Tucson shinshu sangha
A small, informal group. We usually meet the first and third Sundays 1-3 pm at the Little Chapel of All Nations, 1401 E. 1st Street, Tucson.
Go to Tucson Shinshu Buddhist Meetup for next scheduled meeting.
No charge, ever, but donations to the Little Chapel are encouraged.
For info: johnveen@yahoo.com
* * *
Local Sangha?
“Jodo Shinshu” or “Shinshu” or “Shin Buddhism” is an 800-year-old “Copernican revolution”** in Buddhism that is hardly known in this country, and frequently misrepresented even in its home country, Japan.
**(As Copernicus asserted a heliocentric astronomy contrary to common thinking at the time, Shin’s founder Shinran saw the buddha-dharma as primary, not the human mind.)
Where is the local sangha?
Well, we're trying!
I’ll paraphrase a Shinshu saying: “This is the easy path, but no one’s on it.”
It’s called “easy” partly because the entire teaching is summed up in a short string of words that take various forms, including: namo-amida-buddha, namu-amida-butsu, namandabu, etc.
Namo is the “me,” the apparent self of fear and greed. “Amida Buddha” is a collective noun representing all buddhas and dharmas that call to us. These words, run together, represent the nondual truth of impermanence and unconditional “salvation” that contains and defines us all—good, evil, young, old, smart, stupid, rich, poor…
But “no one’s on it”—possibly because the self is only interested in its own gratification, its own centrality to any profundity, and that’s not the Shinshu approach.
A flash of insight into our prior liberation—an insight that, once seen, can’t be truly unseen—is called “shinjin,” and it’s the core of Shinshu. Really, shinjin is the purpose of this “spiritual” life.
But Shinjin isn’t “ours,” it doesn’t belong to the self; it forever contains and shines upon us whether we think we deserve it or not.
What, then, do we “do”? What is our “practice”? How do we achieve this "Shinjin"?
No practice, no effort, just receiving.
We listen, we hear, we receive unhindered truth passively as it “embraces” us, always.
Is this a mystical idea?
No, this is the opposite of mysticism—this is open eyes. Mysticism is the dreamworld of closed eyes, thought-tangents, wishful thinking, and fixed ideas. Shinjin is the shock of awakeness here-now, as-is.
This in inconceivable and inexpressible, especially by me. I recommend visiting the websites below for a better explanation of modern Shinshu (which I choose to call “immediately accessible, already received liberation”).
Gassho – John Veen, johnveen@yahoo.com
http://maida-center.org/
https://higashihonganjiusa.org/
https://shinshucenteramerica.org/
Namu-amida-butsu
Not as well known in this country as Zen, Shin Buddhism, with its key principles of self-examination and dharma-hearing, is attractive to those of us who have not been terribly successful at transforming our lives through religious practices. In fact, as its (unintentional) founder Shinran said, “No practice is true practice.”
The Dharma comes to us through life experience and the words of various teachers. The message is raw, nondualistic, and completely free of magical thinking. If it’s true, it’s Shinshu, not the other way around. Shinshu is not dogma; it's non-sectarian; and it has nothing to do with held beliefs.
You might ask: But isn’t this “Pure Land” Buddhism, where you repeat a phrase while alive (namu-amida-butsu) so that, at death, you’ll be reborn in the Pure Land and eventually become a Buddha?
No. Shinshu is of the here-and-now with absolutely no concern for any “hereafter.” It’s true Buddhism as conveyed by Shinran Shonin and recent and contemporary teachers such as Manshi Kiyozawa, Haya Akegarasu, Shuichi Maida, and Nobuo Haneda. It’s a Buddhism rooted only in reality, neither secular nor religious. Namu-amida-butsu isn’t a mantra, incantation or prayer, it’s an “aha!” expression of gratitude for that which is always already the case here and now. (The Dharma-ocean contains us, ready or not!)
Are you open to hearing about a “Buddhism of truth,” where there are no absolutes, only lifelong openness to impermanent reality? Visit www.maida-center.org to get the flavor of it. Then let me know if you’d like to join our Tucson discussion group or “sangha.”
Namu-amida-butsu!
John Veen
johnveen@yahoo.com
* * * * * * *
Shin Buddhism or “Shinshu”
1. The Shin teachings are contained (summarized) in a phrase: namu-amida-butsu
2. This is the nembutsu, or “Name”
3. It’s not a mantra, it’s a call (to us)
4. Broken down, Namu means foolish, ordinary “me”; Amida Buddha (butsu) means Buddha of boundless light and life, a symbol for wisdom and compassion (also, a collective noun, a symbol for all Buddhas)
5. Narrative meaning: “Come to the Buddhas’ wisdom”
6. Where and when? Here and now (not future-oriented)
7. How? Through listening to the Dharma, and self-examination
8. Passive non-practice; this work is already complete (paradox)
9. This is an “Other-power” teaching not a “self-power” teaching; self-effort is vain effort
10. Our blindness, our delusion, is recognized
11. Twofold awakening: awakening to radical (root-deep) selfishness, brings with it the simultaneous awakening to “no-self”
12. Blind delusion remains blind delusion; but “seeing it is transcending it”
13. Transcending “crosswise” in “one-thought-moment”
14. This is the “easy path” not the “path of sages”
15. Self-caused suffering becomes a teacher; “poison is the cure”
16. Ordinary, deluded life carries on; sorrow and joy; tragicomedy
Horizontal/historical trajectory of Shinshu: countless Buddha’s (awakened teachers) prior to Shakyamuni; Shakyamuni’s various teachers; Shakyamuni (4th century BCE); the Buddha-Dharma; death of Shakyamuni; Hinayana Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhism; the “seven patriarchs”; Shinran (1173-1263); modern “teachers” focused on here: Manshi Kiyozawa, Hara Akegarasu, Soga Ryojin, Shuichi Maida, Nobuo Haneda…India-China-Korea-Japan-world…
Other terms and concepts:
1. Pure Land (symbolic)
2. Shinjin (clear understanding now; twofold awakening)
3. Foolish, ordinary person
4. Blind passions (not eliminated)
5. Icchantika (hopeless skeptic/doubter, lost cause) as focus of this teaching
6. Rational experimentation
7. Open eyes
8. Non-meditation
9. Impermanence, interdependence, dependent origination, non-origination, suchness, nonduality, emptiness, unborn, extinction…
10. Inconceivable, inexpressible
11. Timeless non-continuation
12. Provisional Buddhism, true Buddhism, non-Buddhism
13. Temple Buddhism, non-temple Buddhism
14. “Seeking” as openness, not grasping-attachment
15. Right view is no view
16. “Beginners mind,” “don’t-know mind”
17. The breaking of our “I-glasses”
18. Dharma actualized
19. Repeated reawakening to “prior” awakening
20. Awakening as context
21. Zen and Dzogchen comparisons
22. “Primal vows” in Shinshu; primal desire (for liberation); fulfillment (always-already)
23. Zange (Buddhist confession) completes the rough circle
24. Non-mysticism
25. Spiritual effort as fear-greed (self-power)
26. Human wisdom as dualistic wisdom
* * * * * * *
The Recognition of Impermanence
Shuichi Maida, translated by Nobuo Haneda
The recognition of impermanence liberates all. Liberation means becoming impermanence and working as impermanence itself. In that sense, all existing things are already liberated, just as they are, because they are already working as impermanence itself. Such things as plants, trees, fishes, and insects are already liberated. Only human beings experience (or awaken to) this liberation by recognizing impermanence. For an impermanent being to become aware of being an impermanent being is called recognition.
Thus the crucial question in life can be solved through recognition, not through actions or practice but simply through recognition. That is why it is said that liberation is not a matter of practice, but a matter of understanding. It is not in the future; it is in the present moment. Action, or what should be done, has something to do with the future. But liberation is in the eternal now. That is why I say that it is a matter of recognition. It is recognition, nothing else, that immediately enables us to cognize eternal life and thereby know that we are living in the eternal now.
When we go through the hundred-eighty degree turn in life because of recognition, a perfectly free life becomes possible. A perfectly free life is not a practice realized through our efforts; it is something that becomes possible because of recognition.
* * * * * * *
From the Dharma Breeze newsletter:
Buddhism talks about the two ways of transcending things such as dualistic human wisdom, deluded ideas, and blind passions: (1) transcending them by eliminating them and (2) transcending them by seeing them. Non-Shinshu teachers teach us the first way of transcending. Shinran teaches us the second way. Shinran tells us that when we receive the Buddha’s wisdom-perspective and are able to clearly see the self (i.e., human wisdom, deluded ideas, and blind passions) through that perspective, we are transcending it, although we have not eliminated it.
Here an example that shows the Shinshu way of transcending is in order. I can talk about the smallness of my house and the hugeness of the world outside it. If I only stay in my house, I cannot see its smallness; I think that my house is a huge world and all the things I do in it have great significance. For example, my occasional argument with my wife is a matter of great significance, and which one of us is right is a matter of great importance. But if I happen to see my house from an airplane in the sky, I can see the smallness of the house and all the things that take place there. Then I can simultaneously transcend my misguided view that my house is a huge world and all the things that take place in it have great significance. This transcendence, however, does not mean that I stop arguing with my wife. I still do, but there is a difference between before and after seeing the house from the sky. Before I thought everything about the house had great significance, but now I don’t think so. Although I still have my karma of arguing with my wife, I can now see it as a matter that does not have absolute importance. I can now laugh at myself and all the things that I do. This is the Shinshu way of transcending.
Shinjin awakening means the same thing. “Seeing it is transcending it.” It does not mean that we can eliminate things such as dualistic human wisdom [deluded ideas, blind passions]; it means that we clearly see their pettiness and smallness and become liberated from attachment to them.
Shinjin awakening is accompanied by a sense of both sadness and joy: the sadness of seeing the self that lives in the small world of human wisdom and the joy of seeing the self transcending the small world. This is the unique aspect of Shinran’s shinjin awakening.
Non-Shinshu teachers say that their liberation experience is accompanied by a sense of great joy at having eliminated dualistic human wisdom and becoming one with the Buddha’s wisdom or at having eliminated their blind passions. They seldom talk about the sadness of seeing the self that still lives in a small world of human wisdom or the self that still has deluded views and blind passions. But Shinran is different. He tells us that a shinjin person experiences both deep sadness at having dualistic human wisdom, deluded ideas, and blind passions and deep joy at receiving the Buddha’s wisdom that enables us to transcend them.
Shinran never places himself on the side of the Buddha’s wisdom or the Dharma. He never claims that he has become one with the Buddha’s wisdom. He always sees himself as a recipient of light; he keeps on recognizing the depth of his darkness, being illumined by the light… He experiences both the sadness of discovering the miserable reality of the self and the joy of being embraced by the Buddha’s light.
[On gratitude:]
…for Shinran, receiving the Buddha’s wisdom—the wisdom that transforms the negative into the positive—is everything in Buddhism. If a person receives the Buddha’s wisdom, all the negative things, such as sickness, poverty, an accident, a disaster, start to have positive meanings—they turn into “our teachers.” If all those negative things turn into something meaningful, they become the objects of our gratitude. Then our regular gratitude that is directed only toward positive things, such as health, wealth, and happiness, start to appear shallow. When we say, “I am so grateful,” we are usually talking about positive things, such as wonderful health, a nice family, and a nice job. We seldom feel grateful for the negative things we have in our lives.
Shinran knew that if we receive the Buddha’s wisdom alone, all things in our lives, not only the positive things but also the negative things, would become indispensable conditions for the fulfillment of our lives. That’s why he expressed his gratitude exclusively to those who guided him to the Buddha's wisdom, and did not talk about his gratitude for other things.
One of Shinran’s expressions of gratitude is as follows:
Such is the benevolence of Amida Buddha’s great compassion,
That we cannot help returning it, even to the breaking of our bodies;
Such is the benevolence of the master [i.e., Shakyamuni] and true teachers,
That we cannot help repaying it, even to our bones becoming dust.
(Nobuo Haneda, Dharma Breeze newsletter, December 2018)
Go to Tucson Shinshu Buddhist Meetup for next scheduled meeting.
No charge, ever, but donations to the Little Chapel are encouraged.
For info: johnveen@yahoo.com
* * *
Local Sangha?
“Jodo Shinshu” or “Shinshu” or “Shin Buddhism” is an 800-year-old “Copernican revolution”** in Buddhism that is hardly known in this country, and frequently misrepresented even in its home country, Japan.
**(As Copernicus asserted a heliocentric astronomy contrary to common thinking at the time, Shin’s founder Shinran saw the buddha-dharma as primary, not the human mind.)
Where is the local sangha?
Well, we're trying!
I’ll paraphrase a Shinshu saying: “This is the easy path, but no one’s on it.”
It’s called “easy” partly because the entire teaching is summed up in a short string of words that take various forms, including: namo-amida-buddha, namu-amida-butsu, namandabu, etc.
Namo is the “me,” the apparent self of fear and greed. “Amida Buddha” is a collective noun representing all buddhas and dharmas that call to us. These words, run together, represent the nondual truth of impermanence and unconditional “salvation” that contains and defines us all—good, evil, young, old, smart, stupid, rich, poor…
But “no one’s on it”—possibly because the self is only interested in its own gratification, its own centrality to any profundity, and that’s not the Shinshu approach.
A flash of insight into our prior liberation—an insight that, once seen, can’t be truly unseen—is called “shinjin,” and it’s the core of Shinshu. Really, shinjin is the purpose of this “spiritual” life.
But Shinjin isn’t “ours,” it doesn’t belong to the self; it forever contains and shines upon us whether we think we deserve it or not.
What, then, do we “do”? What is our “practice”? How do we achieve this "Shinjin"?
No practice, no effort, just receiving.
We listen, we hear, we receive unhindered truth passively as it “embraces” us, always.
Is this a mystical idea?
No, this is the opposite of mysticism—this is open eyes. Mysticism is the dreamworld of closed eyes, thought-tangents, wishful thinking, and fixed ideas. Shinjin is the shock of awakeness here-now, as-is.
This in inconceivable and inexpressible, especially by me. I recommend visiting the websites below for a better explanation of modern Shinshu (which I choose to call “immediately accessible, already received liberation”).
Gassho – John Veen, johnveen@yahoo.com
http://maida-center.org/
https://higashihonganjiusa.org/
https://shinshucenteramerica.org/
Namu-amida-butsu
Not as well known in this country as Zen, Shin Buddhism, with its key principles of self-examination and dharma-hearing, is attractive to those of us who have not been terribly successful at transforming our lives through religious practices. In fact, as its (unintentional) founder Shinran said, “No practice is true practice.”
The Dharma comes to us through life experience and the words of various teachers. The message is raw, nondualistic, and completely free of magical thinking. If it’s true, it’s Shinshu, not the other way around. Shinshu is not dogma; it's non-sectarian; and it has nothing to do with held beliefs.
You might ask: But isn’t this “Pure Land” Buddhism, where you repeat a phrase while alive (namu-amida-butsu) so that, at death, you’ll be reborn in the Pure Land and eventually become a Buddha?
No. Shinshu is of the here-and-now with absolutely no concern for any “hereafter.” It’s true Buddhism as conveyed by Shinran Shonin and recent and contemporary teachers such as Manshi Kiyozawa, Haya Akegarasu, Shuichi Maida, and Nobuo Haneda. It’s a Buddhism rooted only in reality, neither secular nor religious. Namu-amida-butsu isn’t a mantra, incantation or prayer, it’s an “aha!” expression of gratitude for that which is always already the case here and now. (The Dharma-ocean contains us, ready or not!)
Are you open to hearing about a “Buddhism of truth,” where there are no absolutes, only lifelong openness to impermanent reality? Visit www.maida-center.org to get the flavor of it. Then let me know if you’d like to join our Tucson discussion group or “sangha.”
Namu-amida-butsu!
John Veen
johnveen@yahoo.com
* * * * * * *
Shin Buddhism or “Shinshu”
1. The Shin teachings are contained (summarized) in a phrase: namu-amida-butsu
2. This is the nembutsu, or “Name”
3. It’s not a mantra, it’s a call (to us)
4. Broken down, Namu means foolish, ordinary “me”; Amida Buddha (butsu) means Buddha of boundless light and life, a symbol for wisdom and compassion (also, a collective noun, a symbol for all Buddhas)
5. Narrative meaning: “Come to the Buddhas’ wisdom”
6. Where and when? Here and now (not future-oriented)
7. How? Through listening to the Dharma, and self-examination
8. Passive non-practice; this work is already complete (paradox)
9. This is an “Other-power” teaching not a “self-power” teaching; self-effort is vain effort
10. Our blindness, our delusion, is recognized
11. Twofold awakening: awakening to radical (root-deep) selfishness, brings with it the simultaneous awakening to “no-self”
12. Blind delusion remains blind delusion; but “seeing it is transcending it”
13. Transcending “crosswise” in “one-thought-moment”
14. This is the “easy path” not the “path of sages”
15. Self-caused suffering becomes a teacher; “poison is the cure”
16. Ordinary, deluded life carries on; sorrow and joy; tragicomedy
Horizontal/historical trajectory of Shinshu: countless Buddha’s (awakened teachers) prior to Shakyamuni; Shakyamuni’s various teachers; Shakyamuni (4th century BCE); the Buddha-Dharma; death of Shakyamuni; Hinayana Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhism; the “seven patriarchs”; Shinran (1173-1263); modern “teachers” focused on here: Manshi Kiyozawa, Hara Akegarasu, Soga Ryojin, Shuichi Maida, Nobuo Haneda…India-China-Korea-Japan-world…
Other terms and concepts:
1. Pure Land (symbolic)
2. Shinjin (clear understanding now; twofold awakening)
3. Foolish, ordinary person
4. Blind passions (not eliminated)
5. Icchantika (hopeless skeptic/doubter, lost cause) as focus of this teaching
6. Rational experimentation
7. Open eyes
8. Non-meditation
9. Impermanence, interdependence, dependent origination, non-origination, suchness, nonduality, emptiness, unborn, extinction…
10. Inconceivable, inexpressible
11. Timeless non-continuation
12. Provisional Buddhism, true Buddhism, non-Buddhism
13. Temple Buddhism, non-temple Buddhism
14. “Seeking” as openness, not grasping-attachment
15. Right view is no view
16. “Beginners mind,” “don’t-know mind”
17. The breaking of our “I-glasses”
18. Dharma actualized
19. Repeated reawakening to “prior” awakening
20. Awakening as context
21. Zen and Dzogchen comparisons
22. “Primal vows” in Shinshu; primal desire (for liberation); fulfillment (always-already)
23. Zange (Buddhist confession) completes the rough circle
24. Non-mysticism
25. Spiritual effort as fear-greed (self-power)
26. Human wisdom as dualistic wisdom
* * * * * * *
The Recognition of Impermanence
Shuichi Maida, translated by Nobuo Haneda
The recognition of impermanence liberates all. Liberation means becoming impermanence and working as impermanence itself. In that sense, all existing things are already liberated, just as they are, because they are already working as impermanence itself. Such things as plants, trees, fishes, and insects are already liberated. Only human beings experience (or awaken to) this liberation by recognizing impermanence. For an impermanent being to become aware of being an impermanent being is called recognition.
Thus the crucial question in life can be solved through recognition, not through actions or practice but simply through recognition. That is why it is said that liberation is not a matter of practice, but a matter of understanding. It is not in the future; it is in the present moment. Action, or what should be done, has something to do with the future. But liberation is in the eternal now. That is why I say that it is a matter of recognition. It is recognition, nothing else, that immediately enables us to cognize eternal life and thereby know that we are living in the eternal now.
When we go through the hundred-eighty degree turn in life because of recognition, a perfectly free life becomes possible. A perfectly free life is not a practice realized through our efforts; it is something that becomes possible because of recognition.
* * * * * * *
From the Dharma Breeze newsletter:
Buddhism talks about the two ways of transcending things such as dualistic human wisdom, deluded ideas, and blind passions: (1) transcending them by eliminating them and (2) transcending them by seeing them. Non-Shinshu teachers teach us the first way of transcending. Shinran teaches us the second way. Shinran tells us that when we receive the Buddha’s wisdom-perspective and are able to clearly see the self (i.e., human wisdom, deluded ideas, and blind passions) through that perspective, we are transcending it, although we have not eliminated it.
Here an example that shows the Shinshu way of transcending is in order. I can talk about the smallness of my house and the hugeness of the world outside it. If I only stay in my house, I cannot see its smallness; I think that my house is a huge world and all the things I do in it have great significance. For example, my occasional argument with my wife is a matter of great significance, and which one of us is right is a matter of great importance. But if I happen to see my house from an airplane in the sky, I can see the smallness of the house and all the things that take place there. Then I can simultaneously transcend my misguided view that my house is a huge world and all the things that take place in it have great significance. This transcendence, however, does not mean that I stop arguing with my wife. I still do, but there is a difference between before and after seeing the house from the sky. Before I thought everything about the house had great significance, but now I don’t think so. Although I still have my karma of arguing with my wife, I can now see it as a matter that does not have absolute importance. I can now laugh at myself and all the things that I do. This is the Shinshu way of transcending.
Shinjin awakening means the same thing. “Seeing it is transcending it.” It does not mean that we can eliminate things such as dualistic human wisdom [deluded ideas, blind passions]; it means that we clearly see their pettiness and smallness and become liberated from attachment to them.
Shinjin awakening is accompanied by a sense of both sadness and joy: the sadness of seeing the self that lives in the small world of human wisdom and the joy of seeing the self transcending the small world. This is the unique aspect of Shinran’s shinjin awakening.
Non-Shinshu teachers say that their liberation experience is accompanied by a sense of great joy at having eliminated dualistic human wisdom and becoming one with the Buddha’s wisdom or at having eliminated their blind passions. They seldom talk about the sadness of seeing the self that still lives in a small world of human wisdom or the self that still has deluded views and blind passions. But Shinran is different. He tells us that a shinjin person experiences both deep sadness at having dualistic human wisdom, deluded ideas, and blind passions and deep joy at receiving the Buddha’s wisdom that enables us to transcend them.
Shinran never places himself on the side of the Buddha’s wisdom or the Dharma. He never claims that he has become one with the Buddha’s wisdom. He always sees himself as a recipient of light; he keeps on recognizing the depth of his darkness, being illumined by the light… He experiences both the sadness of discovering the miserable reality of the self and the joy of being embraced by the Buddha’s light.
[On gratitude:]
…for Shinran, receiving the Buddha’s wisdom—the wisdom that transforms the negative into the positive—is everything in Buddhism. If a person receives the Buddha’s wisdom, all the negative things, such as sickness, poverty, an accident, a disaster, start to have positive meanings—they turn into “our teachers.” If all those negative things turn into something meaningful, they become the objects of our gratitude. Then our regular gratitude that is directed only toward positive things, such as health, wealth, and happiness, start to appear shallow. When we say, “I am so grateful,” we are usually talking about positive things, such as wonderful health, a nice family, and a nice job. We seldom feel grateful for the negative things we have in our lives.
Shinran knew that if we receive the Buddha’s wisdom alone, all things in our lives, not only the positive things but also the negative things, would become indispensable conditions for the fulfillment of our lives. That’s why he expressed his gratitude exclusively to those who guided him to the Buddha's wisdom, and did not talk about his gratitude for other things.
One of Shinran’s expressions of gratitude is as follows:
Such is the benevolence of Amida Buddha’s great compassion,
That we cannot help returning it, even to the breaking of our bodies;
Such is the benevolence of the master [i.e., Shakyamuni] and true teachers,
That we cannot help repaying it, even to our bones becoming dust.
(Nobuo Haneda, Dharma Breeze newsletter, December 2018)
Shinran's hand copy of the amida sutra:
