On Doctrine and Experience

Once you deepen your acquaintance with Shinbuddhism, you cannot fail to be surprised to learn that this deceivingly simple from of the Buddha-Dharma actually is grounded on an elaborate doctrine, the milestones of which are summed up in the Anjin Rondai, the Topics of Faith, of the Nishi Hongwanji. This may seem especially strange for people who have come to know Shinbuddhism through popular introductions, which inevitably have the flaws of their merits. A very common reaction, which I once witnessed in a discussion forum, is to relegate the classics, i.e. the works and utterances of Shinran Sonin and Rennyo Shonin, to the study of historians, and to insist on the value of so-called "personal experience" instead.

However, due to the widespread individualism and subjectivism, such a "personal experience" amounts mostly to a mere stirring of moral sentimentalism, and is part and parcel of exactly those things a follower of the Middle Way has to let go, namely passion (i.e. sympathy or antipathy) and opinion (i.e. error). In Shinbuddhism, this letting-go is the abandonment of hakarai, of ego-centered calculation, that is brought about entirely by the Other Power of Amida's Saving Vow. The absence of calculation on behalf of the person of Shinjin, the cause of which is the Ocean of Amida's Merits embodied in Namo-Amida-Butsu, is the Shinbuddhist approach to the Heart of the Buddha's Realisation, namely that everything is devoid of anything personal, i.e. the Realisation of Suchness.

Now, if passion, including the clinging to personal happiness, is to be foregone, so is also opinion. The "intellectual" pendant of moral sentimentalism is positivist rationalism, of which secular humanism and religious fanaticism are the two inseparable facets. So a preoccupation with doctrine may ultimately lead to the error of dogmatic literalism or doctrinaire self-righteousness which also is a form of hakarai. This error can be avoided if Shinbuddhist doctrine is understood in terms of a spiritual therapy, the steps of which have to be followed until reconvalescence is ensured. It is a means -- a necessary means, perhaps, but only a means to the Ultimate End of Realisation, the Seed of which is Amida's Trust.

Doctrine, then, is a ladder which can be discarded once it has been scaled, to use Wittgenstein's simile. This may appear utterly scandalous to someone who is obsessed by the "pristine Buddha Dharma". However, it has to be clearly understood that until Realisation has been achieved, i.e. until Enlightenment becomes actual, the ladder of doctrine is still required. And according to Pure Land Buddhism, Enlightenment takes place only at the point of dissolution of this last nama-rupa, and the consequent Birth into the Land of Bliss.

There certainly is an Experience that is essential to Shinjin, but there is nothing personal to it, though it can be called Personal with a capital "P", namely the Buddha's Realisation as it is distilled into the

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU

On His Birthday

Today I've turned 44. My real Birthday is only too soon to come, though my heart has been born in the Pure Land ever since I have been grasped by Amida's Vow.

In gratitude I recite

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU

On Having No Head, Shinshu Fashion

To illustrate how much doctrinal leeway there seems to be in Jodo Shinshu, and to dispel any impression that the author of this blog is a narrow-minded fundamentalist, allow me to formulate an approach to Shinjin that is inspired by Douglas Harding's Headless Way.

Harding who passed away a few years ago is best known for his book "On Having No Head", which provides a seemingly rather idiosyncratic but actually highly effective account of non-duality. Basically, Harding's method of provoking a non-dual in-sight is quite simply to attend to the vacuity that is right above your shoulders at the centre of the so-called "first-person" perspective. This perspective should indeed be called "no-person" perspective because it obviously has no centre, or preferably, its Centre is an Absence of Self, or No-Self.

Right above your shoulders, if correctly attended to, is both an unsullied and serene Void, Nirvana, and the Samsara of conditioned phenomena, including cogitations, emotions, willings and bodily sensations. Void and Samsara are non-distinct, inseparable like Background and Foreground.

The Void is not (in) the mind, but rather the other way round: the nama-rupa is a flux of dharmas unfolding in the Void. Enlightenment belongs to nobody. It is not the self lifting itself by its own bootstraps, it is the self vanishing like mist on a mirror. To be more precise: the flux of dharmas still unfolds, but the ghost or the spectre of a "head" disappears, at the very least for an instant.

The Void is boundless, clear and blissful; it is Amida, Infinite Light, and the Pure Land. So Amida and the Pure land are "right here", but they are not in the mind, as pointed out earlier on.

The Vow is the potential of the Void to become apparent by making the ego transparent or translucent and finally vanish, every karmic momentum having been exhausted.

The Call is the ephemeral apparition of the Void which brings the ego-mechanism momentarily to a halt. It is the realization of the power of the Vow.

True entrusting is the self-effacing confidence that responds to the Call and is expressed by the Recitation of the Name which is thus also the working of the Vow Power.

The spectre of a "head", the ego, is still there, but has been driven out of the Centre it has usurpated and that belongs to the Buddha alone. Left to its own devices at the periphery, and its engine broken, the ego will trundle on in virtue of the remaining karmic momentum or tanha until its final disaggregation.

Carefully re-read and understood, the account above is perfectly orthodox, though it is clearly reminiscent of Suzuki's view expressed in his "Buddha of Infinite Light". Indeed, neither does it affirm the error of "the Pure Land in the Mind" nor that of "Becoming a Buddha in this Life". But does this assay not contradict the story told in the Larger Sutra ? Well, why shouldn't this story be both an allegory of a non-dual experience and a description of a transcendental, but nonetheless relative reality that is a real analogy of the absolute truth which consists in the very same non-dual experience ?

Why, indeed, should Amida and Sukhavati not be both "right here" and "over there", or better: neither "right here" nor "over there" according to absolute truth, a truth which is not grasped by anybody, but which nevertheless manifests itself in

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU

On Concessions to Modern Mentality

A commonplace complaint about the contemporary world is that is secular and materialist. Like all clichés this affirmation cannot even claim to be a half-truth, especially if we disregard the exception of Western Europe. Nonetheless it is true that many if not most Westerners who come to Buddhism are anti-religious or at least have a strong resentment aginst their religious upbringing, which is usually Christian in the case of Europeans and Northern Americans. This fact constitutes a considerable challenge to the transmission of a genuinely religious tradition such as Shin Buddhism, which is quite explicitly devotional. It is a particularly grave problem for Jodo Shinshu since many of its clergy and clerics are influenced by Liberal Theology, which would be unthinkable in Tibetan Buddhism which seems to resist such deviations much better due to its stronger reliance on religious or doctrinal authority.

The perfusion of Shin Buddhism by theological approaches that are quite alien to Buddhism has become so overwhelming that it is difficult to find English presentations of Jodo Shinshu that are not affected to some degree by a tendency to reduce religion in general and (Shin) Buddhism in particular to a set of guidelines for the fulfillment of this-worldly existence. Often not even the slightest attempt is made to outline and explain the basic tenets of Mahayana Buddhism and how Jodo Shinshu is firmly rooted in it, and if elements of traditional Buddhist doctrine are mentioned, they are interpreted as metaphors for the unwholesomeness of our present existence and its healing.

This take goes down well with the general public, as is evidenced for example by the popularity of the writings of Rev. Unno, which certainly have their literary merits, but have to be complemented by the more traditional writings of Rev. Inagaki and Rev. Kobai that provide rigorous assays of Jodo Shinshu doctrine. Rev. Unno has a great skill to pick up his readers where they are with every-day examples of human suffering and its transcendence. However, one gets the impression that Rev. Unno makes undue concessions to a certain modern mentality that is resilient to anything that is other-worldly or transcendent by implying that the account of Dharmakara's career and enlightenment is a metaphor for our own transformation in our present existence.

Now, intellectual honesty and fairness demands that one concedes that religion is also about healing the fractures of this-worldly human existence. Indeed, the first step in the Buddhist path is to realise the inevitability and generality of human (and non-human) suffering. Furthermore, Mahayana Buddhism has an intrinsic aversion against literalism and does use metaphors to represent spiritual realities. For instance, the embellishments of the Pure Land in the Smaller Sukhavati Vyuha Sutra (Amida Kyo) are meant to represent the qualities of the Perfectly Enlightened Mind. Finally, and most importantly, a basic tenet of Madhyamika is the non-distinctness of Nirvana and Samsara, of the World of Enlightenment and the World of Birth-and-Death, according to the viewpoint of Ultimate Truth, which however is the viewpoint of a Perfectly Enlightened Being, not that of a bombu or ordinary unenlightened person. The realisation of the non-distinctness of Nirvana and Samsara is not only the content of Prajna as Perfect Wisdom, but is also the lever of Perfect Compassion since it enables a Buddha to come to the rescue of the suffering beings on This Shore while firmly standing on the Other Shore.

All this being granted, nevertheless one has to insist that Jodo Shinshu adopts the viewpoint of the ordinary unenlightened person for which the Buddha is on the Other Shore while she is on This Shore. Only in this perspective does the doctrine of Other Power Faith make sense, i.e. salvation by transfer of Amida's Merits through the channel opened by the coincidence of the Buddha's saving intention and the bombu's intention to be saved solely in virtue of the Merits of the Buddha, the latter being a reflection or echo of the former. In the light of this fact two caveats have to be made with respect to revisionary accounts of Jodo Shinshu doctrine.

Certainly a person of Shinjin is transformed by being grasped by the Light of Amida's Wisdom and Compassion. Indeed, the Buddha's Light operates a con-version in the bombu's heart that consists in turning away from self-centredness to Buddha-centredness, which is the Jodo Shinshu way of Anatta. The con-version of Other Power Faith constitutes the potentiality of Buddhahood, but it does not yet amount to Perfect Enlightenment which comprises Perfect Wisdom as the realisation of Suchness and Perfect Compassion as the realisation of the Means of Universal Salvation. It does not yet constitute the Going into Nirvana and the Returning into Samsara. Assimilating the transcendent state of Buddhahood to the other-centred and all-accepting attitude of the myokonin can only give rise to a cruel deception, since we remain unenlightened beings ridden with passions, hatreds and delusions in spite of being grasped by Amida's Vow and we have to live out our karma until our final demise. It is important to be aware of this, since this "simul justus et peccator", this being both a Buddha-to-be and a karmically shackled being is the liberating message of Jodo Shinshu: you simply do not need to be a Buddha or even specially holy in this life and your passions and delusions do not count against your ultimately realising Buddhahood in the Pure Land.

The second caveat with respect to modernist teachings is that you cannot consider the account of Dharmakara's bodhisattva career as being wholly mythical, since otherwise you are sawing the branch on which you are sitting. Jodo Shinshu as a school of Mahayana Buddhism is rooted in the doctrine of Karma, of Cause-and-Effect. Salvation by Faith is not a miracle of Pure Grace, but involves the strictly orthodox Transfer of Merits. The bombu's ultimate enlightenement is the consequence of her karma being drowned in the Unfathomable Sea of Amida's Merits, which are the karmic result of His kalpa-long Practice as Dharmakara. This does not mean that we have to imagine Dharmakara walking with creatures of the Precambrium. Indeed, conventional Mahayana wisdom is that this world of Saha is not the only universe in the present, past, or future, which leaves enough time and space for Dharmakara's career having taken place many kalpas ago, or many Big Crunches and Big Bangs ago in the terminology of modern cosmology.

But aside from these rarified considerations, the simple fact remains that for a person of Shinjin, Amida/Dharmakara is a Thou to which she turns to in devotion and gratitude, which are due to a Real Person and not to a mere fiction. So the simplest is still saying:

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU

On Sharing the Dharma

A zenchishiki or dharma-friend has expressed some worries about a certain skepticism or pessimism that seems to pervade my previous post. Perhaps I should point out that I do believe that people of Shinjin and especially priests have the duty to share the Dharma. Also, I do not want to denigrate the precious work of persons that dutifully and painstakingly explain the Dharma.

Where would I be now myself if I had not come to know the exhilarating and liberating doctrine of Other Power Faith through the works of Reverend Jean Éracle, the founder of the Swiss Buddhist Society ? My karma is such that though I had lived in Geneva for two years before he died, I had never actually met him personally. It is during a seminar at the local branch of the Theosophical Society (one of my least avowable past associations) that I happened to read one of his minor works, a small collection of Buddhist sutras in a popular series of spiritual texts. This collection contains an early version of Dharmakara's/Amida's Vows which was slowly growing upon me until I decided to read Rev. Éracle's works related to Pure Land Buddhism in general and Shinbuddhism in particular.

I am truly grateful to Rev. Jean Éracle, as I am to his successor as priest of the Shinbuddhist temple in Geneva, Rev. Jérôme Ducor, who taught me a lot not only about Jodo Shinshu, but also about Mahayana Buddhism. Since I am not living in Geneva anymore for professional reasons, even live at a great distance from Switzerland, I miss the regular breath of oxygen of a Shinbuddhist community that is faithful to the Dharma taught by Master Shinran and Master Rennyo.

So no, I am not objecting to duly informed persons of Shinjin preaching the Dharma. But I do believe that everyone should be aware of the limitations that the present Age of Declining Dharma, the spiritual decadence of the human race, as well as the ego attachment that is our universal condition, impose on our abilities of sharing the Dharma. It is mandatory to scrupulously respect the benchmarks of the works and deeds of Shinran Shonin and Rennyo Shonin.

In particular, I perceive two diametrically opposed dangers.

One danger is literalist proselytism and sectarism. A person, say X, may have encountered the Shinbuddhist Dharma in a situation of extreme spiritual distress and have felt its enormous liberating power. It is natural that she may want to scream this message from the rooftops, which in the Age of Internet is tantamount to spamming. X may be horrified that numberless beings are headed for hellish afterlives, condemned by their own behavior to continuously erring for ages in Samsara before acquiring again the infinitely rare and preciously unique opportunity of being a human being that lives in an age when the Dharma-words of a Buddha can (still) be heard. X may feel that it is her duty as a person of Shinjin to drag people if necessary by their hairs to listening to the Dharma. And for the same reasons X may justifiably be appalled by the glib intellectualism of Postmodern scholars, which she must consider to be minions of Mara.

The worst thing about X is that in a certain respect she is absolutely right. But she forgets that, first, nobody, not even Amida Buddha himself, can change the karma of someone else. Second, since Samsara has an end, but no beginning, each one of us has wandered for countless ages in all sorts of existences, ranging from hellish to divine, such that the very worst has already happened to us before. Third, though we persons of Shinjin consider the Shinbuddhist Dharma as the Ultimate Dharma of the Age, we should keep in mind that there proverbially are 84000 ways of attaining Nirvana: neither do we claim to be enlightened, nor should we require others to exhibit their Buddha marks. Fourth, the Buddha Dharma is incompatible with literalism, especially in the Mahayana tradition: we should be aware that there is a certain leeway in interpreting not only the Three Sutra Canon, but also the Writings of our Masters. To provide an example and name names: the writings of D. T. Suzuki strike me as odd and heterodox, but I do perceive the person of Shinjin behind the occasional idiosyncrasies. There are undoubtedly worse writings than those of Suzuki (which I personally like precisely because of their quaintness), but I would like to point out that even what appears to be the most superficial and glibbest postmodern account of Shinbuddhism may sow a seed that will eventually grow into a lotus flower.

This brings me to the other horn of the dilemma: the attempt to adapt Shinbuddhism to a profane and secular world. A person, say Y, is a priest that encounters all sorts people from all walks of life during his pastoral duties, the needs of which he has to respond to. Now, ordinary people are by necessity or by affinity utterly unspiritual. Ordinary people, including the most refined academics, only think of Nirvana when confronted with impermanence and death, and only inasmuch as these affect them materially as biological, not as spiritual beings. Otherwise, religion is considered by most people to be nothing more than a set of instructions for psychological or social well-being: forget about the Buddha, let us tackle life now, where there is so much to reform, right ? And is social and political activism not the best way to honor the Buddha ? Is Shinjin not tantamount to feeling in harmony with oneself and with others ? Confronted with this mentality, and affected by it, our priest Y will try to conform the Dharma to the really existing Sangha instead of vice-versa.

But is Y not right in picking people up from where they are ? Should one not start with those aspects of the Dharma that people can relate to their own every-day experience and which may enable them to get on with it ? Of course it is right to pick people up from where they are, depending on where you want to drop them. If eventually we do not encourage them to reflect on the Nature of Suffering, its Origin, its Cessation and the Way to its Cessation, if we do not point out to them that the easiest way to realize Nirvana is Birth into Amida's Pure Land, and the way to ensure Birth is Other Power Faith, why should we bother telling them about Shinbuddhism at all ? Of course, as I said earlier on, even the most superficially liberal reading of Shinran Shonin's Writings may prepare the ground for hearing the Dharma that was preached by Shakyamuni Buddha on the Vulture Peak. However, to alter the famous metaphor of the Tannisho, that there is the antidote of the Abiding Dharma is no reason to administer the poison of Fashionable Opinion.

The Middle May between Literalism and Liberalism is not some compromise but quite simply the Dharma. That we are unable to fathom It and that we inevitably deform It to some degree by expounding It, does not annul the fact that the Dharma is what It is. The Dharma is the yardstick of truth and error, and It is, according the Buddha's Final Words, our only Lamp.

NAMO AMIDA BUTSU