Prologue 44

Many people do not know how truly honorable Buddha is, but go too far in saying ‘my karmic evil is profound’. This, however, is merely your idea of ‘profound karmic evil’. If you do not know the virtue of Buddha but talk about ‘profound karmic evil’, you are not being true to your words. If you do not know about ‘white’, how can you know about ‘black’?

Take ‘the explication of six syllables’ as an example: Simply because the ‘gratitude’ of the two-syllable ‘na-mo’ is not separated from the ‘I will definitely save you!’ of the four-syllable ‘a-mi-da-butsu’, ‘the person to be saved’ (Namo)(Shinjin) is Namo Amida Butsu, and ‘the Dharma that saves’ (Amida Butsu) (I definitely save you!) is also Namo Amida Butsu. This is known as ‘the oneness of the person to be saved and the Dharma that saves’ and ‘perfection of self-benefit and benefiting of others’ (if they should not be born there, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment). 

Namo Amida Butsu, therefore, is the Buddha of ‘the person to be saved and the Dharma that saves’, of ‘perfection of self-benefit and benefiting of others’. This is why Amida Tathagata is regarded as unbelievably honorable.

Zuiken Sama

<Perfectionof self-benefit and benefiting of others>

- the Tathagata's perfection of both the great merit-power for his own benefit and the merit for benefiting others