Tucson Shinshu Sangha: Hearing the Buddhas' Truth
“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?
Online, and at the Ada Peirce McCormick building (by the U of A), in the library. Email [email protected] if you are interested in participating.
. . .
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, Buddhist, non-Buddhist...
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. Or because it's a path of no-self ("no one").
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, and it's our "true self."
What, then, do we “do”? What is our “practice”? How do we find this "shinjin"?
We listen to the Dharma and examine our selves, hopefully in the company of honest Dharma friends.
We listen, we hear, and we (re)discover or re-cognize this unhindered truth passively as it simultaneously (paradoxically) flows out of us and embraces us.
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 now of primal/prior awakeness.
This is inexpressible, especially by me. I recommend visiting the website below for a better explanation of modern Shinshu, which I choose to call “immediately accessible, already received liberation”.
Tucson Shinshu Sangha: hearing the Buddhas' truth.
Hear it? Do you want to hear it? Do you want to help us hear it?
Please join us.
Gassho – John Veen, [email protected]
For more accurate information about Shin Buddhism, visit:
Maida Center
* * *
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 the voice of our true self calling us. We hear it. And that's all we need to "do."
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.
Namu-amida-butsu!
John Veen
[email protected]
* * * * * * *
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 (hearing the Dharma; true self)
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
27. Hongan
* * * * * * *
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)
*
Shift in focus, change in basis
Nobuo Haneda writes that when we meet a “power” that is outside, beyond ourselves—beyond, that is, our also-powerful, compelling, hypnotic self-love—we have a chance to hear something that would not have occurred to us if we only listened to the relentless dream-chatter of our personal minds. We accidentally hear a sound or catch a glimpse of something unexpected. It surprises us: “What…?!” This surprise is outside the repetitive loop of ego-mind, dream-mind, survival-mind. It’s like driving around a bend on a monotonous highway, in a daydream, and suddenly the vast ocean is there, and the clear blue sky. It shocks us out of our reverie. Isn’t that better than reverie? Isn’t that what we really wanted all along?
This kind of “wanting” is primordial. Haneda, tracking the ancient Shin view, calls it “primordial aspiration.” Something inside suddenly recognizes something outside. “What…?! Oh, that’s what I really want. That’s what I really am! Not all this chatter, this mental gibberish.”
Eight hundred years ago the great revolutionary Buddhist thinker Shinran caught a glimpse of this view while in the presence of his teacher, Honen. In his book Dharma Breeze, Haneda writes that Honen’s spirit made a “crack” in Shinran’s “world of self-love.” Then “cool fresh air started to gush into his world.” Honen’s life, demeanor, spirit, “made Shinran realize that he had been living in a ‘garbage can’ and that the entirety of the self” had been nothing but this container of garbage. While he had, until then, believed that he could sweeten, improve, enlighten his life-inside-the-can, he now saw that this was a mistake. “He realized there was only stinkiness in the garbage can. Even what he considered purity in it was another form of stinkiness.”
Then Shinran “no longer considered the self, the garbage can, important. Now he considered the self worth forgetting.”
Being “overwhelmed and permeated” by this fresh air, "Shinran shifted his focus from the self to the spirit that Honen embodied, from the garbage can to the fresh air. In this way Shinran’s spiritual basis was totally changed.”
Haneda concludes, “When we are shaken and overwhelmed by this [primordial] power, we resonate with it and can forget our individual happiness or liberation. This self-forgetfulness is actually the realization of our true happiness or liberation.”
(Haneda’s quotes are from Dharma Breeze, Chapter 14)
*
Radical nonduality
“Subjective human life, and objective nature (the Tathagata), do not constitute a fixed opposition of ego-self and non-ego like straight lines on a plane. They form one rounded and perfect Dharma world where through this opposition they determine themselves mutually, and develop the meaning of individual ego and total ego, which are inwardly and infinitely continuous and one.”
Soga Ryojin, “Reader,” p. 396
*
“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?
Online, and at the Ada Peirce McCormick building (by the U of A), in the library. Email [email protected] if you are interested in participating.
. . .
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, Buddhist, non-Buddhist...
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. Or because it's a path of no-self ("no one").
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, and it's our "true self."
What, then, do we “do”? What is our “practice”? How do we find this "shinjin"?
We listen to the Dharma and examine our selves, hopefully in the company of honest Dharma friends.
We listen, we hear, and we (re)discover or re-cognize this unhindered truth passively as it simultaneously (paradoxically) flows out of us and embraces us.
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 now of primal/prior awakeness.
This is inexpressible, especially by me. I recommend visiting the website below for a better explanation of modern Shinshu, which I choose to call “immediately accessible, already received liberation”.
Tucson Shinshu Sangha: hearing the Buddhas' truth.
Hear it? Do you want to hear it? Do you want to help us hear it?
Please join us.
Gassho – John Veen, [email protected]
For more accurate information about Shin Buddhism, visit:
Maida Center
* * *
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 the voice of our true self calling us. We hear it. And that's all we need to "do."
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.
Namu-amida-butsu!
John Veen
[email protected]
* * * * * * *
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 (hearing the Dharma; true self)
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
27. Hongan
* * * * * * *
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)
*
Shift in focus, change in basis
Nobuo Haneda writes that when we meet a “power” that is outside, beyond ourselves—beyond, that is, our also-powerful, compelling, hypnotic self-love—we have a chance to hear something that would not have occurred to us if we only listened to the relentless dream-chatter of our personal minds. We accidentally hear a sound or catch a glimpse of something unexpected. It surprises us: “What…?!” This surprise is outside the repetitive loop of ego-mind, dream-mind, survival-mind. It’s like driving around a bend on a monotonous highway, in a daydream, and suddenly the vast ocean is there, and the clear blue sky. It shocks us out of our reverie. Isn’t that better than reverie? Isn’t that what we really wanted all along?
This kind of “wanting” is primordial. Haneda, tracking the ancient Shin view, calls it “primordial aspiration.” Something inside suddenly recognizes something outside. “What…?! Oh, that’s what I really want. That’s what I really am! Not all this chatter, this mental gibberish.”
Eight hundred years ago the great revolutionary Buddhist thinker Shinran caught a glimpse of this view while in the presence of his teacher, Honen. In his book Dharma Breeze, Haneda writes that Honen’s spirit made a “crack” in Shinran’s “world of self-love.” Then “cool fresh air started to gush into his world.” Honen’s life, demeanor, spirit, “made Shinran realize that he had been living in a ‘garbage can’ and that the entirety of the self” had been nothing but this container of garbage. While he had, until then, believed that he could sweeten, improve, enlighten his life-inside-the-can, he now saw that this was a mistake. “He realized there was only stinkiness in the garbage can. Even what he considered purity in it was another form of stinkiness.”
Then Shinran “no longer considered the self, the garbage can, important. Now he considered the self worth forgetting.”
Being “overwhelmed and permeated” by this fresh air, "Shinran shifted his focus from the self to the spirit that Honen embodied, from the garbage can to the fresh air. In this way Shinran’s spiritual basis was totally changed.”
Haneda concludes, “When we are shaken and overwhelmed by this [primordial] power, we resonate with it and can forget our individual happiness or liberation. This self-forgetfulness is actually the realization of our true happiness or liberation.”
(Haneda’s quotes are from Dharma Breeze, Chapter 14)
*
Radical nonduality
“Subjective human life, and objective nature (the Tathagata), do not constitute a fixed opposition of ego-self and non-ego like straight lines on a plane. They form one rounded and perfect Dharma world where through this opposition they determine themselves mutually, and develop the meaning of individual ego and total ego, which are inwardly and infinitely continuous and one.”
Soga Ryojin, “Reader,” p. 396
*