By Rev. Ken Yamada
Serious seekers “study” Buddhism, but can we really “learn” Jōdo Shinshū? What, how, and why do we study?
Buddhist thinker and Ōtani University professor Kaneko Daiei (1881-1976) pondered such questions in a 1966 essay, “Prolegomena to Shin Buddhist Studies,” reckoning on academia’s purpose ( Robert F. Rhodes translation in Cultivating Spirituality, A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology). He begins by stating:
Shin Buddhism teaches us to go to the Pure Land by saying the nenbutsu. That’s all. Since that’s all there is to the teaching of Shin Buddhism, is there any need to study it academically?
Personally, this question dogged me for years as I struggled to understand how Jōdo Shinshū related to my life. I couldn’t see a connection, confused by its arcane language and dogmatic teaching proclaiming “Amida’s salvation” enables our “birth in the Pure Land.” Devotees say they’re embraced by “Amida’s compassion,” making me wonder if they’re more Christian than Buddhist. What did it all mean?
Today Jōdo Shinshū is a bona fide academic major, replete with professors, textbooks, homework assignments and research papers. Shinshū classes proliferate in person and online. In contrast, Buddhism isn’t supposed to be dogmatic—a rigid way of thinking to which everyone must conform. If there’s no dogma, what’s being taught? It seems Buddhism should be more a “path” or practice towards spiritual awakening, especially Shinshū.
Kaneko writes:
Some say religion is nothing more than faith. We feel this faith directly. We, so to speak, intuit the Buddha’s saving power. Because it concerns intuition, there is no need to study it academically. There is no place for academic study in the world of intuition.
[Others say] each of us individually recites Namu Amida Butsu and experiences something in it. There is nothing else to Shin Buddhism. To take up anything else and treat it academically is actually a hindrance.
In the Tannishō, Shinshū founder Shinran Shonin (1173-1263) says:
As for me, I simply accept and entrust myself to what my revered teacher told me, “Just say the nenbutsu and be saved by Amida”; nothing else is involved.
This last statement reads like a Zen kōan, an impossibly complex riddle disguised as a simple directive. Could a deeper meaning lay hidden behind such plainspoken words that needs studying?
According to Kaneko, Shinran acknowledged the need for study:
(All the various sacred writings that clarify the significance of the truth of other-power state that) anyone who believes in the original vow and says the nenbutsu will attain Buddhahood. Other than this, what learning is necessary for birth? Truly, the person confused about this should by all means engage in study and understand the significance of the original vow.
(Tannishō, Chapter 12)
Then, what do we “study”? Presumably: Shinran’s writings. Here, Kaneko disagrees. Our focus shouldn’t be on “what,” but rather “how.” He writes: “Shin Buddhist Studies should not be defined as the study of Shinran’s writings, but the study of how Shinran studied.”
Shinran focused on understanding the “true words of the Great Sage,” which he found in the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life and Amida’s 48 vows. “If we can truly understand the Sutra of Immeasurable Life, we can naturally understand the meaning of Buddhism as a whole,” Kaneko writes.
Tradition typically accepts as truth the words of Śākyamuni Buddha because he would never lie. But Shinran questions them, asking “why” such teachings were necessary.
Kaneko writes:
The dogmatic authoritarianism that has long characterized Shin Buddhist Studies is not the true method of study. I am not opposed to recognizing the authority of the teachings. However, I’m not sure whether it was the teaching, or the teacher, that was considered authoritative until now.
People who think like this only recognize the authority of the teacher, and fail to recognize the authority of the teaching itself.
In probing “why” such teachings were necessary, Kaneko concludes: After the time Śākyamuni Buddha lived, the world turned evil. Pure Land teachings arose from a desire to escape this defiled world to a pure world where all can follow the Buddhist path.
He gives an example:
Politicians should devote all their efforts to running the country, but in fact they don’t seem to be thinking seriously about such things. It’s really sad! Everywhere we look, our society is rapidly falling into evil ways, and no one apparently has any idea as to what will happen. People say that the world will gradually evolve into a better place. However, I can’t help but think that they are only deluding themselves. Claiming to create something new, they are only destroying what we have. We are laboring with the hope that someday our world will turn into a perfect, beautiful place. But this hope is always sadly crushed. Can we really create the kind of world we long for…
When we survey human life in this way, it is only natural that we would want to cast aside the actual world and seek another world in the future. Disappointed with the conditions of this world, we feel that it is not worth living in and that it is utterly impossible to gain salvation in this world. It is for this reason that the desire for the Pure Land arose…
The desire to seek the Pure Land is an understandable cry that wells up from the depths of our hearts.
Kaneko probes deeper at the need or necessity for Pure Land, confronting deeply personal questions: Why do we exist? What’s the ground of our existence? What does it mean to be human?
Whereupon, we confront what Rennyo Shonin described as “the great matter of the afterlife” or “the great matter of life-and-death.” Kaneko says “we cannot live without asking about the meaning of our existence”
Kaneko writes:
The phrase “the great matter of life-and-death” has the power to overturn reality as we understand it from the bottom up. These words reveal the contrast between the actual world and the ideal world. We ordinarily live in the actual world. As long as we are living in the actual world, worrying about food and clothing or worrying about love and desire, religion does not exist. From such a point of view, any thought about the ideal world is slighted as illusory.
It’s often said that religion concerns the world of nothingness. It’s said that problems of food, clothing or love and desire are real problems, but that problems of faith in the gods or buddhas, concern the world of nothingness. However, words like “the great matter of the afterlife” or “the great matter of life-and-death,” end up overturning such a commonsense view of the world. The world that we until now thought was illusory somehow comes to have a powerful significance, whereas the conception of reality that we actually held until now becomes empty. What was most actual then becomes most empty. I think this is something that everyone experiences at some time or another…
When we experience this reversal, when this “floating world” becomes empty, we perceive that there is something in the ideal world which we have taken to be empty. Furthermore, we come to perceive that we are fulfilled only in that ideal world. Without such a reversal, I think religion would not exist. It is only when we experience such a reversal that religion, in the true sense, arises…
We must proceed in our studies with the vow to confront and resolve this great problem of birth-and-death. Unless it’s done in this way, it’s impossible to engage in Shin Buddhist Studies.
In Shin studies, Kaneko sees language as a fundamental problem which must be considered carefully. For instance, a name merely refers to something, it’s not the thing itself. For example, the word “hot” doesn’t convey the true nature of hotness, which causes pain and scalding. The word “flower” actually refers to two different things: a particular flower and all flowers; in other words that which has both individual and common characteristics, opposites existing simultaneously. Words are concepts that can’t express what’s apprehended through our senses.
Likewise, Kaneko says: “by nature, enlightenment cannot be expressed in words. Enlightenment is something we sense (kantoku 感得), a kind of self-realization. It’s not something you can explain.”
He describes the conundrum:
Because it’s impossible to make people understand what we have sensed by remaining silent, we are forced to use concepts to express it. When a teaching is expressed in words, it has already been conceptualized. A teaching is like a finger pointing to the moon. It’s not the moon itself…
So what we express in words is not really the wisdom of self-realization gained through sensing something.
Whenever students of Kiyozawa Manshi (1863-1903) (Kaneko’s teacher) tried to explain their understanding, he famously “crushed” them, denying any argument they might form. Because truth is intuitively understood, any attempt at conceptualization becomes dogma.
Another Kiyozawa student, Akegarasu Haya (1877-1954) later wrote:
Life is always fresh when I keep developing, always old when I preach. Words that burst out of me are always new, but when I get ready to tell them to others, they are already stale.
(Shout of Buddha, Writings of Haya Akegarasu, translated by Gyoko Saito and Joan Sweany)
Kaneko noted that artists say to truly draw a flower, the flower must draw itself. The flower must become the artist. Likewise, for one to awaken to truth, the truth must become oneself. The truth reveals itself, speaks and proclaims itself. “It is here that the teaching is found,” Kaneko writes. “Hence the truth and the teachings are not two separate things.” This truth is “flowing forth from the pure dharmadhātu.” Thus the name “Tathāgata” comes from “suchness” (tathā) “coming forth” (āgata)—the truth actualized.
Kaneko says, “We must grant true authority to the teaching. We must treat the teaching with utmost respect and recognize that the teaching itself is the truth proclaiming itself. Because the teaching is itself the teaching of the Awakened One.”
The Seven Patriarchs of Shin Buddhism all followed this same method of understanding, according to Kaneko. Convention views them chronologically following one another, each developing the Buddha’s teachings in their own way. But Kaneko sees them all having spiritually awakened through the same method.
Kaneko urges us to recite “Namu Amida Butsu” with sincere desire to be born in the Pure Land. This sincere desire is none other than aspiration for enlightenment.
However, because our practice falls short, he says, Amida’s original vows become the most powerful condition. To discover this truth, we must reflect inwardly on our actions. Subsequently, our gasshō becomes paying reverence to the Buddha’s “command of original vow calling to and summoning us.”
In this way, we discover the ground (iware いわれ) for our need to place our palms together and seek birth in the Pure Land, he says. This ground can only be discovered in the realm of subjectivity.
Kaneko asks: When reciting nenbutsu, do we merely say it? Are we really focused on the Buddha? We must deeply reflect on such questions. The Buddha’s Name is enlightenment proclaiming itself. If there’s no proclamation, there’s no truth. He says, “the Buddha’s vow-power manifests itself in us. We don’t say the nenbutsu, rather, the Buddha says it.”
He writes:
When we believe in the Buddha and his original vows, it is not we who believe in them. Rather the Buddha’s wisdom or the Buddha’s original vow itself manifests itself as our faith. We believe when the Buddha’s wisdom manifests itself in us. To make us have faith—that is the Buddha’s work. In fact, we can truly take refuge in the Buddha only through the working of the Buddha.
According to Kaneko, at this point, genuine necessity appears. As we reflect inwardly on the realities of daily life, we immediately experience the Buddha’s original vows. To immediately experience the Buddha’s original vows means the original vows manifest themselves in us. “The nenbutsu becomes the person saying the nenbutsu,” he says. This is what Shinran meant when he said: “I just say the nenbutsu and be saved by Amida Buddha.”
Common sense defines the one who has faith as myself; therefore “I” am saved. No! Faith and salvation are entirely other power, according to Kaneko. When Shinran says, “I just say nenbutsu,” faith is transferred from Other Power (tariki ekō). Self-consciously reciting Nenbutsu isn’t true Nenbutsu.
Kaneko writes: “If we accept other-power, then it would mean that we don’t have to do anything. We can be saved even if we just take naps, they say. But this is totally wrong. This is not what other-power means. The original vow that is other-power can be known only when we genuinely reflect inwardly on the reason.”
This means to deeply contemplate the meaning of life and follow a path of introspection. Hearing Amida’s calling voice is how we understand the Awakened One’s true teaching.
Kaneko writes, “we must begin our analysis of the method of Shin Buddhist Studies by reflecting on how the teaching echoes in our ears and how our spirits are impressed by the teaching.”
-Rev. Yamada is editor at Higashi Honganji’s Shinshu Center of America