This statement is to help us break our limited view of Buddhist practice based on the so called power of the ego and escape its dangerous traps. Many people who hear the message of the Primal Vow of Amida Buddha and the wonderful Jodo Shinshu teaching about it, are struck by the simplicity and easiness of the attainment of birth in the Pure Land. Although they seem to understand what it is all about, in fact they cannot accept this teaching as it is.

Even if they hear that Amida especially saves (leads to birth in the Pure Land and to Buddhahood) all people no matter their good or evil karma, their merits or lack of any merit, they still cannot believe what they hear and think that somehow, those with some merits and virtues are especially saved, or they are even more saved than the others with no merits.

When these people hear that Amida made his Primal Vow with the intent of the “evil person’s attainment of Buddhahood” they do not take this statement for what it is, i.e. to immediately entrust in it and become happy about it, but they think the contrary, that especially because “an evil person attains birth [in the Pure Land], it goes without saying that a good person will.” This line of thinking goes something along the lines “if evil people are saved, then we who are not so bad as they, deserve all the more to be born in the Pure Land.” Thus, instead of relying on Amida’s power, they still cling to their own power and merits. So Master Shinran continues as follows:

“This is because people who rely on doing good through their self-power fail to entrust themselves wholeheartedly to Other Power and therefore are not in accord with Amida’s Primal Vow”
No matter how often they hear the Jodo Shinshu teaching, the only thing such people can hear and accept is their own ego’s calculations. They are blinded by their ego and their so-called merits and virtues. For these people the power of the Primal Vow avails them nothing, and they cannot use this wonderful and simple method in order to attain supreme Buddhahood in the Pure Land. In other words, they do not have the twofold profound convictions (nishu jinshin) of shinjin:

I am an evil being who has wandered in the world of delusion from timeless past and have no possibility of reaching Enlightenment

and

Amida Buddha established his Primal Vow to cause such an evil person to be born in the Pure Land.

This is what is meant by “when they overturn the mind of self-power and entrust themselves to Other Power, they will attain birth in the true and fulfilled land.”

If one thinks that he is good enough to be born in the Pure Land, believing that somehow he has an advantage because of such and such merit or good deeds that he has done, then he is caught in the trap of his ego, and is thus very far from attaining Buddhahood in the Pure Land.

Shinran Shonin said that as long as one has not yet become a Buddha, he lives in delusion and darkness, and for this kind of person every good he does is always mixed with the poison of ego. Only a Buddha can do a truly good deed. So what kind of good or merit do we think we have as long as we are not a Buddha? How can unenlightened people like us have a merit even as little as a piece of dust? And what can this so-called “merit” do for us in order for us to be born in the Pure Land? What practice can we successfully do by relying on our own power?

Shinran said, “it is impossible for us, who are possessed of blind passions, to free ourselves from birth-and-death through any practice whatever.”

Into my opinion, the evil person saved by Amida is in fact the one who realizes he is indeed an evil person, who is aware of the evil he has deep in his heart, even if on the outside he looks like a good person. And, how many of us do not look like good people? It is so easy to keep the appearance of a good person!

Many people think of me as a good man, but only I myself know how evil I am and how often I am capable of committing any act if the conditions are met. When I look to a murderer or a thief or any other criminal now in jail, I realize that they are me, but me without having the occasion of being in the same situations they were in when they committed their evil actions. I am now writing these words, and maybe I have a calm mind, but who knows what I will do tomorrow out of jealousy if my girl friend leaves me, or I lose everything I have. I might steal, kill and do any evil actions that other people did who are now in prison.

When Shinran spoke about evil I do not think he had in mind what is commonly considered social or moral evil – that which society says is wrong but might have been acceptable in the past. By evil, he rather means that no matter what good we might think we did or merit we believe we have acquired, we still cannot be sure that we attained a level from which we cannot fall back and retrogress, thus not being able to finally attain Nirvana. Many sages of today from various religious paths widely admired by people still say about themselves that they are just simple persons with a lot of work to do on themselves. Not even they think that they attained a level from which there is no retrogression.

Thus it is no coincidence that the third chapter of Tannisho begins and ends with the sentence: “Even a good person attains birth in the Pure Land, so it goes without saying that an evil person will.”

Those people who look like good persons on the outside but realize they are in fact evil persons, and all people who are aware of the evil inside them, will be born in the Pure Land if they rely on Amida Buddha’s Primal Vow and not on their own so called “merits”. This is shinjin of the twofold profound convictions.