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Selected passages from Honen Shonin
with commentary
“Question: ‘When evil thoughts will keep arising within the
mind, what ought one to do?
Answer (by Honen Shonin):
‘The only thing to do is to repeat the
Nembutsu.’”[1]
Commentary:This is something that I often say in my books,
articles and discussions with my Dharma friends. We cannot fix our
samsaric minds. We cannot eliminate evil thoughts. We cannot stop
thinking. All we can to do is change the focus from whatever
appears in our mind to Amida, through the saying of His Name. Just
as you don’t take a monkey serious, don’t take your mind serious.
We are not saved because of any quality that can be found in our
minds and we are not obstructed to be born in the Pure Land by our
blind passions and evil thoughts. Our salvation comes from outside
of our samsaric mind, so we do not need to bother about it
anymore.
Accept yourself as you are because you are saved by Amida Buddha
exactly as you are. Accept that it is impossible to have pure
thoughts while you are still in this samsaric environment, itself
the effect of personal and collective karma. Here everything is a
temptation and an obstacle, so it’s impossible that thoughts of
attachments, desire, aversion, etc, do not arise in your mind. If
you had no evil thoughts then you would be a Buddha, and for a
Buddha the Primal Vow would be useless. In that Primal Vow Amida
asked you to entrust to Him, say His Name and wish to be born in
His Pure Land. He did not tell you to have pure thoughts or to
develop special qualities in your mind. Basically, He asked you to
come as you are, entrust to Him as you are with all your problems
and blind passions, say His Name as you are, and wish to be born in
His Pure Land as you are. There is no need to self-exclude yourself
from His salvation by inventing obstacles that He never put in the
Path to His Pure Land, so simply say His Name without worrying
about your monkey mind.
There is no problem if your mind is agitated or chaotic.
Nembutsu does NOT depend on your mind and is not improved or
affected by anything that can be found in it. Why? Because the
Name“AMIDA” belongs to AMIDA! You did not invent the Holy
Name!
“Only Nembutsu is true and real”, said Shinran Shonin,
which means that Nembutsu does not belong to the illusory samsaric
world, but to the reality of Enlightenment. I repeat this because
it is extremely important - although we say it with our lips,
Nembutsu does not belong to us and is not improved or affected by
us. We can’t soil Nembutsu with our thoughts. More than this,
Nembutsu was invented especially for beings like us. It is not a
mantra that should be recited in a special way or with a special
state of mind, but a Name that can be easily said by anybody, no
matter how high or low they are on the scale of spiritual
evolution. It is the Name that does not exorcise demons, as demons
themselves can say it in faith and be saved and transformed into
Buddhas in the Pure Land of Amida. It is the Name that low level
beings like us can say it as they are and enter the stage of
non-retrogression for birth in the Pure Land. It is the ultimate
expression of the Infinite Compassion of Amida and all Buddhas.
No matter where you go in the ten directions and no matter how far
you search in all religions you cannot find a Name so powerful and
yet so Compassionate and easily accessible to all.
Namo Amida Bu
[1]
Honen the Buddhist Saint - His Life and Teachings, volume
III, compiled by imperial order, translation by Rev Ryugaku
Ishizuka and Rev Harper Havelock Coates, The Society for the
Publication of Sacred Books of the World, Kyoto, 1949, p.
426
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