Salvation in the Present
This is teaching from Professor Eiken Kobai - a Japanese Shin Scholar of the highest rank.
His writing confirms what I came to understand by my own layman’s reading of Shakyamuni Buddha and his disciple Shinran in translation - and now share as SHIN UGLY - Shinran’s plain teaching in plain language for plain people about how Amida Buddha’s great compassion works to end our suffering once and for all.
It’s wonderful SHIN UGLY teaching (dharma) to be able to refer to as I complete Part 3 of “The Easy Path To Buddhahood.
Have a good weekend, all. I’ll be back on Monday.
Paul R.
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The Jodo-Shinshu teaching is frequently misunderstood as being “salvation” that takes place after death. This is a great mistake. Shinran Shonin carefully pointed out that the salvation of the Primal Vow takes place in the present. I believe that the most important and deep meaning that the Jodo-Shinshu teaching has, is that salvation is granted to those of us living at this very moment.
In the Chapter on Attainment of his True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way, Shinran
Shonin wrote:
When common men filled with evil passions and the multitudinous beings defiled with the sins of Birth-and-Death, receive the Faith and Practice of Merit-transference in the Phase of Going, at that moment, they enter the “rightly-established group.”
In the Jodo SankyoOjo Monrui (Passages on Birth in the Pure Land through the Three Pure Land Sutras), he wrote:
Birth in the Pure Land as expressed in the Larger Sutra is based on the vow “selected” by Amida Buddha, which is beyond human comprehension. That is why it is referred to as
“Buddha-centered power” (tariki).
In other words, that is what “birth in the Pure Land through the Nembutsu” means, and that is how we are absolutely able to attain absolute enlightenment. We will be included in the “rightly-established group” (shojoju) in our present life and will be born in the true land of recompense (The Pure Land).
Further, in the Jodo Wasan (Japanese Poems on the Pure Land), he wrote:
Those with True Faith are instantly numbered among those who are “rightly established”; When they reach the non-retrogressive stage, They will unfailingly be led into Nirvana.
As expressed in the above statements, when we receive SHINJIN (True Entrusting), we are immediately placed in the “rightly established group” (shojoju), which means that we are already in the embrace of “salvation.”
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(Paul’s note): And that last statement, blog readers, is why neither sickness nor self-inflicted death - and the great negative karma such a death entails - was able to determine my beloved Jessie’s fate.
This is the mysterious power of Amida’s Primal Vow - this ultimate path to Buddhahood.
It’s the only path that will actually WORK for plain people - burdened with blind passion which causes us to endure endless births into lives of ignorance as non-buddhas.
It is the only path that will will actually WORK for plain people - whose blind passion makes us both sow and reap such great negative karma.
It is the only path that will actually WORK for plain people - people like Shinran, like Honen, like Jessie, and like me.