Hymns on Master T’an-Luan, # 46

Namuamidabutsu.