Inaugural Jodo Shinshu Meeting in Singapore, by Horai
Cultural Services Center
Hi all,
there will be a Jodo Shinshu meeting to be held in Singapore on 3
September 2006 at the Fuzhou Association building in Tyrwhitt Road,
opposite Jalan Besar Stadium and Christ Church Secondary School.
The meeting will be held from 2:30 to 5:30pm.
All those who are interested in joining us, please do not hesitate
in dropping me a private message.
There will be a short service, Q&A and discussion. Refreshments
will be provided.
Gassho
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What is Jodo Shinshu?
Shin Buddhism
At the heart of the Shin Buddhist teaching lies a vision of true
reality as alive with wisdom and compassion, working to bring all
beings to the highest fulfillment of human life, the attainment of
Buddhahood.
Shinran teaches that this activity manifests itself as Amida
Buddha, who resolved to save all beings by bringing into his Pure
Land, the realm of enlightenment, all who say his Name, entrusting
themselves to his Vow. He thus performed practices for long eons
and fulfilled this Vow, so that his Name, Namu Amida Butsu, came to
resound throughout the universe, awakening all beings to the
reality of great compassion.
Saying the Name results in birth into the Pure Land, not because it
is a good act that people perform, but because it is the activity
of Amida Buddha himself giving the virtues of his own practice to
them. Shinran therefore stresses that genuine nembutsu arises
naturally and spontaneously from the Buddha's mind that unfolds
itself in us and transforms our minds into wisdom and
compassion.
As long as we perform religious practices or say the nembutsu
contriving to achieve Buddhahood, our acts are based on attachment
to our own goodness. In fact, we constantly cling to imagined
selves that we take to be permanent and real, seeking to enhance
and protect ourselves by erecting barriers against all that we see
as standing apart. Thus arise the feelings that poison ordinary
life - desire, envy, anger, fear. Acts rooted in such anxiety and
self-attachment can only lead to further pain.
A mind of true sincerity and authentic trust arises when we
genuinely hear and are grasped by Amida's Primal Vow, and realize
that our own designs are futile and unnecessary. Seeing ourselves
with the Buddha's wisdom, we perceive for the first time that all
our acts arise from egocentric passions. Nevertheless, this is at
the same time to know that Amida's light and life pervade our
existence just as we are.
When karmic bonds to this life end with death, people of the
nembutsu go to the Pure Land. But with their fulfillment of perfect
wisdom-compassion, they return immediately to this world in the
dynamic activity of bringing all beings to awakening.
The following passages, although brief, reveal the essential
elements of Shinran's religious awakening: the realization of the
Buddha's wisdom-compassion working in one's existence in the
immediate present, coupled with insight into the actual nature of
the bound and ignorant self.
Words of Shinran
"Saved by the inconceivable working of Amida's Vow, I shall realize
birth in the Pure Land": the moment you entrust yourself thus to
the Vow, so that the mind set upon saying the nembutsu arises
within you, you are immediately brought to share in the benefit of
being grasped, never to be abandoned.
Know that the Primal Vow of Amida makes no distinction between
people young and old, good and evil; only shinjin is essential. For
it is the Vow to save the person whose karmic evil is deep and
grave and whose blind passions abound. Thus, for those who entrust
themselves to the Primal Vow no good acts are required, because no
good surpasses the nembutsu. Nor need they despair of the evil they
commit, for no evil can obstruct the working of Amida's Primal
Vow.
Tannisho, 1
Even a good person attains birth in the Pure Land, so it goes
without saying that an evil person will.
Though it is so, people commonly say, "Even an evil person attains
birth, so it goes without saying that a good person will." This
statement may seem well-founded at first, but it runs counter to
the intent of the Primal Vow, which is Other Power. This is because
people who rely on doing good through their self-power fail to
entrust themselves wholeheartedly to Other Power and therefore are
not in accord with Amida's Primal Vow, but when they overturn the
mind of self-power and entrust themselves to Other Power, they will
attain birth in the true and real fulfilled land.
It is impossible for us, who are possessed of blind passions, to
free ourselves from birth-and-death through any practice whatever.
Sorrowing at this, Amida made the Vow, the essential intent of
which is the evil person's attainment of Buddhahood. Hence, evil
persons who entrust themselves to Other Power are precisely the
ones who possess the true cause of birth.
Accordingly he said, "Even the good person is born in the Pure
Land, so without question is the person who is evil."
Tannisho, 3
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