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One sees the Dharma, one shares it, extends it, and must discuss it in terms of one's personal experience of shinjin. Whether one has been saved by the Buddha or not must become clear in one's life. If we are not sure, then our sharing and teaching of the Dharma will not be clear. For myself, I like the metaphor that shinjin is the entrance and the exit of "crossing the river. " The starting point of the nembutsu as the entry into the Buddha's way is not entry into shinjin. But, at this starting point of nembutsu, is where it is important to meet a teacher who is a "good friend of the way" for in studying the teachings of the Buddha, it is important to be able to walk a path tread by a person whose footprints were deep in shinjin.
Where does this process begin? To be able to stand at the point where you choose to study and to live the nembutsu this is the starting point both of the life of nembutsu and the shinjin process. From this starting point it is urgent to listen with one's total being in order to awaken shinjin , an experience which transforms one's life. Though I am not initially full and complete, this total listening opens within my life a clear direction towards Buddhahood, towards the Pure Land.
What was Shinran's process? At age nine he was sent to Mt. Hiei. He practiced the monastic disciplines with diligence there for twenty years. His search was harsh, disciplined as far as looking into the inner working of his bonno, his burden of karmic evil, was concerned. During this period he lived the life of a celibate monk, but in spite of that life he saw more and more acutely his own blind desires and defilements. At age twenty-nine, he encountered the nembutsu teacher Honen and came to realize there is a true way to become Buddha though there are these defilements in one's life
With his teacher, Shinran had the real awakening experience, the experience of shinjin. It took him twenty years of perseverance to arrive at this. At the age of twenty-nine, he threw everything away and returned to Amida Buddha or, in other words, Shinran "died to his old self and was born to a new self." It was a deep experience in his life, which he expressed through the phrase "one single moment of shinjin ," meaning that the experience of shinjin is fulfilled in a single moment.
It is here, at this single moment when the experience of shinjin is awakened in our own life, that we can truly discuss and see the world of shinjin, of illusion, as well as the world of enlightenment (Pure Land, Nirvana). Without this experience, there is not true listening, true hearing, but only listening with one's brain. Such listening is not "testing with one's body. " It is superficial and unclear.
William James' Varieties of Religious Experience deals with two types of conversion: one gradual, one abrupt. James describes two factors as bringing about an abrupt conversion. One is the type of personality and the other is the kind of situation-for example, much anguish and suffering in a person's life. Though James spoke of this area in terms of Christianity, I feel it is also valid in terms of Shin Buddhism. For example, myokonin Genza's experience of faith was very abrupt. Genza was only eighteen when his father, working alongside him in the field, died, saying at the last, "When I die, rely on the Buddha!"
Shocked by this, Genza began to listen to the teachings. The following summer, at nineteen, he experienced awakening. At that time, farmers used to go up into the mountains to gather grass. They would load the grass on cows or horses and bring it down from the mountains in such loads that often one could hardly see the animal under its burden of grass. It was while Genza was loading grass on his cow, in that very moment, that he realized-experienced with his body-the meaning of Amida's compassion in his life. "Just as the cow carries grass down the hillside, Amida carries that bonno I am always creating . Amida carries it and has always carried it!"
In contrast to such an abrupt conversion is the gradual, slow ripening illustrated in the life of another myokonin, Saichi. Saichi's father, though not of a temple family, became a Shin Buddhist priest in Shimane, a devoutly Shin Buddhist prefecture. Saichi then began listening to the teachings at about age eighteen, listened but did not understand and so quit for a few years. At age thirty he began listening again, but only after the age of fifty did he ripen to an experience of shinjin.
In the past, the question in Shin Buddhism used to be, "When did you receive shinjin?" But, based on this categorization of William James, it may not be necessary for everyone to have such an abrupt awakening-a gradual awakening may happen. The point is, whether abrupt or gradual, the awakening must be clear in one's life, a transformation in one's life in which the dark shadows of bonno and the light of Amida stand out distinctly.
Shinjin is complete in itself, but it happens over and over again and deepens one's sensitivity to the joys and sorrows one experiences. The Buddha is always embracing us and yet, only at times do we realize we are being embraced. The "absolute" of awakening, the experience of shinjin which is Other Power, the working of Amida's Vow, is always-without interruption-the environment of myself. It embraces the "time" which is my process of history from birth to death. Only in my awakening to the paradox of my inescapably defiled self-the self who is always contriving, justifying, selecting, discriminating, trying to organize the world of experience around myself-as being this very self that is embraced by Amida-do ] realize this ever-present environment of shinjin.
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