Just moving

An old boyfriend of mine is moving. His mother is getting older and her health isn’t great; he’s eager to be near her. As he plots the move from Washington, DC, to Pittsburgh, Pa., he’s been posting updates on Facebook.

“It's official,” he wrote a few days ago. “I am moving to Pittsburgh June first. Start my new job then. Now all I need is a cheap place to live and a way to get around”. Then, this morning: “Off to check out neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Moving is also Buddhist practice. Namu Amida Butsu.”

I am, at heart, a smart aleck. I couldn’t help but ask him “Is describing moving as Buddhist practice a nicer way of calling it a pain in the ass?”

Well, isn’t it? How often do we find ourselves facing serious obstacles – work, relationships, finances – and then describe them as another form of practice? It’s not without reason, of course. An old friend at the Anchorage Zen Community back in Alaska once told me “the people who annoy us most are our best teachers.” She was right, alas. Approaching difficulties with mindfulness is certainly a far better response than panicking and running in the opposite direction, something I’ve done far too many times.

Zen teaches us to sit “just to sit”. There should be no other motives behind the action. My ex is moving, and while he now has a thousand new responsibilities to deal with as he prepares to uproot his life and move back to his hometown, he has committed to simply moving. There are reasons behind his decision, of course, and deadlines and associated tasks to deal with but, at heart, again, if he approaches it with mindfulness, he is simply moving.

Yesterday, I was listening to a dharma talk online by a teacher whose path I was fortunate enough to cross years ago back in Alaska. Jan Chozen Bays is a Soto Zen priest in Oregon, but she had a huge impact on my practice back when I practiced Zen and she continues to influence me still. She is a great proponent of what she calls mindful eating.

Impatient, she said she often finds herself rushing through meals “to get it over with.” In order to slow herself down, she takes a bite of her food and then sets her cutlery down, waiting until she has chewed and swallowed before she picks it up again. We rush through things to get them over with so that we can continue to the next activity. And then we rush again.

“If you carry that toward its logical conclusion,” she observed, “then what are you rushing toward? Your own death. Is that something you really want to rush toward?”

My ex, and my old teacher, have the right idea. We should approach each action as part of our daily practice. Whether or not I’ll remember that sage advice as I rush through my next task is anyone’s guess, but there it is.

Namu Amida Butsu.

Everything is as it should be

Everything is as it should be. That’s a line that gets tossed around often by Buddhists, particularly when things are going well. It seems harder to apply the same thinking to those moments when all hell has broken loose and we just find ourselves wishing it were all over.

The topic came up during my Monday study class and I used it as my dharma talk this morning at Kokoro, the assisted living home for seniors where I conduct services. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought at all if Jerry, who leads the Monday class, hadn’t put a finer point on the topic.

Everything is as it should be because of karmic causes and conditions. How else would it be? Throw in a small change to those circumstances, be it a matter of timing or weather or someone’s mood, all themselves subject to karmic causes and conditions, and a new result rises from the equation. When A and B happen, C is the result. This is always the case.

In other words, even when shit happens, it’s as it should be.

Part of dealing with that, of course, is accepting that nothing is either good or bad. It’s only how we perceive things that make them so. It’s raining as I write this. I like rain. I enjoy watching it fall and I enjoy the sound of the drops as they patter patter patter against my window. For someone who was caught outside in the rain, or the farmer who is trying to harvest strawberries right about now, it’s a different story. Karmic causes and conditions bring us to our various conclusions about whatever is happening around us.

This isn’t a dark sort of fatalism. It isn’t fatalistic at all. When we understand karma, we are free to make more of a particular event or moment. We can change it by changing the conditions that came together to produce a particular outcome. We may not always get the results we want, and we may be disappointed with the ones we get, but understanding that makes acceptance of what’s difficult easier to bear and opens us to the possibilities of making change where ever we can.

Besides, disappointment in a certain outcome is just another form of attachment, another example of our egos refusing to let go. If things don’t work out the way I want them to, I have cause to look for the underlying reasons and maybe I’ll discover something that will help me do things differently in the future.

Namu Amida Butsu.

I do not consider myself
worth counting but sometimes
even for me heaven and
earth are too small.

-- Kujo Takeko (1887-1928)

More on faith

Shinjin is the experience of awakening to the salvific grace of Amida. It arises the very instant - what Shinran referred to as a "thought moment" - we recognize our inherent buddha nature and realize we are saved by the power of Amida's primal vow. Because shinjin is often translated as "faith" we miss this essential aspect of Jodo Shinshu teachings. As Takamaro Shigaraki writes in The Problem of the True and the False: "The nembutsu is the process and shinjin is the goal."

To describe shinjin as faith completely undermines the very premise of shinjin; shinjin is the liberation we seek, the jumping off point to nirvana. Shinjin, itself, is the gift of recognition of our buddha nature and our ultimate deliverance from the seemingly endless cycle of life and death through Amida Buddha.

When I describe shinjin as the experience of awakening, I mean that shinjin is not a static moment, an "aha!" moment. It is, instead, a lifetime experience of growth and learning. While Shigaraki calls it the goal, I do not believe he means that it stops there. Once we have attained shinjin, we continue to experience it on successively more profound levels. Shinjin is, in a sense, an ongoing penultimate experience that does not reach its final fruition until that moment when we are released from this life and freed from the wheel of samsara.

Awakening to shinjin, experiencing shinjin, opens us to the desire to learn and understand more. It is our limited, deluded self that prevents us from experiencing total enlightenment in this life time but shinjin drives us on to learn more, to open our hearts ever more to Amida's grace. Our buddha nature seeks reunion with Amida and through shinjin it pushes harder and farther until we are free.

On use of the word "faith"

"Faith" is a tricky word in Jodo Shinshu usage.

While reading for my Honen study group I came across this passage, a quote from T'an Luan's Commentary on the Treatise on Birth in the Pure Land, in "Teachings of Honen":

The Easy Practice refers to birth in the Pure Land simply through faith in the Essential Vow of Buddha Amitabha. One can be born in the Pure Land and will immediately become characterized as being in the state of the certain attainment of birth by reliance on the power of His vow. The certain attainment of birth is attached to the practice of non-retrogression (126).

Over and over again, we struggle with the word because faith carries a radically different meaning in Buddhism than it does in Christianity. For Buddhists of any denomination or school, faith implies a dualistic relationship between the believer and the being or entity in whom the believer has placed her faith. By necessity, the relationship is one of two separate entities between whom there is no equality, no common link.

But in Buddhism, this relationship is very different because of the belief that all sentient beings inherently have Buddha nature. In other words, we all have within ourselves the ability to realize our full potential as buddhas, to eventually realize our true Buddha Nature in lieu of our delusional sense of self. It is because of the this recognition of our potential that faith is such a poor word, and carries with it a tremendous risk for misrepresenting the Dharma.

Jodo Shinshu teachers and thinkers have struggled with this for years. The word faith, although initially introduced with the best of intentions in order to help people understand a complicated premise, is deceptively dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. The problem, of course, remains in deciding which word with which to replace it.

The Rev. Kenryu Tsuji writes:

Why is it that a man who has Faith does not become enlightened in this life? The answer lies in the nature of man. He is still in his earthly body, subject to physical and mental limitations. So long as he is a relative and imperfect being, he can never become an absolute Buddha, perfect in every respect. It is, therefore, that the assurance of Buddhahood is given in this life and the actual attainment of Buddhahood is realized in the Pure Land. In the Creed we read, "We rely upon Amida Buddha with our whole heart for the Enlightenment in the life to come".

Faith will not save us so long as it enforces a separation between our selves and Amida. We must move beyond faith to awakening to realize our Buddha Nature; with that awakening, we open ourselves to enlightenment by recognizing our limitations as human beings. Faith is counterproductive and limiting; recognition of our flawed humanity is the path to our salvation through Amida.

Changing Truth

Truth is relative, a fact borne out by our individual perceptions of what we experience around us when compared against the same truths as experienced by others.

Tonight, in our Honen study group, conducted as usual in the social hall of the temple, we discussed the role of the Seven Patriarchs of the Jodo Shinshu tradition (Just for reference's sake, the seven patriarchs are Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Tan Luan, Tao Cho, Shan Tao, Genshin, and Honen). Led by Jerry B., as usual, it was a good discussion but a particular point really stood out for me.

We began to talk about the role of dharma transmission - an important concept for Zen Buddhists, but less so for Jodo Shinshu Buddhists - and the role of karma in the teachings of the patriarchs. Karma, of course, is the collection of causes, circumstances, and conditions that shape and give form to how we live our lives and the decisions and actions we undertake. The teachings of the patriarchs, each influenced by those who came before him, are the results of karma, as well.

In other words, were the causes and conditions not right to bring about the circumstances necessary for Nagarjuna, or Shantao, or Shinran to come to their conclusions, we might be living very different lives today. Our understanding of the Dharma, our religious lives, would be very different. That's what I mean when I say that truth is relative.

For many people, the idea that truth is not a static thing is frightening. Truth, they will tell you, is true precisely because it never changes. Truth is a fixed point from which all else radiates, and anything that deviates from that is false. However, in our deluded viewpoints of the world around us, we are unable to see truth and are, therefore, unable to state what is profoundly true and what is not.

Shinran said "When I ponder on the compassionate Vow of Amida, established through five kalpas of profound thought, it was for myself, Shinran, alone. Because I am a being burdened so heavily with karma, I feel even more deeply grateful to the Primal Vow which is made to decisively save me."

For Shinran, for the patriarchs, for you, for me, our perceived truth is a different truth and because it merely perception, it is not true at all. When Shinran said the Vow of Amida was for him alone, he meant Amida cut through the delusion with which Shinran surrounded himself to show him that which is Truth. The Dharma is the only truth; everything else we understand to be true in our lives is false. Shinran understood this, and he understood that Amida reached out to him under circumstances which were peculiar to him, to circumstances which were of his own making.

"...it was for myself, Shinran, alone."

Our attainment of shinjin is a unique experience, and while we come to the same truth, our attainment is a truly individual experience. Our particular circumstances shape and filter our experience of shinjin, meaning, once again, that truth is relative. But the truth to which that experience leads us is the same truth for all beings.

True gratitude

Gratitude, even in a Jodo Shinshu context, is a tricky thing. As Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, we should feel gratitude as easily as we breathe but of course, it's not that easy.

It's tempting to regard gratitude for a thing given as the same as the gratitude we feel for Amida's all-embracing compassion. If a friend helps you with your car, or helps you land a job, you do feel grateful. To take that a step further, you probably feel grateful for the good friends in your life, and the fact that you are so well taken care of.

Gratitude in that context is important, and we should never hold back from thanking those who help us. Mom and Dad were right: 'please' and 'thank you' are just as important now as they were when we were kids.

But our gratitude toward Amida is an entirely different thing. It isn't a response we feel when we're particularly happy about how well things have been going, or when we pass through some particularly dangerous moment intact. The gratitude we are called upon to demonstrate is far more profound than that. It is a gratitude that extends beyond that moment of satisfaction.

In Tannisho, Yuienbo credits Shinran with saying "When I consider deeply the Vow of Amida, which arose from five kalpas of profound thought, I realize that it was entirely for the sake of myself alone! Then how I am filled with gratitude for the Primal Vow, in which Amida resolved to save me, though I am burdened with such heavy karma."

Shinran, despite whatever misgivings he had about himself, despite what anger he might have been feeling, or disappointment, or - indeed - gratitude toward another person for a kind favor, expressed a far more profound sense of gratitude for the one thing that exists and will continue to exist long after the anger and nice favors have been forgotten.

The gratitude Shinran spoke of transcends mere quotidian gratitude. It's gratitude of another level altogether, a gratitude realized only when we understand just how complete and enveloping Amida's compassion truly is. When I think about just how greedy or selfish I am, when I consider just how often I have hurt or harmed others by my own self-absorption, and then consider the fact that Amida has extended her compassion even to me, I feel and understand a true depth of gratitude that surpasses anything else.

In his essay "The Problem of the True and the False" Takamaro Shigaraki wrote:

To say that shinjin is the experience of awakening means, in a more concrete sense, that we awaken to the compassion of the Tathagata. Not only that, we also awaken to the depths and weight of our own karmic evil, which is illumined by that compassion.

To understand that fully is to realize true gratitude.