Editor's Note - This is an excerpt from the July 2010 issue of the Buddhist Wheel

(The following response is to a Honolulu Betsuin member’s letter to the recent newsletter article, “A New Hope”; 4/2010)

“Dear Rev. Bruce,
…Upon re-reading the article ‘A New Hope’, my feeling is that you are trying to point out that in this generation, we need to speak up and take positions on issues confronting us. To me this very important issue that you point out is somehow lost because you focus on Shinran’s teachings and I don’t see the relevance to us taking a position in controversial issues with Shinran’s spirit and teaching…Can you point them out to me?…”

Dear genuine seeker:

The relationship of Shinran’s Teachings to social justice remains an ongoing challenge to modern life as it was in Shinran’s times. When Shinran began to interpret and translate the inner view and meaning of the Buddha-dharma—as spiritual awareness—he couldn’t help but apply it to living in the real world. The Buddha-dharma as a spiritual teaching and journey is not “otherworldly” as some think; genuine religious life must include everyday living as it naturally embraces the social themes and real-life issues of the day.

Shinran as recipient of Amida Buddha’s Primal Vow—Shinjin- Nembutsu— shares with others, his unique understanding of spiritual master Honen’s Teaching of the “Exclusive Practice of the Selected Primal Vow”—NamoAmidaBtusu. With Master Honen’s popular (Amida’s) Selected Nembutsu Practice gaining popularity, the Kofukuji monks accused Honen of being an enemy of the Dharma. Without any just cause, they presented a petition to the imperial court accusing his disciples of lawless conduct.

Honen and seven disciples (including Shinran) were exiled; four others were executed. (Tannisho, A Translation: A Record Lamenting Divergences, 1995).

To use more modern examples, here are two that might be more familiar.

Martin Luther King Jr. is celebrated by our nation as a founder to the civil rights movement in America. While certainly, today more than ever before women, persons of color, and other minorities have gained significant ground in the struggle for “civil rights”, the vision of the “Promised Land” for Rev. Dr. King Jr. continues to challenge the “American ideal of justice for all” and the racial, social and economic divide between mainstream and its minorities.

Julia Ward Howe, the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and political, social activist and co-founder of Mother’s Day, believed such a day was a calling for people to disarm and seek peace; to respect the lessons of charity and mercy which mothers teach their children and create a solidarity with women around the world. Howe’s pioneer quest for social justice by women seemed only natural: “...to the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social and economic justice seem self evident”. (Mother’s Day Proclamation, 1870, Boston) And while all children should naturally express gratitude to their mothers, it invites a larger view of universal dignity and social justice, basic to all human existence.

These examples demonstrate the ongoing thread of social conscience that pervades whenever and wherever social injustice is disparaged. While these are not directly related to Buddhism or Jodo Shinshu, they indicate a similarity that prompted Shinran and his efforts to alleviate suffering through sharing the Buddha Dharma.

After all, Sakyamuni Buddha himself experienced the consequences of being born and living in a society that determined a person’s place, vocation and dignity based upon a caste system formalized by the priestly class. The Buddha’s quiet but bold revolution affirmed each person, not by birth and caste, but by noble practice of the Dharma of wisdom and compassion. The Buddha asserted that only by such practice will the bonds of ignorance, suffering and deceitful arrogance be overcome.

It should be no surprise, then, to find in Shinran’s writings, a call to live fully and meaningfully in this world such as his Private Letters (Goshosokushu), “We know and abandon the evil-karma of this world by doing good…” Interpreted, it means, “those foolish beings grasped by Amida’s Great Compassion, now deeply aware of their “evil” of the three poisons of greed, anger and deceitful arrogance, are to be born in Amida’s Pure Land.” Shinran’s strategy is classically Buddhist in nature; the negation or transformation of delusions begins with it acknowledgement expressed as Amida Buddha’s Vows to grasp and then, turn them into true virtue, the spiritual power to enlighten all beings by the already accomplished forty-eight Vows—the 18th being its highest expression.

“In the Light and power of Great Compassion a person awakens to the 'nakedness' of his essential nature characterized by self-love, greed, anger and arrogance. This speaks to the shared and universal basis of all humanity that affirms existence as impermanent, uncertain and fraught with constant worry over happiness and sorrow--"foolish and karmic-bound". And, as such, we are already embraced and grasped in the amazing power of Amida’s Primal Vow which takes our foolish karma and turns it into ultimate spiritual power to liberate all beings from their greed, anger and arrogance.

As such, as long as we are living in this world, finite and foolish, we must face up to its problems and issues, and not try to bury them with wishful thinking, because “we want to escape to the Pure Land”. Bound to the world we know and have endured for eons, this is our legacy to never turn away from the truth, even as that truth is so often the truth we don’t want to see. And yet, as it is also the Vow’s realization, we experience profound spiritual Joy and assurance living in the power of Compassion.

I hope this response will be of some encouragement. On a genuine human level, encounter in both the Vow and with others offers us the choice of freedom from our selfcenteredness, limited as that may be, a willingness to acknowledge and discuss the issues of the day and open ourselves to others who really share a similar life story (Co-compassion). NamoAmidaButsu.

Gratefully, I remain in Gassho,
Your brother in the Dharma
Bruce Y. Nakamura
5.25.10

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