We really could use someone to look up to these days. 

In Living Nembutsu: Applying Shinran’s Radically Engaged Buddhism in Life and Society, religious scholar Jeff Wilson presents us with a radical role model: Shinran Shonin (1173–1263). Shinran, who founded the Jodo Shinshu school of Pure Land Buddhism, lived during a time of social, political, and religious upheaval in medieval Japan, a time that produced fellow radical religious thinkers like Honen, who first advocated for chanting the nembutsu, and Nichiren. By rejecting mainstream Buddhism, with corrupt monks and monasteries, Shinran worked to create a Buddhism that was available to everyone regardless of their social and economic standing; all one has to do is put their faith in Amida Buddha and call his name to be born in the Pure Land. 

Living Nembutsu, published in March 2023 by Sumeru Press, includes chapters called “Queer Shinran” and “Refugee Shinran,” and explains how engaged Shin Buddhism and Shinran himself can inspire Pure Land practitioners and help us navigate today’s most pressing issues. Wilson, a Tricycle contributing editor, is professor of religious studies and East Asian studies for Renison University College at the University of Waterloo (Canada) and an ordained Jodo Shinshu minister. He recently spoke with Tricycle about how “radical Shinran” worked within the Buddhist tradition to once again make Buddhism’s liberatory potential available to everyone.  

What’s the story on how this book came to be? The project has been percolating for a long time. Jodo Shinshu has been my primary community of practice for the last twenty-five years or so. I went to graduate school and became a professor of Buddhism, and eventually I got ordained—I serve in a supporting ministerial role at the Toronto temple. And as part of all that, I’ve been asked to give dharma talks and participate in seminars for the past twenty years. When you’re a speaker, you talk about the things that you’re interested in, but people also start asking you things that you eventually start incorporating into your talks. And one thing that often comes up is the intersection of Buddhism and various social issues—the hot topics of the day. 

A lot of people wondered about the role of Jodo Shinshu in social, political, and environmental issues. There is a stereotype that Pure Land Buddhism has been passive, not engaged. I’m a historian and anthropologist in addition to being a practitioner, so from my research I know that actually many people, both historically and currently, have been involved. 

Shinran himself was very involved in the social issues of the day. We think of him as a religious reformer, but 800 years ago in Japan and everywhere else on the planet, there was no separation between the religious and secular. And Shinran was politically persecuted because he was teaching what we today might call a Buddhist liberation theology. If you’re trying to liberate people from the oppressive social order through religious means, the powers that be are not going to take kindly to that. He was a political prisoner, exile, and refugee. And so I thought, this is easily the most important single monk in Japanese history, the cultural impact of his teaching is larger than anyone else, his movement is the largest and has been deeply involved in politics for over 800 years. So why do we keep asking these questions about whether Jodo Shinshu has a history of social engagement? 

How did you first encounter Shinran: as an academic or practitioner? I first read Dr. Alfred Bloom’s book Shinran’s Gospel of Pure Grace (first published in 1965) in the mid-nineties when I was studying at Sarah Lawrence College. It was interesting, different, not at all like the other stuff about Buddhism I was reading in English at the time. And the “gospel of pure grace” seemed so Christian … he had to work within the language constraints of the time, when religious studies in North America were dominated by the study of Christianity. I was attending all sorts of different groups: Zen, Shambhala, Insight, in order to broaden my understanding of Buddhism to the greatest extent. And I started to steer more into Jodo Shinshu, especially as I became disillusioned with my time with Zen Buddhism. It wasn’t that Zen was bad; it had a tendency to pump up my own ego—the better I got at meditation or keeping the precepts or the more I could talk intelligently about koans, the more self-conceited I started to get. It wasn’t a good match. I was also concerned about how few Asian practitioners there were in many of these spaces. And then I began attending the New York Buddhist Church on the Upper West Side, and became more and more drawn in until Jodo Shinshu became the tradition that I was adopted by.

What was going on in Japan during Shinran’s lifetime that led him to such radical thinking? What I’ve tried to convey in my talks at Jodo Shinshu temples and in other situations is just how radical Shinran was. Jodo Shinshu grew to become the largest Buddhist school in Japan—one out of every three Japanese people’s family background is Jodo Shinshu—it’s all kind of very normal (at this point). I wanted to convey the really unique things about Shinran. 

Shinran was born into an ossified medieval social hierarchy, where Buddhism’s revolutionary potential was profoundly muted by social conditions that put the dharma and Buddhist practice out of the reach of all but the most privileged. Japan was wracked by constant civil war, environmental disasters, epidemics, the threat of foreign invasion, elite Buddhist monastic complexes that hoarded their power with armed monks, and a vast gulf between the lives of the enfranchised and the great mass of poor regular people. The old style of Buddhism, including the Tendai school he was trained in, was beautiful and true but no longer relevant. Worse yet, establishment Buddhism had become one of the primary obstacles between average people and Buddhahood. Shinran wanted to create a Buddhism focused on freeing those who had been excluded from the current Buddhism.

“Shinran drew on his own suffering, exile, downward mobility, and outlaw status to build a true solidarity with the people of Japan.”

Buddhism for the 99 percent. That’s right. Shinran turned to the Pure Land teaching of Honen (1133–1212), another radical monk, as a solution. Honen created a revolutionary sangha, sort of like a Pure Land ashram where men and women, monastics and laypeople, upper class and lower class all mingled freely as practitioners of the nembutsu. Their flouting of strict social standards that were designed to keep everyone in their carefully ordered place, and their insistence that the expensive and esoteric rituals of elite Buddhism were unnecessary due to the liberating power of Amida Buddha, earned them the enmity of the powerful monasteries. Honen and Shinran’s community was smashed and their Pure Land Buddhist teaching was made illegal. They were exiled as criminals, their ordination stripped by official censure. In those days, conditions in Kyoto were relatively better, and Shinran was thrown out into the “real” Japan. He was living among the peasants and fisherpeople, and this reinforced his idea that “these are the people that the Buddha cares about but that elite Buddhism doesn’t care about.” 

This unjust persecution helped to truly set Shinran free. It was clear to him that the powers that be would never support a Buddhism of universal liberation, regardless of their supposed commitment to Mahayana Buddhism. And with nothing left to lose, Shinran turned fully to preaching a Buddhism he felt was designed for his times. He drew on his own suffering, exile, downward mobility, and outlaw status to build a true solidarity with the people of Japan. He did so by teaching in the vernacular, offering dharma lessons that could be distributed and read out loud at gatherings for the benefit of the illiterate majority. He composed dharma hymns that could be memorized and performed in meetings or individually, without the need for scriptural study. He told the farmers, soldiers, and women who came to listen to him that there was a path designed for them, in their ordinary, toiling, oppressed lives, one that didn’t demand expensive dana payments, unrealistic moral precepts, or rejection of the family and community ties without which life was literally impossible in regular society. And he demonstrated this by eating meat, drinking alcohol, marrying, and raising a family, while still fulfilling the role of a monk through teaching, wearing robes, and performing rituals.

You write that Shinran transformed Buddhism by working within the existing framework, but it just seems to me that he was doing something completely different! If you take a look at The Collected Works of Shinran, which is a massive, two-volume set, and start reading through it, you’ll see he does a lot of proof texting and quoting from other sutras, and you might think to yourself, “oh, this guy is super traditional.”

He didn’t advocate abandoning the classic texts, nor did he critique the famous teachers. He used their words, images, and ideas constantly in his own preaching, but he reinvigorated them with readings and meanings that teased out the fundamental principle of Amida’s Buddha’s compassionate liberation of all beings, which he felt underlay all Buddhism. He continued to use the resources his forebears had preserved and transmitted to him—Amida Buddha, the Pure Land, the nembutsu, the Primal Vow, the way of the bodhisattva—but he ensured their continued vitality by applying them in different, sometimes opposite, ways from their uses in the past, so that they met the needs of the suffering disenfranchised classes rather than insisting those with the least agency somehow overhaul themselves according to demands of unobtainable social positions or ancient cultures impossibly distant from their own. He was comfortable talking about Amida, the Pure Land, and other aspects of Buddhism with literal, symbolic, and pedagogic approaches according to the needs of his listener, and inhabited all of these modes as a person liberated from the boundaries and boxes that society wished to impose and enforce.

This method of respect for the past, combined with attention to the needs of the present, remains an important model for Jodo Shinshu temples today. Our times and places are not those of Shinran any more than Shinran’s were those of Shakyamuni Buddha, so we have to navigate the breathtaking pace of social and technological change and find ways to keep the dharma stream flowing as a genuine source of life and support. And we have to avoid succumbing to the modern Western temptation to simply throw away the old and entrust in the salvific power of the latest cool thing. We’re fortunate to have a guide like Shinran, who showed how to focus on what truly matters: the liberation of all people, not as a theory but as a way of living together in inclusive sanghas that can transform suffering into gratitude and joy.

The book focuses on modern Jodo Shinshu communities and how they’ve served LGBTQ communities, among others. Can you talk a little bit about projects in your sangha? My temple is involved in refugee assistance, and an important previous minister, Rev. Newton Ishiura—this was before my time—was quite involved in Indigenous matters, helping First Nations and Inuit people push for rights in Canadian society. And over the last dozen years or so there’s been a growing push within Jodo Shinshu communities in North America and Hawaii to become educated and sensitive on LGBTQ+ inclusion. 

Jodo Shinshu is sangha-based, it’s not an individualistic, solo-meditator type of Buddhism. It’s family Buddhism, and so if someone comes out to their temple, they’re also coming out to their parents, aunties, grandparents, best friends—if you have difficulty being out to your family, you can’t be out at temple, because it’s the same people. We’re trying to highlight how Buddhism is supportive of LGBTQ+ people and that they’re an important part of the sangha. The nembutsu is precisely for those people whom our culture has labeled “evil” in the first place; when there’s more suffering, that is where Amida Buddha is rushing to. And if we can make our temples an inclusive, affirming, and empowering place, this will flow out to other places as well. Making it OK to be out as yourself at temple can then make it OK to be out at home, at work, on the street, etc.

“We’re fortunate to have a guide like Shinran, who showed how to focus on what truly matters: the liberation of all people.”

We have various LGBTQ+ affinity groups in some of the temples. Gardena Buddhist Church’s Ichi-Mi group just released a video called “A Profound Silence” that interviews various queer people and their allies about their experience as Buddhists and some of the challenges they face. 

This doesn’t mean that these spaces were always inclusive, not because there were reasons in Buddhism for noninclusivity but because people didn’t understand how to be inclusive. From both Japanese and North American culture we’ve inherited degrees of homophobia, sexism, racism, and other challenges that we’re working to eliminate so that we can fulfill the central vision of Pure Land Buddhism: a harmonious, inclusive, welcoming sangha that serves as an engine for liberation.

Organized religion is on the decline in favor of more individualistic forms of practice. Is this the case in Jodo Shinshu communities in North America? And how might Shinran’s message of acceptance and the community’s embrace of often-marginalized groups—like the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants—help keep a congregation strong and connected? Yes, many Jodo Shinshu temples have experienced a contraction in the past generation, just as other religious institutions have. Within all areas of life, our society is undergoing a profound shift from smaller, closely interconnected, local and intimate relationships to larger, loosely interconnected, dispersed networks. Of course that comes with all the advantages and drawbacks—such as freedom and loneliness—that result from such an unprecedented and rapid cultural change.

Those changes represent challenges and opportunities for Jodo Shinshu temples. We’re subject to the same socially corrosive, centrifugal forces as everyone else. But within and between our temples we have an inherently resilient web of intergenerational bonds which helps to mitigate those forces to some degree. Now we need to continue to foster awareness of and continue to activate the radical welcome at the heart of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism.

  As Shinran declares: 

In reflecting on the great ocean of shinjin (the awakened, trusting heart), I realize that there is no discrimination between noble and humble or monks and laypeople, no differentiation between men and women, old and young. The amount of evil one has committed isn’t considered; the duration of religious practices is of no concern. It is a matter of neither practice nor good acts, neither sudden nor gradual attainment, neither meditative nor non-meditative practice, neither right nor wrong contemplation, neither thought nor no-thought, neither daily life nor the moment of death, neither many-calling (of mantras) nor once-calling. It is simply shinjin that is inconceivable, inexplicable, and indescribable. It is like the medicine that eradicates all poisons. The medicine of the Tathagata’s Vow destroys the poisons of our wisdom and foolishness.

Shinran is saying here that Amida Buddha’s vow of universal liberation is a great warm ocean that floats all of us, no matter who we are or what we’ve done. It breaks down all distinctions we erect between our group and so-called others (our “wisdom,” which the Buddha reveals to be foolishness) and accepts everyone just as they are. Our sanghas are called to be part of this great ocean of shinjin, of total acceptance and embrace. The point isn’t to build membership numbers, but naturally when you do have a community that can welcome in those who aren’t given welcome elsewhere, and where people of whatever type feel supported and connected, that will be a place that people want to be. So if we live up to our central religious principles of inclusion and acceptance, that will have a positive effect on keeping the sangha healthy and continuing as an institution that is valued by the community.

A thread throughout the book is Shinran inverting a teaching to make it clearer, and something you wrote in your chapter on the environment really struck me: the Earth is sick without us. Can you speak about this? Some of this comes from the Buddhist experience, but other perspectives as well, such as Indigenous issues in the US and Canada and the Landback movement. There is this idea of nature with a capital “N” as something pristine that we are spoiling. This is a romantic fantasy based on European enlightenment ideas; it has literally never existed. 

And today, whether it’s about the rainforest or whatever is looking bad, we’re like, “oh no, poor Nature.” Even that creates an us and them situation. Everywhere you go, the Amazon, on top of mountains, and in caves and the deserts—there are people living there, and there have always been people living there. This idea that we’re destroying nature is a mental mistake, like when we draw a line around our skin and say, “this is me,” and beyond my skin is not me. Some people talk about getting rid of humans, like we’re a cancer or something. What we need is to slow down and develop a better relationship, better balance, so we stop destroying this thing that we ourselves are a part of. Shinran talks about the ability of the ocean to accept and purify even the most polluted rivers: it’s a metaphor for how Amida Buddha naturally transforms all beings into awakening. The Earth really does have amazing regenerative abilities, but we’re selfishly outstripping its capacity to handle our activities. We need to remember that our presence is part of what makes the land and water healthy, and lean into that role rather than ignorantly treating it all as “natural resources.” 

This attitude is developed by the EcoSangha movement in the mainland Jodo Shinshu temples, and the Green Hongwanji program in the Hawaiian temples. And we saw an example of this at the Jodo Shinshu temple in Winnipeg. They inducted an elm tree as a member of the temple. It’s a small act but a significant one: it recognizes that trees are part of the sangha with us and that we support one another. It’s a reflection of the Pure Land, which is described as a beautiful place where people, birds, trees, and waters all live in harmony and enable one another’s awakening. That’s the vision that animates our temples, and we need to apply it in all areas of life.

♦

The post Shinran’s Engaged Buddhism appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It was in Reading, a town in the county of Berkshire in Southeast England, that Satya Robyn was first exposed to Buddhism. She’d read Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and was drawn to Zen by its aesthetic and to Buddhism in general by the teachings of Pema Chödrön. Interested in learning more, she attended a few beginner’s sessions at a Zen center where, as she noted, the teacher was “wonderful” but “the group wasn’t quite right. . . . There wasn’t enough warmth. I couldn’t feel like I belonged. But I kept going. I talked to the teacher about it, expecting her to say, ‘Just keep doing it,’ but instead she encouraged me to trust that feeling.”

So Robyn did, next trying Tibetan Buddhism—a “culture shock”—and then, many years later, joining a Pure Land group she’d been introduced to through psychotherapy training.

“It hooked me in,” said Robyn. There she encountered the Japanese term bombu, meaning “foolish beings of wayward passion,” and immediately felt she understood it. “We’re all bobbing along on the waves of our greed, hatred, and delusion, they told me. That’s where we begin. And there was something immensely relieving about that for me. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m allowed to be like this.’”

The group, the Amida Order, run at the time by David Brazier, became Robyn’s home. She ordained as a priest and that was when she was given the name Satyavani (satya is Sanskrit for “truth,” and vani, “eloquent communication”)—a fitting name, for in addition to being a psychotherapist, Robyn is a writer. She made it her legal name and shortened it to Satya.

When I asked Robyn about her motivation for becoming a priest, she explained she’d realized that she wanted to make the dharma the center of her life. From there, it was a logical step to want to share the teachings with others.

In addition, she found that her spiritual work dovetailed nicely with her activism. As a member of the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion, she relied on her faith to give her the courage to engage in protests that she would otherwise have shied away from. It even helped her absorb the grave effect of a first arrest: “I’m a good girl, a law-abiding citizen. But I sat in my red robes in the middle of the road, just sobbing about the situation we’re in and feeling the craziness of having to take such an action. Six police officers picked me up and carried me off to a police cell.”

“There is a source of infinite love and wisdom, and my job is to help people find a connection with it.”

This was in 2019. In 2020, Robyn and her partner, Kaspa Thompson, left the Amida Order and became the lead teachers for Bright Earth, a Pure Land Buddhist temple in Malvern, Worcestershire; they continue their own training as lay ministers with Bright Dawn, a center in Coarsegold, California.

“If you had to explain to your Aunt Mary, who knows nothing about Buddhism, what the aim of your practice is,” I asked Robyn, “what would you say?”

“I would say my experience is that there is a source of infinite love and wisdom, and my job is to help people find a connection with it. We call it Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light.

“But it doesn’t really matter what you call it. The important thing is to bring people into a relationship with this source. Religion should be consoling, I think. It should help us feel less afraid, and when we’re less afraid, we’re kinder. Given what we’re facing, the questions I ask myself are, How can we stay grounded and resilient? How can we continue to be kind to ourselves and others without something bigger to lean into?”

The implication, of course, is that “something bigger” is that connection to infinite love. “It’s a difficult thing to sell in this society,” Robyn told me. “And yet when people get it, they really get it.”

For more information on Satya Robyn’s work and teaching—particularly the new dharma study program she and Kaspa offer for those interested in the practical benefits of Pure Land Buddhism—visit brightearth.org.

Q: The central practice of Pure Land Buddhism is chanting the nembutsu in order to be reborn in Amida’s Pure Land. As a modern Buddhist practitioner, why would I want to do this?

In my experience, knowing that you will be OK when you die brings great relief and relaxation. When we recite the nembutsu (“Namu Amida Butsu” or “Namu Amida Bu”), we’re immediately received by Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light. We don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen, and this relaxation offers an assurance that everything will be OK. At the same time, the Pure Land is not an end point. We understand it as the perfect training ground for enlightenment. And once you achieve that, you come back and help people.

The great sage Shinran—successor to Honen, the founder of our school—said that when we recite the nembutsu, we are known and accepted and loved by Amida Buddha. There’s nothing we have to do to earn that love. We are received just as we are. That is just so radical! We don’t need to do any complicated practice; we don’t even need to be good people. We don’t need to have lots of money or be born into the right family or have free time or be academic—we just need to say the name of Amida Buddha, and that’s all that’s necessary. That’s why Pure Land Buddhism came into existence: Honen wanted everybody to have access to this kind of basic acceptance, not just the elite.

As a teacher, I want people to know that they too are acceptable just as they are. I want them to have a taste of this unconditional embrace. Interestingly, sometimes people bring this up as a criticism of the tradition, saying that being accepted just as we are could give us license to do evil. But Shinran said that just because you have an antidote, that doesn’t mean you should drink the poison. It’s still good to be a good person. And in my experience, if somebody loves you, you’re more likely to want to offer them goodness in return.

Still, one of the advantages of being part of Pure Land Buddhism is that there’s permission to be very honest about our limitations. We can be very free about what we can and can’t do. At the same time, we keep trying. We’re all hungry for connection, for love. That’s what we’re doing in our practice: we’re taking refuge by leaning into love.

–Satya Robyn

The post Meet a Teacher: Satya Robyn appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When in my heart/mind the thought arises to say the nembutsu [recitation of Amida Buddha’s name], entrusting myself to the inconceivable aspiration of Amida which is helping me and making me live renewed, then I have definitely received the benefit of being grasped, never to be abandoned.

—Shinran Shonin, quoted in Tannisho (“Record of Divergences”)

At a gathering of the Buddhist Council of the Midwest, I heard a Sri Lankan monk give a talk titled “Put On Your Own Mask First Before Helping Others.” He said he was explaining the metta (“loving-kindness”) meditation to people visiting his temple in the suburbs. He told them that you begin with directing lovingkindness to yourself, then to others around you, and so on in ever-widening circles. But a woman in the group said, “It’s easy to send thoughts of lovingkindness to others, but it’s hard to think of giving lovingkindness to myself.” So the monk told her, “It’s like when you fly on an airplane, the flight attendants demonstrate how to put on the oxygen mask that comes down if there’s a drop in pressure. They always say, ‘Put on your own mask first before helping others.’ So like the oxygen mask, you have to give yourself lovingkindness first or you really can’t give it to others.”

It’s not on you to give yourself lovingkindness as if it were something you could call up with a click of a button.

To me that woman was expressing how a lot of us feel—all our lives hearing the chorus of internal voices telling us we’re not good enough while simultaneously making us feel it is our personal obligation to care for our family members and others who need help. But I’ve found that in listening to the teachings of Pure Land Buddhism, you realize that it doesn’t matter how undeserving you feel because of not meeting society’s standards. You—along with each and every other person—are included in the Buddha’s enlightenment. The spiritual awakening of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni and all the buddhas before and after him is valid only if it includes all beings.

It’s not on you to give yourself lovingkindness as if it were something you could call up with a click of a button. The problem with the oxygen mask analogy is that it assumes we are the able-bodied, mentally competent adult who easily grabs their dangling mask and then goes about assisting children with their masks. The Pure Land teachings point out that we are more like the child, unable to reach the mask or understand what it is for. In the turbulence of our lives, we are gasping for air until the moment when someone puts that oxygen mask on us. For many of us, that moment is when we encounter the teachings of Buddhism, miraculously brought to us through eons of causes and conditions by the good friend or friends (kalyanamitra) who guide us to what we were unable to find on our own.

To awaken to the awareness of being helped is to enter the path of humility and gratitude. The responsibility to give lovingkindness to ourselves and others has been shifted from our individual self to a whole collection of beings helping each other. This “whole collection of beings” is symbolized by Amida, the representative of all our ancestors, teachers, and friends, whose deepest wish is for our spiritual liberation. This liberation is seen when we come out of our cubbyholes of self-concern and participate in the community of mutual assistance, the concrete expression of the wisdom of oneness. The nembutsu, to use the words of bell hooks, is calling us to abandon the narcissistic project of “self-improvement” and awaken to “the practice of love within the context of community.”

The post You Can’t Go It Alone appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Pure Land Buddhism is one of the most widely practiced forms of Buddhism in East Asia, and in Japan, Shin Buddhism—a development of Pure Land—is particularly popular. Can you describe the core practice of Shin Buddhism? Jodo Shinshu—or Shin Buddhism, as it is known in the West—is actually the largest school of Buddhism in Japan. The heart of Pure Land practice is chanting the name of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Infinite Light: Namu Amida Butsu, a practice known as the nembutsu (literally, “mindful of the Buddha”). The name comes from Sanskrit, the classical language of Buddhist India: Namo Amitabha Buddha. In China, this becomes Namo Amitoufo, and in Japan, Namu Amida Butsu. Namo comes from “namas” as in the Sanskrit phrase Namaste, which means “I bow to you.” Bowing is an act of humility on the part of the ordinary human being who is filled with attachments and delusions. Amitabha Buddha signifies the “awakening of infinite light,” the illumination of emptiness and oneness that arises from the deepest reality of the true self. Thus, in Shin Buddhism chanting Namu Amida Butsu means “I, this foolish being filled with attachments and blind passions, entrust myself to the awakening of infinite light, the boundless compassion that arises from the oneness of reality.”

Meditation is a core practice in many schools of Buddhism, but in Shin Buddhism it is not regarded as a necessary practice for attaining enlightenment. Is any meditation considered to have spiritual value?  In some traditions, such as Zen, silent seated meditation is the primary practice and chanting is an auxiliary practice. In Pure Land Buddhism, it’s the other way around—while there may be some silent meditation, chanting is the primary contemplative practice.

Most Buddhist schools combine regular repetitive practice with insight practice. From earliest times in India into the present, there has been a balance of samatha and vipassana—single-minded concentration and deep insight. Thus, in Zen meditation, practicing sustained concentration through regular repeated seated meditation alone is insufficient. Similarly, insight into the nature of reality—or in Zen, the recognition of ultimate emptiness or oneness—is by itself insufficient. It is the combination of body-mind practice, concentration with insight, that is the foundation of practice.

So, too, in Pure Land Buddhism it is not enough to simply repeat the chant Namu Amida Butsu. One must realize the depth of one’s foolishness, one’s blind passions, with the simultaneous unfolding of great compassion. The foolishness of the ego-self is illuminated and dissolved by the truest, deepest reality of the self: emptiness, oneness, boundless compassion.

Honen, founder of the Jodo-shu Pure Land school, and his disciple Shinran, founder of Shin Buddhism, are two of the most important figures in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. What are the differences between them and their schools of Pure Land practice? The difference between Shinran and Honen lies in their emphases. Honen emphasized repetition as the foundation of practice: chanting Namu Amida Butsu over and over, continuously. Shinran, on the other hand, emphasized the depth of awareness: realizing one’s foolishness simultaneously with the awakening of infinite light arising from deep within.

Ultimately, the chanting does not come from the conscious self, the ego-self. It arises from the deepest reality of the self: emptiness, or the formless dharmakaya, buddhanature beyond form, beyond words. When we chant Namu Amida Butsu, continuous practice and deep realization merge. It is like learning to play the violin: When one truly devotes oneself to practice, repetition and profound, inspired performance go hand in hand. There is the experience of the music flowing through one. Rather than being conscious of oneself as the musician, or the subject manipulating the object, subject and object—musician and music—become one. The poet T. S. Eliot writes of “music heard so deeply/ That it is not heard at all, but you are the music/ While the music lasts.” This is also true of the practice of chanting Namu Amida Butsu. When one is truly steeped in the practice, it occurs not through conscious effort but arises spontaneously from the deepest self, the self of emptiness and great compassion.

The goal of Shin Buddhism is to bring all beings to liberation. The chanting of Namu Amida Butsu signifies this with the realization that I am already embraced in boundless compassion; however, I have yet to realize this in practice. Already, but not yet: “All beings are one with me in the deep flow of oneness. Therefore, I am moved to become one with all beings.”

“Chanting does not come from the conscious self, the ego-self. It arises from the deepest reality of the self: emptiness, of the formless dharmakaya, buddhanature beyond form, beyond words.”

Can you describe the relationship between Shin Buddhism and Shinto beliefs and practices? In Japan, religion began as integral to the project of nation building. Many strands were brought together to create Japan’s national narrative, including the creation of a Japanese “state religion” that combined elements of Confucianism for governance and social organization, Daoism for the story of creation and some deity names, and Buddhism for an overarching framework of principles (“This world is an illusion, only the Buddha is true,” stated the 7th-century prince Shotoku) and the afterlife, along with continued worship of native Shinto deities, or kami.

During the Kamakura period (1185–1333), many monks began to reject the idea of Buddhism as part of state religion, among them Honen and Shinran, the founders of the rising Pure Land schools. They both declared that one need not worship the kami and that the practice of invoking the great compassion of Amida Buddha alone would be sufficient. At the same time, they did not tell their followers to attack or disregard the kami. All sentient beings were included in the larger community, including the kami. Most of the other schools of Japanese Buddhism included worship of the kami and placed Shinto shrines within the Buddhist temple precincts. Shinran did not include this practice, and so Shin Buddhist temples do not include Shinto shrines even today.

Are the teachings and practices of Shin Buddhism different from those found in Chinese Pure Land Buddhism? In China, chanting the name of Amida Buddha originally developed separately from Chan Buddhist meditation (which later became Zen meditation in Japan). There were masters who taught at temples that primarily emphasized nianfo (Chinese for nembutsu), the practice of the name, or “mindful chanting.” There were also masters who primarily emphasized Zen meditation. However, by the Song dynasty era (around the 12th century), Pure Land and Zen had fused in China so that both practices were taught in the same temple. In Japan, there was some intermingling of Zen and Pure Land practice early on, but during the Kamakura period, Zen and Pure Land became major movements and arose as separate schools or sects. Thus, while in China they came together, in Japan they developed separately, and that continues to be the case today.

Early Buddhism emphasized self-reliance; but the focus of Shin Buddhism is reliance on Amida Buddha for one’s salvation—an external source. Can Shin Buddhism even be considered a form of Buddhism? In Shin Buddhism, practice based on the conscious ego-self is called “self-power” practice. Practice that is realized from the depths of emptiness or oneness, which is beyond ego calculation, is called “other-power” practice. But “other power” does not refer to an external being, like a god. It really means “other than ego.” The foolish being filled with blind passions is the calculating ego, the karmic self. Amida Buddha as the self-expression of emptiness, oneness, and boundless compassion, the deepest reality of the self, is the “Amida self,” as it were. For this reason, Shinran states that “true entrusting is buddhanature.”

The foolish being who entrusts the self to the awakening of infinite light does not do so with ego-intention. Letting go of the ego and entrusting oneself to the flow of reality that arises from deep within occurs from the true self beyond words—one’s own buddhanature. Yet this is true for all schools of Mahayana Buddhism. As the Zen master Dogen, founder of the Soto school, states of the nature of practice, “One throws oneself into the realm of the Buddha, and true practice unfolds from the side of the Buddha.” In esoteric Buddhism (Zhenyan in Chinese, or Shingon in Japanese), there are five cosmic buddhas who all lend the practitioner the cosmic power of their “added realization,” or kaji. Yet these cosmic buddhas also turn out to be manifestations of buddhanature, emptiness, and oneness: that is, the true nature of the self.

Taking refuge in the three jewels—the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha—is a practice common to many schools of Buddhism. Does it hold the same significance in Shin Buddhism? Besides chanting the nembutsu, Shin Buddhism includes many other practices such as taking the three refuges, bowing, offering incense, and so on. At the same time, nembutsu is said to contain all other practices; so if all one can do is to practice the nembutsu, that is sufficient. Shinran thus states that the nembutsu is “the basis of all good, all virtue.”

Although Shin Buddhism is non-monastic, there are Shin priests, like yourself. Can you speak about Shin priesthood? How does it differ from monasticism in other forms of Buddhism? Does the concept of sangha take on a different meaning in the context of shin? Shin Buddhist priests are usually married and have families, so it is a “lay priesthood.” This has been the case since the time of Shinran himself. Shinran had a wife named Eshinni, and together they had seven children. For thirty years they lived as partners in ministry among the farmers and ordinary laypeople in the countryside. Both Shinran and Eshinni are always depicted wearing priests’ robes, and “Eshinni” is itself a name that reflects her ordained status.

Although the Shin lay priesthood is unusual in Buddhism, it actually reflects the foundations of Mahayana Buddhism, which as a movement shifted the focus away from monkhood and toward the community of all sentient beings.

This is why, when we look at the “three baskets” of Buddhist sacred scripture—Sutra (teachings of the Buddha), Shastra (treatises or explanations of the Buddha’s teachings), and Vinaya (monastic regulations)—we see that when Mahayana Buddhism emerged, entirely new sutras and shastras were created; yet there is no special Mahayana vinaya that is exclusively focused on renunciant monks and nuns. Laypeople are even featured as the protagonists of Mahayana sutras, such as the layman Vimalakirti in the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra and the queen in the sutra The Lion’s Roar of Queen Shrimala. So while the sangha of early Indian Buddhism is the community of monks and nuns, the sangha of Mahayana Buddhism is the cosmic community of all sentient beings. In Zen Buddhism, even trees and grasses are said to be enlightened.

Shinran famously stated: “I am neither monk nor layman.” This means that on the path of Shin Buddhism and boundless compassion, there is no distinction between lay and monastic. At the same time, this statement by Shinran can be understood as a reflection of his own self-realization: “As a foolish being, I am not qualified to call myself a good layman or a good monk. I simply entrust myself to the awakening of infinite light.” Both readings can be true, and both can be seen in the practice of the name: Namu Amida Butsu, “I, this foolish being, entrust myself to the awakening of infinite light.” Or as the modern Shin Buddhist poet Saichi states, “How wonderful, how wonderful!/ In the cosmos utterly empty/ All are buddhas/ I, too, am included/ Namu Amida Butsu.”

What do you regard as the major relevance of Shin Buddhism for the world today? Until the 20th century, the highest attainment of bodhi, or awakening, was reserved primarily for the ecclesiastical class—the ordained—and only a small percentage of laypeople practiced seated meditation or went on extended meditation retreats. While increasing numbers of people have engaged in meditation and other contemplative practices since the latter half of the 20th century—first in the West, then in Asia and elsewhere—they often lack the support and teachings that are relevant to facing the complex challenges of the modern world. Shin Buddhism arose specifically for those of us who live in the world of attachments and blind passions, so that the deepest realization of the dharma is made available to all of us. I often share the path of Shin Buddhism with people who have never heard of it, yet it seems to speak to them immediately as relevant to their own difficulties and spiritual quests. I feel that this interview is another wonderful opportunity to share the Buddha Way. How wonderful! Thank you. Palms together.

♦

This interview is adapted from “The Essence of Shin Buddhism” by Mark Unno, originally published in Eastern Horizon 66 (May 2022), and is reprinted by permission of Eastern Horizon.

The post The Awakening of Infinite Light appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Buddhist studies scholars since the 19th century have paid noticeably less attention to Buddhist laywomen than to other practitioners. Most scholarship has been concerned with men, but even the studies that do discuss Buddhist women have focused largely on nuns or female renunciants, with laywomen—wives, mothers, and caregivers in their communities—receiving scant attention. The implicit assumption is that women’s most authentic spiritual selves must exist independently of their families.

But Jessica Starling, an associate professor of religious studies and Asian studies at Lewis & Clark College, is addressing this dearth of scholarship with her research on Japanese Shin Buddhist temple wives.

There is no strong tradition of ordination for women in the Jodo Shinshu (“True Pure Land school”) tradition, and since Buddhist monks can and do marry in Japan, the closest thing to a nun is the resident priest’s wife, known as bomori, or “temple guardian.” Starling’s book, Guardians of the Buddha’s Home: Domestic Religion in Contemporary Jodo Shinshu, chronicles her interactions with bomori and shows how they navigate culturally and religiously mandated domesticity. Bomori are expected to stay at home and tend to the temple—and to bring up multiple children, one of whom (probably the oldest son) will one day be the next resident priest (jushoku).

Starling’s close examination of Pure Land households, however, revealed an unforeseen gender dynamic. Feminist thinkers have long debated the role that domestic labor plays in inequality: first-wave feminists championed waged work as the key to escaping culturally mandated domesticity, while second-wave feminists argued that we ought to uplift the dignity of the labor traditionally relegated to women. Bomori complicate this picture: by staying at home, they actually gain status as ecclesiastic figures.

“The very gender ideology that divides labor along gender lines and ‘confines’ women to staying at home in fact renders temple wives de facto religious professionals,” Starling writes. When the resident priest leaves the temple to perform ceremonies or visit the laity, bomori become the highest authority. They use their knowledge of Buddhist doctrine as well as their skills as housewives (serving tea, chatting with visitors) to both welcome laypeople and educate them in the dharma.

Tricycle spoke to Starling about what bomori do, how having a family can be a way of spreading the dharma, and why it’s important for scholars to decenter the role of male priests.

Who are bomori? Officially, the term refers to the spouse of the resident priest of a Jodo Shinshu temple. Because resident priests are overwhelmingly male, bomori basically means the wife. How someone performs the role is very individualized: there’s no strict prescription from the Jodo Shinshu higher-ups. Bomori do a lot of the behind-the-scenes work of running the temple, maintaining the community, and making sure parishioners feel invited. They keep the atmosphere, making the temple a warm, friendly, and hospitable place to be, and they organize events such as the meals that follow services. Many also clean and decorate the altar.

The boundary between the religious and domestic spheres of a Jodo Shinshu temple is far more permeable than one might think. A bomori’s work extends from the “private,” domestic realm into the space for Buddhist worship; it’s impossible to draw a hard line between the two.

What does her day typically look like? The structure of the bomori’s day will depend on whether her husband is a full-time priest who’s busy visiting parishioners’ houses and doing ritual services, such as funerals, traveling to give dharma talks, or hosting events at the temple. Some temples aren’t that busy, so the husband might take an office job or become a teacher at a local high school or something like that.

But most bomori tend to the temple all day long. The temple is essentially a public institution, and most temples want to keep the main hall open all the time. She needs to be around to receive visitors to the temple, answer their questions, and serve them tea if they want to talk for a little bit. There’s also clerical work to do, phone calls to place for scheduling services, and deliveries to be received. So the bomori is just kind of there. She holds down the fort. And that’s where her name comes from—bomori, meaning “guardian or protector of the temple.”

Your book highlights the role of family as the connective tissue of Pure Land Buddhist communities. But speaking generally, a non-Asian practitioner or scholar steeped in Buddhist modernist ideals might not recognize a mom with a kid squirming in her arms as a “true Buddhist practitioner,” at least not at first. Yes. I certainly have been questioned by both Western and Japanese scholars about how “Buddhist” my research material actually is. There continues to be a sense that authentic Buddhism is grounded in texts. For most of its existence, the field of Buddhist studies has tended to define its object of study in relation to the Buddhist doctrine that’s been written down. This has been changing, at least in the past two decades or so, but it’s been a big challenge for scholars to bring women fully into the picture. This is partially because of the dearth of doctrinal texts written by Buddhist women. And Buddhist texts are relatively ambivalent about women and women’s bodies, if not overtly misogynistic.

“The chanting happening in the main hall is not separate from the cooking going on in the kitchen—the scriptures are not self-contained.”

Japanese Buddhist texts include some sutras and some of the writings of the founders of the various schools of Buddhism, such as Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of Jodo Shinshu; Nichiren (1222–1282); and Eihei Dogen (1200–1253). Unfortunately, virtually no important Buddhist texts have been written by women, so scholars have had to look elsewhere to make sense of women’s religious activity.

I knew I had to look closely at what happens in the domestic sphere and the importance of interpersonal relationships—which is such a crucial part of women’s role at the temple—in sustaining the Buddhist tradition.

Domestic labor is not really considered “work,” let alone anything spiritual. How does your book make the bomori’s work legible as religious activity? What I felt I needed to do with this book was help my audience—who I imagined would be mainly Western scholars—take more seriously these practices, which get overlooked because of their place in the domestic world. I wanted the reader to see that the meaning of the chanting happening in the main hall is not separate from the cooking going on in the kitchen—that the scriptures are not self-contained. Meaning emerges in social contexts, so within a family-run temple particular kinds of meanings are made.

For a few decades now, academics have pushed for the study of “lived religion,” arguing that the classic spirit-matter divide has continued to inform our views of religion and that these views were shaped by a Protestant bias concerning what constitutes religion’s authentic sphere of activity—namely, the disembodied, nonmaterial realm.

Many people who are less familiar with Japanese Buddhism may be surprised to learn not only that priests marry and have families but that the temple system itself largely depends on an inheritance system in which a priest passes his temple down to his son. This has been the case for all established Buddhist traditions or sects since the Meiji period (1868–1912), even if they were historically more monastic. In most parish temples in Japan today the family temple system is used, whereby the jushoku, resident priest, is expected to be succeeded by one of his children, usually his oldest son. (They often call the eldest son “young successor” or “junior jushoku.”) While the temple is like a public institution and the center of a religious community to some extent, it’s also his home. There isn’t a clear demarcation between the priest’s family affairs and the affairs of the temple, and his wife helps with all of them.

Other Buddhist schools had to readjust to the practice of priests marrying, but in the Jodo Shinshu this family system has been around for much longer. Shinran had already set a new standard for the religious professional in this tradition. He, like other Buddhist reformers in medieval Japan, subscribed to the idea of mappo, or the degenerate age of the dharma. Under mappo, he thought, practitioners were no longer spiritually capable of mastering the difficult path to enlightenment. It was in your interest to give yourself entirely to the working of Amida Buddha. He was articulating a path away from what is called jiriki, or “self-power,” toward tariki, or “other power.”

Shinran embraced his own inability to live a truly pure, celibate life, and he was open about having a wife and kids. He basically said, “I’m not a monk or a layperson, I’m just a devotee of Amida.” And so the movement that followed him didn’t have any expectation that the priest had to be celibate. During the Tokugawa period (1603–1867), Jodo Shinshu was the one Buddhist tradition that was given an exemption by the government so that the head of a temple could be married and still have the status of priest.

You note that other recently published academic texts focusing on contemporary Japanese temple Buddhism have mostly looked at the men. Most of these studies concentrate on the priest’s official activities—taking ordination, giving sermons, performing rituals. But you write, “I wanted to go even further by asking what Buddhism looks like if we do not put male priests at the center of our story at all.” How did you come to that question? At the time of my first trip to Japan, I was maybe 21 years old. I had a job teaching English in a little fishing village. A coworker in the school board office found out that I had studied religion in college and took me to a Buddhist temple. When we got there, the priest came in, and he had just slipped on his robes, one of my first indicators that this place was his home. He lit some incense and tried to explain what Amida was. He invited us to sit down in a room to the side. Then this woman came in, brought us tea and some delicious sweet, and just left. She wasn’t dressed in robes or anything, and no one introduced her. I know now that she was the bomori.

Before that encounter I had assumed that a Buddhist priest would be celibate and living alone. That clearly wasn’t the case, so I started to question everything I had learned about Buddhism up to that point. Years later, I went back to that temple and interviewed the priest and the bomori for my book. They told me their son was slated to become the successor, but he was off working a regular job while his parents were still able to run the temple. In this case, it’s obvious that family relationships are the connective tissue of the tradition: they’re what are sustaining the temples.

Scholars often stop at that first introduction to the temple, where the priest presents Buddhism to the outsider, sort of like my first encounter: “This is what we do here.” But there’s this backstage thing happening, and I thought that was equally important. With my research, I had an advantage: my daughter was 9 months old when I started doing my fieldwork, and she would come with me. So the women I was interviewing would play with her and feed her, and it usually felt very natural and casual. Being a mother myself, I was able to access that other realm of the temple in a way that other scholars perhaps hadn’t even seen.

Can a temple wife become a resident priest? It is possible for a woman to become the head priest of her family’s temple. In that case, the temple either doesn’t have a bomori or she asks her husband or mother-in-law to be the bomori. Often a bomori has the same religious credentials as her husband, even if she’s not technically the head priest. That means from an institutional perspective, she’s just as qualified as her husband to do rituals and hold services. There is a group of Jodo Shinshu women, now mostly in their seventies, who were part of second-wave feminism in Japan. They spent the 1990s working for institutional recognition and created a kind of feminist movement within the Jodo Shinshu. Temple wives were already very organized—the history of fujinkai, or women’s associations, dates back to the early 20th century, and there are bomori associations especially for temple wives—and they used these networks to raise institutional consciousness about the fact that their tradition was so behind on gender equality.

Many women at the time got their kyoshi degree, or teaching degree, which takes one or two years at an accredited Jodo Shinshu university and makes one eligible to become jushoku of a temple. One of the reasons their generation did this was to make a point—they wanted, in principle, to be equal to their husbands. However, the percentage of female jushokus who currently occupy the main administrative and social role at a temple remains quite small. More frequently a woman receives ordination just in case a male member of her family cannot fulfill the role of priest. And when a woman does become a jushoku, it’s often seen as a temporary fix until a male priest can take over the line.

“Some bomori think it’s too exhausting to try to break the glass ceiling. Others see it as their mission.”

But there’s a longer history of the Jodo Shinshu opening up these kinds of channels for women. In 1909, the Hongwanji-ha, a major Pure Land subsect, amended its bylaws to make it possible for women who had taken kikyoshiki (lay ordination) to become certified as female lay instructors. It was not clear what function these new titles were expected to serve, although allowing women to do these things encouraged doctrinal study among Buddhist women’s groups and offered an official position for lay leaders, both male and female. Around this time, the bomori’s role was becoming increasingly codified, and there was a lot written about the importance of an education in Buddhist doctrine so that the bomori could not only support her husband but also educate her son—the future jushoku—as well as the temple’s parishioners.

How are these ideas put to work in a bomori’s life today? Most of the acculturation to roles at the temple happens within the family. Many bomori learn from their mothers-in-law what is expected of them, and those informal internships are how ideals for the role get passed down across generations. Interestingly, most bomori are apologetic about how they fail to live up to whatever ideal they have in their minds for the role. They would often show me how they did things in practice, while claiming that “really” (honto wa) it should be done some other way, but that they unfortunately couldn’t achieve that ideal themselves.

Ideas about the gendered division of labor within temple families have certainly been shaped by the dominant gender norms of the 20th century. But the role of the temple wife is also unique in some ways. Her home is also a religious institution, so nothing she does is strictly confined to the private realm in terms of its religious significance.

I think bomori “feel their gender” the most when they step out of their sanctioned role as housewives. The response from laypeople is often dismissive, so there’s some discomfort and dissonance. Say a parishioner comes by and asks for a ritual, but the jushoku is away, so the bomori offers to do it in his stead. The layperson, feeling uncomfortable with a woman doing the jushoku’s role, might be like, “Oh, you don’t need to do all that; I can just wait until your husband’s available.” There’s still resistance to having the wife fulfill the ritual role or having the husband do things like serve tea.

Some bomori think it’s too exhausting to try to break through that glass ceiling. They are more comfortable inhabiting the slightly less visible and more expected role as bomori, one that doesn’t involve those awkward confrontations. Others, however, want to do it—they see it as their mission to keep practicing with and despite those pressures and help their congregations become more accustomed to seeing a woman take the lead at the temple. And others aren’t choosing to become a priest for feminist reasons at all: it’s because of some family situation such as illness that causes them to take on that extra responsibility as jushoku, because no male successor is available.

It’s fascinating that the division of labor that confines women to the home turns these temple wives into the religious professionals of the temple, because when their husbands aren’t there they often end up stepping into the role of jushoku. Interestingly, if you ask one, “Are you a professional?” she’ll likely say, “No, no, I don’t know what I’m doing.” But it’s clearly the case that everyone perceives her as being an expert in what she does and having a special identity and status for the position she occupies. In the wider community, when people see one out and about, they say, “Oh, there’s the bomori” or sometimes just “Otera-san” (“Temple person”). That’s a status and an identity, whether she likes it or not. She is the temple, to some extent.

It’s disappointing that in scholarship about religion, women’s domestic activities are often held up as an example about how oppressed or contingent a woman’s position is. The sense is that if she’s not acting fully independently of her family, then her religious activities aren’t significant. What happens when we really look at what the women are doing? Part of what makes a bomori so fully identified with the temple is that she’s always there; she’s the face that greets you. She’s a center and coordinator of community and an important point of contact for the laity. Presumably if the person who took me to the temple during that first visit when I was 21 hadn’t called ahead and told the priest, “I’m bringing this American, get your robes on”—if I had just wandered in—the bomori would have been there, and she would have made the tea and tried to answer my questions, even while demurring that she was not a real priest. Most of them are very reluctant to claim any special authority. But they have all kinds of expertise in running a Buddhist temple. The bomori is an essential worker who is keeping Buddhism alive in Japan.

The post Temple Wives appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“Thank god, I’m a Buddhist!”

It may not be surprising for anyone growing up in the United States to hear someone blurt out an expression like “thank god.” Religion in America is often understood with the template of Christianity as the default framework, and this common phrase reflects that. But this default framework poses a challenge to introducing Shin Buddhism, which offers a different model of spirituality. The essential practice of Shin Buddhism is to voice the Buddha’s Name, “Namo Amida Butsu,” with a sense of gratitude. Viewed from a superficial point of view, this may appear to be a prayer voiced to a god, but that’s not entirely accurate. Unfortunately, using unfamiliar traditional terminology to explain its meaning may add another layer of confusion. (Terms such as “bodhisattva,” “vow,” “Amida,” and “Other Power” would each take a chapter to explain.)  

Rather than relying on definitions of traditional terminology, modern Shin Buddhists move directly toward an experience or a practice. However, the practice is not motivated by achieving a future goal, but instead by appreciating what has been received. The practice is to cultivate our minds to shift from focusing on what is discomforting to a mind that is blissful. It focuses on the experience of the present moment and not on a desired future, and in doing so, Shin Buddhism provides a method of awakening for ordinary, working people who are not monks and nuns. 

To experience a Shin view of life, we use “please” to denote a prayer, and “thank you” to express that we acknowledge receiving a gift. With these phrases in mind, the Shin practice of voicing the Buddha’s name is to shift our minds from a desired outcome, “please,” to the reality of receiving the present moment, “thank you.” This sense of gratitude is traditionally aimed toward the compassion of Amida Buddha. Amida is the Japanese term that combines two Sanskrit words: Amitabha (light) and Amitayus (life). Thus, Amida Buddha represents immeasurable light and infinite life. Light and life are two phenomena that comprise all that we know on this earth and this universe.

We might relate more easily to the experience of Amida Buddha by using the familiar terms “efforts of others.” A Shin life of gratitude is to constantly realize that our present moment is the result of the efforts of others. The “efforts of others” goes beyond the contributions of humans. It represents all life forms and history. For example, consider what is involved in presenting a meal: raising vegetables or animals by farmers, preparing them for market, transporting them to suppliers, selling them to customers, and preparing the meals for consumption. All phases of this process have involved evolution, science, innovation, sacrifice, and labor. Interdependence reminds us that everything is intricately connected to sustain us. Thus, “thank you” is an effective introduction to the experience of voicing “Namo Amida Butsu.”

The perspective and quality of life shifts as one acknowledges the benefits of human life in this way. The joy revealed by saying “thank you” puts the desires of the ego, “please,” in perspective. Receiving a gift affirms that we are included with others. We begin to see ourselves in terms of “we,” not just “me.” The natural result is our participation as part of the “effort of others” for the betterment of all others. As we acknowledge that we have received much in life, our natural response is to serve others.

Constantly expressing gratitude for things such as the common conveniences of modern life helps us develop a broader and deeper insight into the unique and wondrous gift of life itself. The mindfulness of gratitude brings the attitude achieved on the meditation cushion to the hectic circus of ordinary life. This refreshing active mindset has made Shin Buddhism the largest Buddhist sect in Japan. And this non-dual practice may help Americans heal the current social divide, too.

Expressing gratitude is just the opening gate of a deep spiritual experience of “Namo Amida Butsu.” As the sentiment of “thank you” permeates our ordinary life, we begin to replace it with “Namo Amida Butsu” or the shorter chant, “Na Man Da Bu.” The beauty of Shin Buddhism is that this practice in ordinary life leads to deeper insights. We realize that the difference between ordinary and spiritual is determined solely by our own minds. What may have been considered spiritual a century ago is now considered ordinary. But everything that has benefitted us is a result of the “efforts of others” or the “compassion of Amida Buddha.” Our human birth or the care and feeding of an infant and child could be considered ordinary. But with the perspective of 14 billion years of light and five billion years of life, we can qualify this process as spiritual. The Buddha reminds us of this reality as we voice the Name, “Na Man Da Bu.” 

For those who have not renounced the ordinary life of work and family, the Buddha provided an awakening process in the practice of Shin Buddhism. Awakening to the rare opportunity of human birth balances the dread of suffering and death. However, this truth must be practiced in order to become real.  

Holding the quality of gratitude opens us up to many of the deeper lessons of Shin. The three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance still exist, but do not dominate our lives. Our individual ego is merged with others and the qualities of humility, kindness, acceptance, and wholeness emerge. The compassion of Amida Buddha remains primary as we continue to experience the “efforts of others” for our benefit. Namo Amida Butsu.

♦

For more on gratitude in Shin Buddhism, read  “Finding Spirit in the Ordinary”

The post The Efforts of Others appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Visitors to our Shin temple often voice surprise when they see that the atmosphere is somewhat casual and not as exotic as anticipated. The members of the sangha are friendly and welcoming—they don’t seem to display the reserved and meditative posture one might expect at a Buddhist temple. This may be because of the expectation of the visitors and not so much because of the conduct of the sangha, or temple members.

As the Zen roshi Shunryu Suzuki observed, the truth of the dharma could be expressed in just two words: “Not always so.” Zen has a way of slapping us awake in a moment. Shin Buddhism originated and developed as a path of Buddhism for nonmonastics, people in common life, and the methods, practices, and conduct of Shin followers may seem incongruous to what many assume to be Buddhist traits. There is a rich treasure beneath the veneer of ordinary life. Some background can provide a context for realizing the integrity and depth that Shin (more fully Jodo Shinshu) provides in ordinary life.

Since the life of an ordinary layperson is quite different from that of a monastic, the practice, or awakening process, of a Shin practitioner is different from that of a monk. Shinran, the Tendai monk in 13th-century Japan who founded the tradition that is now the largest Buddhist sect in Japan, interpreted the sutras in a way that resonated profoundly with the laity, and his teachings already benefit many Americans who seek a spiritual path in everyday life.

Following a lineage of Pure Land masters, Shinran emphasizes reliance on being mindful of the truth that our lives are the result of the effort of others. This mindfulness is maintained by the continual voicing of the refrain “Namo Amida Butsu,” which is called the nembutsu. It literally means to be mindful of Amida Buddha.

For some, Amida Buddha may be envisioned in human form. However, for most contemporary American Shin practitioners, the name Amida literally means “light and life,” which comprises all known elements of this earth and universe. We can relate to this more intimately by the “effort of others,” which includes parents, teachers, ancestors, society, and plants, animals, and minerals that sustain us. Astronomers, geologists, biologists, anthropologists, and other scientists trace our origination to causes and conditions beyond our comprehension. We have inherited the results of 14 billion years of evolution, and the Buddha reflects this process in mythical form. As contemporary people, limited in knowledge and true wisdom, we seek a meaning of Amida Buddha that is relatable. Shinran provides a way.

Solely saying the Tathagata’s [Buddha’s] Name constantly,
One should respond with gratitude to the universal Vow of great compassion. 

—Collected Works of Shinran

Speaking the nembutsu, “Namo Amida Butsu,” acknowledges our awakening to our inclusion in this incredible life process. The practice of Shin is to develop the heart and mind to align with the truth that we have received this life by no effort of our own. This practice is based on a life of gratitude, something so deeply ingrained in one’s life that it may appear imperceptible to others, although there is a refreshing spirituality that is displayed in ordinary life activities. When I’m enjoying the company of family or fellow sangha members, my thoughts are not about being spiritual. I am being very human in the enjoyment of the food at the potluck, the discussion in our dharma session, or even in the business of a committee meeting. The essence of a Shin Buddhist life is to appreciate the “now.” Of course, the atmosphere of the religious service in our hondo (“main hall,” or sanctuary) is one of religiosity. However, I’ve often stated that Shin is lived in the social hall when we take refreshments with others after the service.

Another important feature of Shin in America is the inclusion of family life in the temple, where dharma classes for children are offered along with youth groups and sports and other activities. The values of Shin are incorporated in all activities; as with every skill we master as humans, we begin with a conscious, mindful practice until it becomes a natural part of our lives.

A toddler stands, then walks, and eventually runs, skips, and dances. From childhood to adulthood, we learn letters that become words that become sentences that become conversations. We may have forgotten how universal is the process of a long-term conscious practice that leads to an effortless naturalness. Driving a car, playing an instrument, cooking a meal, or working on a computer all began with a conscious determination to master the activity. Therefore, a conscious daily practice of expressing “Thank you” can lead to a natural life of gratitude.

For those who are new to Shin, I suggest adopting the practice of saying “Thank you” to all the conveniences we enjoy daily. This is a shift from our usual mindset of “Please,” the request that life accommodate our every desire. We can start each day with thoughts of gratitude as we recite the words “Namo Amida Butsu.” This mindful meditation is continued during the day as we say “Thank you” as we flip on a light or turn on a faucet. Saying “Thank you” at a stop light demonstrates our awareness that other cars have a green light and that our relationship with others is in harmony.

To a Shin Buddhist, spirituality is experienced in the flow of everyday life. Monks and scholars may analyze, discuss, and argue the merits of various levels of the Buddha’s teachings. For us common lay followers, the practice of gratitude brings us directly to the heart of the Buddha’s teachings. It is the attitude that in each moment being human itself is a spiritual experience.

The concept of a Pure Land is central to the mythology of our sect. This holy place, this pure realm, is a state of consciousness rather than a geographical place. We know this realm when we experience gratitude. To be a buddha means to be an awakened being, and being a Buddhist is a constant cycle of waking up to the unique experience of human life. There is no practice that we can undertake to achieve the condition of human life. Everything has been received. There is nowhere else to go, no practice to fulfill, no petition for a better future. Our inconceivable birth has occurred on this improbable planet in this impossible universe, at this precise time in galactic history. Evolution has developed the human mind and heart in order to awaken to this spiritual realm. In this realm, all life is spiritual. The voicing of “Namo Amida Butsu” is both a stimulus to and a response to our waking to the reality of being included as an integral part of this vast universe.

The realm of gratitude transcends the duality of good or bad, right or wrong. The burden of guilt or righteousness is lifted; with this perspective I can accept the harsh realities of the human condition. Even when my intellect and emotions complain about an apparent disaster, my spiritual center cushions the pain. My inconceivable human birth has entered the game of life. The gratitude of “Namo Amida Butsu” alerts me to the awareness that the joys of love and compassion are available. My practice is to appreciate what I have been given, to balance the desire for things that I lack. All my worldly activities and concerns are the gifts of an unseen spiritual source. Every aspect of my ordinary life is a reflection of the spiritual.

“Namo Amida Butsu” affirms that even with the inadequacies of my ego, so much in life benefits me. A sense of humility inspires me to join the effort of others for the betterment of life for all. The gate of gratitude is the threshold of a spirit-ual life. Being liberated from the need to achieve goodness, we flow naturally toward harmony. Gratitude brings us to a simple awakening to the fact that our mundane life is supported by the pillars of wisdom and compassion. How else could my inadequate ego receive so much benefit? To learn about and experience more of these profound yet accessible teachings, visit a Shin temple—you can find one at buddhistchurchesofamerica.org.

Though the appearance and conduct at a Shin temple may appear ordinary, appreciation of the ordinary lifts one’s heart and mind to a true and natural state of spirit. Namo Amida Butsu.

The post Finding Spirit in the Ordinary appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Once again we find ourselves in the month of September, facing the traditional Buddhist fall Ohigan observance, which we celebrate twice a year at the spring and fall equinox. Ohigan means the other shore of enlightenment or the Pure Land, which stands in opposition to this shore of samsara, or the world of delusion. Standing on that other shore is Amida Buddha, who is beckoning us to cross over. 

In the Jodo Shinshu tradition, Ohigan is also called Sanbutsu-e (讃仏偈), a gathering to praise the Buddha, and Buddhists choose to observe the holiday at the fall and spring equinox because it is a time when nature and the universe are in harmony. The sun rises directly in the East and sets directly in the West. The length of day and night are the same, and the weather is neither too hot nor too cold. It marks a passage of seasons. In the fall, we see the trees change colors and plants and animals prepare for the winter months. Nature begins to go to sleep starting in September. 

It is said that this harmonious time of year is the perfect time to contemplate the six paramitas. Paramita literally means “other shore” and the six practices are the tools that one uses to reach the other shore of enlightenment. They are: dana, selfless sharing; sila, correct behavior; ksanti, patience; virya, effort; dhyana, meditation; and prajna, wisdom.  

For Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, Amida Buddha has perfected these six paramitas for us, which is why we gather to praise the Buddha. 

As Shinran points out in his poem above, the name Namu Amida Butsu reaches across the shore to you and me as we reside in samsara. The Buddha’s concern for us is boundless and constant, like that of a parent for a child. Indeed, we sometimes refer to the Buddha as Oyasama (親様) or “great parent.” Because of his/her concern for us, she/he has completed the difficult practices of the six paramitas. Even when we resist, we are embraced by our great parent Amida Buddha. 

Shinran uses the term Sesshu fusha (摂取不捨) a term from the Meditation Sutra, or Sutra on the Contemplation of Buddha Amitayus, which means “to be embraced and never abandoned.” It means that all will be taken and none left behind. It can also mean that anyone who resists and runs away still will be embraced.  

Have you ever seen a squirming young child held by its mother? No matter how much the child arches its back, wriggles, twists, and turns, the mother securely holds the child.  The child has no fear of falling because of the trust between parent and child. This is an example of the relationship between Amida Buddha and us. No matter how hard we try to escape or wriggle free, Amida holds on and embraces us with compassionate arms. Ohigan, then, is a time to praise the Buddha for the constant and deep compassion for you and me.  

“The light emanating from Amida’s features illuminates all the worlds in the ten quarters, takes in all beings, and never abandons them.” — Meditation Sutra

The post Why We Celebrate Ohigan appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Obon season is here again and unfortunately, due to the ongoing pandemic, we will not be able to hold our Bon Dance for another year. We all look forward to this annual ritual of remembrance for its fellowship, food, and fun. By gathering and dancing together, we make thinner the veil of separation between us and our departed loved ones, and we feel closer to them. Obon is truly a festival of joyful memory in which we celebrate life and our continuing relationship with those that have come before.

Not being able to celebrate Obon in the traditional way has made us realize how important rituals are in our lives. They can offer us connection, grounding, and healing. What makes rituals so special and powerful is that they are intentional. We consciously and mindfully undertake them so we can be reminded of what is truly meaningful in our lives.

In the Shin tradition, we believe that when someone dies, they become one with the Buddha. Therefore, while their physical form may pass from this world, the true essence of our loved one continues to live on in enlightenment, and the activity of enlightenment is always present in our lives. Our loved ones are always with us, embracing us, through the working of “Namo Amida Butsu,” [the recitation of the Buddha’s name, and Shin Buddhism’s central practice].

Obon reminds us of the great web of life—that our lives are made possible by countless causes and conditions that we should be grateful for. We are also reminded that we have a responsibility to create a meaningful life for future generations. While Obon is a festival of joyful memory, it is also a reminder that we are links between the past and the future. Obon teaches us how well we live in this present moment is the best way of honoring our departed loved ones.

Obon is truly a joyful gathering in which both the living and the dead rejoice in the universal embrace of the Buddha’s compassion. While our dancing is a physical act of remembrance for our loved ones, we also dance for ourselves. When we awaken to the timeless working of the Buddha’s vow in our lives, we can do nothing else but express our profound joy and gratitude. This is why we dance—because we realize our loved ones have become one with timeless reality that is never far from us.

But dancing during Obon is just one form of ritual that can connect us with our ancestors. 

When I moved to Kona [Hongwanji Buddhist Temple] several years ago, my dad drove over from Hilo to deliver my grandparent’s obutsudan, [a family altar], to me. I don’t know how old the altar is but I remember them always having it. What makes the altar so special is that it contains my grandparent’s Ihai or wooden Memorial Tablets. My grandparents were such a big part of my life, that to be able to care for their obutsudan is quite meaningful. Each morning, I start the day by lighting a candle, offering incense, and chanting a sutra. This daily ritual of self-reflection reminds me of how I am always connected to the working of limitless Light and Life. I am also able to greet my grandparents each morning to thank them for their continuing influence in my life. While I live alone, I am not alone because they are always with me in the dynamic activity of Namo Amida Butsu. They have become personal Buddhas who help me feel ever connected to the rhythms and cycles of life. This ritual of starting my day with them and the Buddha has been healing especially during this time of pandemic.

What personal rituals do you have that connect you to your loved ones? 

I know many people ohaka mairi, [the traditional custom of visiting the graves of ancestors, typically done during Obon], by cleaning and bringing flowers to family graves. Our temple columbarium and cemetery are always well kept and full of beautiful flowers. Besides flowers, people sometimes leave their favorite snacks and the occasional can of beer on special occasions.

These rituals have continued relatively uninterrupted during this pandemic. They remind us of our need for connection and how healing it is to be in relationship with our departed loved ones.

In the Amida Sutra, one of the three sacred scriptures of Shin Buddhism, we find the phrase kue issho. These beautiful words describe how we will all meet together in one place. It refers to how when we entrust in Amida’s vow and aspire for birth in the Pure Land, we will all meet together in the world of enlightenment.

In our tradition, it is customary to inscribe kue issho on headstones as a reminder of this sacred promise fulfilled by Amida Buddha’s great compassion. You might also find Namo Amida Butsu inscribed on many headstones. This is also customary because we continually meet our loved ones and experience kue issho in the dynamic activity of saying the Buddha’s honored name, or reciting the nembutsu. We meet our loved ones in the working of great wisdom and compassion that sustains our lives.

Not all rituals are necessarily religious, however. Do you make your mom’s favorite recipe for special family gatherings? Do you go to your grandfather’s favorite fishing spot? Do you pau hana, [a Hawaiian phrase for hanging out after work], with family and friends like your dad used to? Or do you simply tell your departed spouse good morning every day when you wake up? Think about the rituals you regularly perform that connect you to love.

These rituals of remembrance are truly about the life we continue to share with those who have gone before. They are life-giving and connect us to what is truly meaningful and real.

So while we cannot dance together again this year, we can all reflect on the ways our departed loved ones continue to enrich and influence our lives. This is the true spirit of Obon that we can always celebrate.

Namo Amida Butsu.

⧫

This post originally appeared here on Rev. Blayne Higa’s blog. Read more about Rev. Higa here in Tricycle magazine.

The post On Memory, Rituals, and the Spirit of Obon appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The dharma was always there, helping Reverend Blayne Higa stay balanced during 17 years of public service in his home state of Hawaii. Back then his focus was urban planning, which he’d studied in graduate school before ordaining as a Shin Buddhist minister.

“The dharma helped me work in public service and not be so reactive to events and situations. It helps us to be able to apply equanimity to the everyday stresses and struggles that everyone faces,” he said in a Zoom interview.

Working in public service, Rev. Higa longed to go deeper into his own Buddhist roots, and he left Hawaii in 2016 to study at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California, where he focused on Shin Buddhist ministry and chaplaincy and received a master’s of divinity degree. He was then ordained, receiving both the preliminary tokudo and full kyoshi certification, at the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha temple in Kyoto. Back in Hawaii, he was named resident minister at the Kona Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, the region’s oldest Buddhist temple, which will celebrate its 125th anniversary next year.

“I feel a great sense of responsibility to honor the rich history of this temple by helping to envision a vibrant sangha that embodies the Buddhadharma for today and the future,” he said. Rev. Higa is a fourth-generation Japanese American whose great-grandparents migrated to Hawaii to work in the sugarcane fields. His mother’s family practiced Shingon Buddhism, a Japanese school in the Vajrayana tradition.

“My grandmother was very devout. I learned to appreciate Buddhism and spirituality by her example,” he said. Although he grew up Buddhist, he didn’t know much about the dharma until college, when he came across books about Shin Buddhism in English.

“I was drawn to the Shin Buddhist spirituality of living with our imperfections and how we are embraced by universal wisdom and compassion,” said Rev. Higa, who started attending a Shin Buddhist temple in his early twenties.

Although Shin Buddhism came to America with the early Japanese immigrants, Rev. Higa considers it “a universal path of awakening” that is being woven into America’s spiritual fabric. “Asian American Buddhist communities have been hiding in plain sight for many years, even though they were the first sanghas to be established in America,” he said. His hope is that with more awareness, the voices and stories of Asian American Buddhists will come to be seen as part of the “wonderful” diversity of American Buddhism.

In his brief two years at the helm of Kona Hongwanji, there have been plenty of opportunities to apply Buddhist teachings.

First came COVID-19. During the lockdown, Rev. Higa’s sangha responded by organizing food giveaways for elderly members of his congregation who were spread out across western Kona. “We have a lot of seniors not connected to technology. So we started a phone ministry team. Our volunteers called all our members, just to check in and to offer that lifeline,” he said. They also packed fresh food boxes. “The temple is most importantly about community and relationships. Many members and their families have been part of our sangha for generations.”

With COVID also came the rising wave of anti-Asian hate crimes. Although Rev. Higa’s community has not been directly targeted with vandalism or violence, the issue is of great concern to him.

“It is really sad to think that we are still facing these deep-seated levels of animosity or hatred for any group,” he said. Such crimes, he added, stem from the three poisons outlined by the Buddha—greed, anger, and ignorance.

“The dharma offers a path of liberation from suffering,” he said. “So it is important for Buddhists to be able to comment and reflect on the nature of suffering in our world and to offer guidance on how the dharma can help.”

The post Meet a Teacher: Rev. Blayne Higa appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.