THE RELIGIOUS consciousness is awakened when we encounter a network of great contradictions running through our human life. When this consciousness comes to itself we feel as if our being were on the verge of a total collapse. We cannot regain the sense of security until we take hold of something overriding the contradictions. Whatever contradictions we may experience they would not trouble us unless we were philosophers, because each one of us is not supposed to be a thinker of some kind. The contradictions however in most cases assert themselves in the field of the will. When we are assailed on this side, the question is felt most acutely, like a piercing arrow. When the will to power is exposed to constant threat in one form or another, one cannot help becoming meditative about life. "What is the meaning of life?" then demands not an abstract solution but comes upon one as a concrete personal challenge. The solution must be in terms of experience. We then abandon all the contradictions that appear on the plane of
A Zen poet-master 3 sings:
Kono-mama ("I Am That I Am" 1)
I
II
In the rear agates and precious stones;
To the East Kwannon and Seishi,
To the West Monju and Fugen 4
In the middle there is a streamer:
As a breeze passes by
It flutters, "hu-lu," "hu-lu."1
Floating all the time,
Blown by the winds, it flows on floating
To Amida's Pure Land.
To put all this again into Christian terminology, Eckhart declares:
[If you can] take what comes to you through him, then whatever it is, it becomes divine in itself; shame becomes honor, bitterness becomes sweet, and gross darkness, clear light. Everything takes its flavor from God and becomes divine; everything that happens betrays God when a man's mind works that way; things all have this one taste; and therefore God is the same to this man alike in life's bitterest moments and sweetest pleasures. 5
Eckhart has a strange but interesting question in this connection:
A question is raised about those angels who live with us, serving and guarding us, as to whether or not they have less joy in identity than the angels in heaven and whether they are hindered at all in their [proper] activities by serving and guarding us. No! Not at all! Their joy is not diminished, nor their equality, because the angel's work is to do the will of God and the will of God is the angel's work. If God told an angel to go to a tree and pick off the caterpillars, the angel would be glad to do it and it would be bliss to him because it is God's will. 6?
The Shin pattern of expression is subjective and personal in contrast to the Zen way which is objective and impersonal, showing that Shin is more concerned with the karuṇā aspect of Reality while Zen tends to emphasize the prajñā aspect. The Shin faith is based on Amida's Praṇidhāna, which is summarized in the "Namu-amida-butsu" known as myōgō (nāmadheya in Sanskrit), meaning "the Name." The myōgō may sound abstract but it is the integrated form of subject and object, of devotee and Amida, of Namu (worshiper) and Buddha (the worshiped), of ki and hō. 7 When the myōgō is pronounced, the mystic identification takes place:
These are from Saichi. His experiences are given direct utterance here. As soon as the "Namu-amida-butsu" is pronounced he as "Namu" (ki) melts into the body of Amida (hō) which is "the ground" and "support." He cannot reason it out, but "Here I am I What has taken place is the identification of Amida (hō) and Saichi (ki). But the identification is not Saichi's vanishing. Saichi is still conscious of his individuality and addresses himself to Amida Buddha in a rather familiar fashion saying, "O Nyorai-san!" and congratulating himself on his being able to write about the happy event.
The following is the explosion of Mrs. Chiyono Sasaki of Kona on the island of Hawaii, who is a myōkōnin belonging to the Hongwanji Temple under Rev. Shōnen Tamekuni:
Good or bad--’tis "kono-mamma"!
Right or wrong--’tis "kono-mamma"!
True or false--’tis "kono-mamma"!
"Is" or "is not"--’tis "kono-mamma"!
Weep or laugh--’tis "kono-mamma"!
And "kono-mamma" is "kono-mamma"!
If you say "kono-mamma" is not enough, you are too greedy.
The "kono-mamma" never changes, nor can it be changed.
It is only because you are my Oya,
You call me to come "sono-mama" ["just as you are"].
It is all due to our not knowing that "kono-mamma" is "kono-mama"
That we wander about from one place to another.
That I am now inside the fold is due to the virtue of Oya's compassion,
And this pleases the Oya and also pleases me;
Oya and I live together then.
Each time I learn of his long-suffering labor,
How miserable I am!
How wretched I feel!
Ashamed of myself I resume my Nembutsu:
"Namu-amida-butsu, Namu-amida-butsu!"
"Kono-mama," we may think, sounds too easy and there is nothing spiritual or transcendental in it. If we bring this out in the world of particulars, everything here will be left to the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. It is the most dangerous doctrine to be put forward, especially to our present world. But it may be worth asking, Is this doctrine of "kono-mama" really so dangerous? 9 Is our present world
Eckhart's passage is a very strong one: As I have often said, there is something in the soul so closely akin to God that it is already one with him and need never be united to him. It is unique and has nothing in common with anything else. It has no significance whatsoever--none! Anything created is nothing but that Something is apart from and strange to all creation. If one were wholly this, he would be both uncreated and unlike any creature. If any corporeal thing or anything fragile were included in that unity, it, too, would be like the essence of that unity. If I should find myself in this essence, even for a moment, I should regard my earthly selfhood as of no more importance than a manure worm. 10
6
No joy, no gratefulness,
Yet nothing to grieve over the absence of gratefulness.
Saichi's "indifference" and "doing-nothing" are another and negative way of asserting "kono-mama" or "sono-mama." Buddha-wisdom is in one sense all-affirmation but in the other all-negation. It says "yes, yes" or "sono-mama" to everything that comes its way but at the same time it upholds nothing,
We can say that Saichi's free utterances, occupying more than sixty schoolchildren's notebooks, are rhapsodies on his living the grand contradiction itself which greets us as ki and hō 13 at every phase of our existence. Saichi lives this contradiction
Shinran, the founder of the Shin sect, presents this comment on the thought of "kono-mama." Since he was a Chinese scholar, he did not use the Japanese vernacular but its Chinese equivalent, tzu-jên fa-êrh, the Japanese reading of which is jinen hōni.
Ji means "of itself," or "by itself." As it is not due to the designing of man but to Nyorai's vow [that man is born in the Pure Land], it is said that man is naturally or spontaneously (nen), led to the Pure Land. The devotee does not make any conscious self-designing efforts, for they are altogether ineffective to achieve the end. Jinen thus means that as one's rebirth into the Pure Land is wholly due to the working of Nyorai's vow-power,
Hōni means "it is so because it is so"; and in the present case it means that it is in the nature of Amida's vow-power that we are born in the Pure Land. Therefore, the way in which the other-power works may be defined as "meaning of no-meaning," that is to say, it works in such a way as if not working [so natural, so spontaneous, so effortless, so absolutely free are its workings].
Amida's vow accomplishes everything and nothing is left for the devotee to design or plan for himself. Amida makes the devotee simply say "Namu-amida-butsu" in order to be saved by Amida, and the latter welcomes him to the Pure Land. As far as the devotee is concerned, he does not know what is good or bad for him, all is left to Amida. This is what I--Shinran--have learned.
Amida's vow is meant to make us all attain supreme Buddhahood. The Buddha is formless and because of his formlessness he is known as "all by himself" (jinen). If he had a form, he would not be called supreme Nyorai. In order to let us know how formless he is, he is called Amida. This is what I--Shinran--have learned.
When you have understood this, you need not any more be concerned with jinen ["being by itself"]. When you turn your attention to it, the "meaningless meaning" assumes a meaning [which is defeating its own purpose].
All this comes from Buddhajñā, which is beyond comprehensibility.
From this commentary of Shinran on jinen hōni, we can see what understanding he had of the working of Amida's praṇidhāna ("vows") or of the other-power. "Meaningless meaning" may be thought of as having no sense, no definite
Eckhart has his way of commenting on all these ideas which we may take as exclusively Shin.
If you suffer for God's sake and for God alone, that suffering does not hurt and is not hard to bear, for God takes the burden of it. If an hundredweight were loaded on my neck and then someone else took it at once on his neck, I had just as lief it were an hundred as one. It would not then be heavy to me and would not hurt me. To make a long story short, what one suffers through God and for God alone is made sweet and easy. 14
It [the will] is perfect and right when it has no special reference, when it has cut loose from self, and when it is transformed and adapted to the will of God. Indeed, the more like this the will is, the more perfect and true it is. With a will like this, anything is possible, whether love or anything else. 15
Supposing, however that all such [experiences] were really of love, even then it would not be best. We ought to get over amusing ourselves with such raptures for the sake of that better love, and to accomplish through loving service what men most need, spiritually, socially, or physically. As I have often said, if a person were in such a rapturous state as St. Paul once entered, and he knew of a sick man who wanted a cup of soup, it would be far better to withdraw from the rapture for love's sake and serve him who is in need. 16
143:1 "And God said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent one unto you." Exodus, 3,14.
144:2 Blakney, p. 205.
144:3 Goso Hoyen, died 1104.
144:4 These are the chief Mahāyāna Bodhisattvas:
145:5 Blakney, p. 17.
146:6 Ibid., p. 205.
146:7 See infra.
148:8 This is her colloquialism for kono-mama, "as-it-is-ness."
148:9 Saichi has this to say in regard to "kono-mama":
We really do not know what this means.
There is no "kono-mama" to him who inattentively listens to the Dharma,
There is no "kono-mama" to him.
I am one of those heretics who know not what "kono-mama" means;
A heretic indeed am I whose name is Saichi.
Saichi must have heard a preacher talking about "kono-mama," warning the audience to be on their guard not to take it in the sense of indifference or dissipation or giving oneself to impulses of the moment which grow out of the one-sided self-power. The "kono-mama" doctrine is likely to turn into a "heresy" when it is only intellectually understood and not experienced in our innermost consciousness.
149:10 Blakney, p. 205.
152:11 Evil passions.
153:12 See infra.
153:13 Ki, originally meaning "hinge," means in Shin especially the devotee who approaches Amida in the attitude of dependence. He stands as far as his self-power is concerned against Amida. Hō is "Dharma," "Reality," "Amida," and "the other-power." This opposition appears to our intellect as contradiction and to our will as a situation implying anxiety, fear, and insecurity. When ki and hō are united in the myōgō as "Namu-amida-butsu," the Shin devotee attains anjin, "peace of mind."
O Saichi, if you wish to see Buddha,
158:15 Ibid., p. 13.
158:16 Ibid., p. 14.
