Eiken Kobai Explains SHINJIN (True Entrusting)
Shin Ugly - Shinran’s plain teaching for plain people about suffering and the end of suffering - pivots around one central concept: there is only one way to END your suffering and become a TRUE Buddha in this age of Dharma Decline - and that is to become a person of SHINJIN (True Entrusting) in the Primal Vow of Amida Buddha.
The teaching is not hard, intellectually - even for someone with no background in Buddhism at all, like my friend Anna. In fact, the very simplicity of it all is what makes it hard for sophisticated folks like us.
Village idiots in medieval Japan - people with no background in Buddhism at all either - could follow it, when Honen, or Shinran or their TRUE students shared it accurately and clearly.
Their great advantage was that they knew they were village idiots - and so didn’t try to fit the vast ocean Amida Buddha’s Infinite Compassion into the thimble of their own conceptual capacities, their own philosophies, their own understandings - Buddhist or otherwise.
That’s why so many of them had little trouble entrusting themselves to Amida Buddha’s guaranteed path to Buddhahood - they could empty their little teacups so Shinran could pour them his tea.
More sophisticated folks often have GREAT trouble.
We are often looking for complextity - something we have to grunt and groan over - something we have to study till our heads ache and our eyes swim - or something we have to work at to EMPTY our minds - something with great and difficult practice to which we will devote years and years.
…something we can be secretly PROUD of.
How do I know this? Because I’ve had the experience of having other Buddhists scratch their heads, asking me “What is your practice? What do you DO?”
It often BOTHERS them to hear Shinran’s Shin Ugly answer there’s no practice in Shin Ugly - no practice whatsoever. The only thing we do is listen deeply - with open minds and honest hearts. Everything else happens naturally after that - as Amida Buddha shines his light and life into our darkness. Once we have the epiphany of Amida doing it ALL - we simply say THANK YOU - NamuAmidaButsu.
I’ve been asked, recently, if I am somehow biased against clerics and scholars. My answer is, “of course not”.
At the same time I declare with NO apology that I AM biased - and I AM standing up - against FALSE teachers and FALSE teaching within the Shin Buddhist community (sangha).
Why? For the same reason Honen, Shinran, Yuien and Rennyo were biased and stood up in their day: False teachers and false teachings lead people AWAY from the simplicity of SHINJIN - of true entrusting - into what Shinran calls “calculated thinking”. And I’ve both observed and dialogued with enough Shin Buddhists to know what a huge issue this is today.
At the same time, I listen deeply and with great gratitude to TRUE teachers of the TRUE teaching - humble men and women - scholars and clerics both - who know that their honest vocation is to transmit accurately Shinran’s teaching to me as a layperson - as best as they can.
As a layperson - without formal training - without scholarly understanding - I have the same vocation as I do my best to transmit accurately Shinran’s teaching to others, as well.
All of us share one purpose: to represent Amida Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha (our Buddha) and Shinran accurately and clearly, so others can find true salvation from endless lives of rebirth as suffering ignorant beings - as we all remain in this world - right up until the moment of our deaths.
And that’s what this blog is all about: Shin Ugly - Shinran’s plain teaching about suffering and the end of suffering. As Rennyo explained, having true teachers is CRITICAL - in order for people to be established in the same true entrusting (SHINJIN) as him.
So I invite you to join me in the “no practice” of listening deeply as Professor Eiken Kobai explains clearly what SHINJIN (true entrusting) is all about.
I am grateful beyond words that the internet has allowed me to read his writings done from lifetime of study as he expounds the dharma simply and truly.
I am honored to to connect with him personally - and to cooperate with him and his students here in the USA to make his true teaching more widely available.
Kobai, his students and I share a common mission: to help restore the Shin Buddhist community to its singular purpose of accurate transmission of Shinran’s True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way.
More than that, we share a common willingness to SPEAK OUT - as Shinran did, and Yuien did, and Rennyo did - to help honest seekers of the Buddha’s truth for plain people to distinguish between True Teachers and True Teaching of Shinran - and FALSE.
Thank you, Professor Kobai.
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…As to what shinjin is, in the Chapter on Faith of the The True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way, Shinran Shonin states that it is the mind “without doubt” and also the mind “not mingled with doubt.”
Further, in “On the One Thought and the Many Thoughts”, Shinran Shonin states: “SHINJIN is hearing the Tathagata’s (Amida’s) Great Vow without doubt“.
In other words, SHINJIN is, “the mind that accepts the Primal Vow without doubt.”
Further, this SHINJIN is divided into “the two aspects of deep faith“:
- the deep faith on the part of “those who are to be saved”
- and the deep faith on the part “that does the saving” (i.e., the saving power of the Primal Vow).
Zendo Daishi expressed this in the following way:
The term JINSHIN refers to the “deep mind.”
There are two aspects to this mind:
- The first is the awareness that I am an evil being who has been transmigrating from beginningless past with absolutely no possibility of escape from that round of suffering.
- Second is faith that Amida Buddha’s 48 Vows will take in all sentient beings and that I will be born in the Pure Land due to his Vow Power.
The first is the deep faith on the part of “those who are to be saved,” and the second is the deep faith on the part of the side “that does the saving.”
In other words, the SHINJIN (true entrusting) taught in Jodo-Shinshu is:
- “I am an evil being who has from timeless past has wandered in the world of delusion and has absolutely no possibility of reaching the world of enlightenment” and
- “Amida Buddha established his Primal Vow to absolutely cause just such an evil person to be born in the Pure Land”.
These two aspects are the single deep personal self reflection of, “This person who is completely beyond salvation will, in fact, absolutely be saved.”
I have already mentioned this but Shinran Shonin considered SHINJIN to be something completely due to Amida Buddha, and referred to it as “SHINJIN based on the `merit transference’ of `Buddha-centered power’”.
Essentially, when this SHINJIN is decided, is when we enter the “rightly-established group of those who are assured of birth in the Pure Land without fail.”
As it states in Article One of the Tannisho (Lamenting Divergences):
When we believe that we are to be born in the Pure Land being saved by Amida’s inconceivable Vow, there rises up within us the desire to recite the Nembutsu.
At that moment, we share in the benefit of “being embraced and not forsaken“.
When we accept the Primal Vow and the desire to recite the Nembutsu rises within us, we are “embraced and not forsaken.” That is, we enter into the “rightly-established group of those assured of birth (in the Pure Land), from which there is no falling back.”
That is how Shinran Shonin taught us that our birth in the Pure Land, where we will become a Buddha, is guaranteed from the moment we receive shinjin.
THAT is our benefit in the present.
I have already stated this, but the purpose of the teaching known as Buddha-dharma is to teach us how to become a Buddha.
Next to the phrase “benefit of becoming (a Buddha),” there is the following phrase written in kana (Japanese alphabet) to explain what this means: “Know that you will receive the benefit of becoming a Buddha“.
In other words, Shinran Shonin said that the great benefit of truth is being assured that we will become a Buddha, and that is what joining the “rightly-established group who are assured (of birth in the Pure Land)” means.