Editor's Note - This is an excerpt from the August 2008 issue of the Buddhist Wheel

All of us who live by the Nenbutsu know that it can be a lonely existence. We often find ourselves living a life of solitary dreams, driven by a vision that no one  else  seems  to  share.  We long for a single voice of understanding that will reassure us that the Nenbutsu Life we have chosen is worthy. The voice that has been trying to reach out to us is that of Shinran. And the place where his voice speaks most clearly is in the book called LAMP FOR THE LATTER AGES, a collection of the letters that he wrote to his disciples.

The following is the letter that Shinran wrote to his Kanto disciple, Yuamidabutsu, on July 13, 1260.

"I've received your letter this morning. I like your name. In the letter you're asking me how we are able to attain a new life in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha. The nenbutsu teaching of ordinary beings that I will explain to you in this letter is not new. When I was young, living in Kanto, I taught the teaching to my followers and now I am sharing it with my Kyoto friends.

"The teaching is this. Those who may seem to have faith and yet do not say the nenbutsu cannot have a new life in the Pure Land; neither can those who say the nenbutsu but do not have faith. Only we ordinary beings who have deep faith in Amida's promise and spontaneously call his name, namoamidabutsu, can have a new life in the Pure Land. When we go to the Pure Land, we will become one with Amida Buddha of Eternal Life. This is what Amida Buddha promised to all living beings.

"I did not invent or discover this faith-nenbutsu teaching. Like you who are now receiving it from me, I received it from my master, Honen, when I was twenty-nine. My master received it from his master, Zendo, who received it from Shakyamuni Buddha, who received it from Amida Buddha. That teaching is the road that is taking me to the Pure Land. Walking on the road, I have found what I am and what I am becoming. I am becoming something better than I am, something larger, spiritually richer, something more important to the world and myself.

"We Pure Land Buddhists do not believe in any form of determinism, and that includes Amida Buddha's intervention. Our lives are the result of choices we make or fail to make. Nobody urged us to believe in the faith-nenbutsu teaching. You and I chose it. Although we may not know if the teaching will take us to the Pure Land or to hell, we do know that it has taken innumerable people to the Pure Land. We also do know that the teaching is the biggest influence upon our behavior. By living the teaching, we produce both our happiness and other people's happiness.

"Soon, you will be able to realize a few things. The faith and the nenbutsu that have been coming out of you naturally are not yours but Amida's. They will not come out if you try to force them to come out. The forced ones are fake. When you let them come out of you freely, your mind goes to the Pure Land to unite with Amida's mind while your body stays here on earth. You will also realize that this faith-nenbutsu teaching is not concerned with life after death so much as with life before death, with the way we treat each other in the here and now.

"I used to think that Amida is saying to me: 'Come as you are and as soon as you can. Then, I will save you.' How wrong I was. Faith does not mean entrusting ourselves to Amida. For me, faith in Amida's vow means that all we have to do is recognize that he saved all of us a long time ago. Amida Buddha did everything, and we did nothing because our salvation happened before we were born. The nenbutsu does not mean that we say Amida's name, but it means that we listen to his name Amida himself is saying. Amida's name that we hear encourages us to try to achieve human betterment by helping one another through sharing. It calls us to make this world we live in more generous, more compassionate, more inclusive, and more peaceful. It also reminds us that since Amida did everything for his Buddha Land, we must do everything for this world of ours.

"You are only twenty-eight years old. By enjoying your nenbutsu life with your wife and children fully, you must test the faith-nenbutsu teaching to see if it is true or it is worthless to you. For me, Amida's vow is true. But it may not be so for other people. It is not a universal scientific truth; it is a religious personal truth, personal because it is I who make it true in my own life.

"When I was at your age, I thought I was a Buddha. It was easy for me to be a Buddha. All I had to do was to forget what kind of person I was. I was living the life of three misused passions (bonno): greed, anger-hatred, and ignorance. I am still a greedy, anger-ridden, ignorant one because surprisingly bonno and the faith-nenbutsu together, not apart, are helping me see my true identity-a Pure Land person.

I do not want to die yet; I do not want to go to the Pure Land at this moment. I want to enjoy this world with my grandchildren as long as I can. But, in spirit I am already in the Pure Land; I just became eighty-eight years old last month; I am ready to enjoy my new life in the Pure Land any time. I will wait for you there."

In LAMP FOR THE LATTER AGES, we find Shinran's twenty-one other letters that, like the one above, contain words that 'burn'-- words that can have the greatest impact and influence on our daily lives.

We are living in an age suspicious of religious experience and also skeptical of any claim to firsthand experience of Amida Buddha. Because of this, Shinran's world seems another world, and yet he is still very alive in his letters. Shinran saw the faith-nenbutsu experience before him. He believed it; he lived it; he made it his own. With us in mind, he wrote it in his letters. He also tells us about his spiritual pilgrimage to Amida's Pure Land through which we begin to understand ours.

We are all skeptics now. There is no one true faith, true at all times and places. Every religion is one among many. Shinran therefore does not want to impose his vision of Amida Buddha on us. He simply seeks to communicate it to us as fully as possible. He wrote his letters so that he and we the readers might see the same thing--so that we might see what he saw, but with our own eyes.

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