Jodo Shinshu is something that you just can’t learn or
listen to with your brain alone. Though you may have ‘Ah, I get it!’, once you
let it slip your mind, you will be finished! You need to make it unforgettable,
and the best way to do this is to imbue your whole body with the smell of
Buddha-Dharma. You must reach such a degree. Without doing so, it will be too
late at the point of death. By just remembering only, you will forget everything
when you die.
At deathbed, what you have is the ‘real pitch dark’ destiny;
what is left is ‘solitude’ and ‘unwillingness to die’ only. The Buddha-Dharma
that you have listened to for several tens of years will be lost to sight. Your
possessions, reputation, wife, children, learning, nasty mother in-law and
hateful daughters in-law, etc.—all such thoughts will disappear. What remains
are only ‘the destiny that is real pitch dark’, ‘so lonely!’ and ‘how lonesome!’
Between the mentality of loneliness and the real pitch darkness arises an
indescribable feeling of ‘fear’. ‘The gloomy future’ refers to ‘lonesome’ and
‘real pitch darkness’, as well as the mind ‘desiring to live’ that emerges at
the point of death.
You do not
all have the ‘desire to live’, do you? Maybe some have such a desire, but just
a little. After all, you still can eat three meals a day, which means you are
still living and thus do not harbor the ‘desire to live’. Nevertheless, when ‘no
matter what, you have to die now’, when your vision is blackened and ‘your eyes
can no longer see things’, you will have such a ‘desire to live’. What people commonly
say about ‘the eyes can no longer see things’ really does happen at the point
of death. Even though your ears can still listen, it is like listening to the
sounds of your daughter talking from afar. ‘Ah, finally I have come to the time
of death!’ At that time, your mind will harbor a very strong desire ‘to live,
to live, and to live’. When ‘no matter what, one has to die’, the strong
thought of ‘desiring to live’ will continue to spring up.
For this
reason, you will realize that you ‘are unable to live’. ‘Desiring to live but unable
to’, ‘unable to live but desiring to’. In that moment, if you have not acceded reverently
to shinjin, ‘the destiny of real pitch-darkness’ will come upon you. When ‘I
have to die alone’, the sentiment of loneliness will rise in the mind. That
kind of feeling is beyond expression, especially when aggravated by the
suffering of illness. It goes without saying that succumbing to illness is
suffering; the ineffable condition of ‘human life is intensely painful’ will be
fully understood in that moment.
Now, you may complain about suffering. Actually there isn’t
anything that is really suffering. I guess none of you here comes without
having had breakfast, do you, because you are penniless and therefore you have had
nothing to eat for three days? Such an occurrence rarely happens to you, does it?
If you end up the same, you may taste a little of what is called life’s
bitterness. However, speaking of the suffering at deathbed, that’s not all!
Hence, you
mustn't do without infusing yourself with the Buddha-Dharma in everyday life. People
who are infused with the Buddha-Dharma will be able to realize that ‘it is
genuinely Other Power’, even in the state of ‘absolute pitch-darkness’. Due to
the fact that ‘no matter what, you can’t get through it’, ‘the Tathagata saves such
a sentient being by His Primal Vow-Power, which I have been listening to from the
very beginning and now see’, you will be more grateful and contented with the
compassion of the Tathagata and naturally feel ‘no worry in that pitch-dark
condition’. ‘Though no matter what, we will have to die, and this life is at
the most 50, 80 or 100 years, henceforth I gain “the deathless life”’. A joyful
mind arises when the ‘desire to live’ is finally satisfied with ‘Now I really can continue to live!’
That ‘absolute
pitch-dark condition’ is totally different from ‘the state of pitch-darkness’ turned
into brightness and birth into the Land of bliss. As long as you have delusion,
it means ‘darkness’. Therefore, humans (bombu)
are animals of delusion, even unto death. ‘Delusion is the nature of ordinary
beings. Apart from delusion, there is no mind in us.’ As long as there is delusion,
it is never bright. Because Amida Buddha saves us in the states of
‘pitch-darkness’, ‘delusion’, and ‘heavily burdened with karmic evils’, we
realize how honorable the Primal Vow is and how immense the Primal Vow-Power—the
power of Namo Amida Butsu!
If the
power and working as well as the compassion of Namo Amida Butsu are just for
saving the sentient beings that can be saved, then this is not extraordinary.
The problem is that ‘no matter what, I cannot be saved; now I have to die’. Your
eyes begin to lose their sight, as described by Master Yuan-Zhao when he was
bedridden: ‘When vision is going off, my destiny is faint’. Amida Buddha can
however enable sentient beings in such conditions to be born in the Pure Land
and become Buddha. So how on earth can bombu know the immensity of the power
and working of Buddha?
What is
this power and working? It is the
‘radiance of Amida Buddha’. Radiance has two kinds, ‘the radiance of
compassion’ and ‘the radiance of wisdom’. Furthermore, the radiance emanating from
the mind is called the mind-radiance and that from the body is called the body-radiance.
Some people make such a classification too. However, the person who has reverently
accepted faith (person of shinjin) has ‘the benefit of being constantly
protected by the mind-radiance of Amida’, living in the embracing and non-forsaking
light of Amida. You cannot see this light with your eyes. How could you? The
eyeballs of bombu can’t do this.
‘My eyes
being hindered by blind passions,
I cannot
perceive the light that grasps me;
Yet the
great compassion, without tiring,
Illumines
me always.’
(Hymns of the
Pure Land Masters)
‘My evil
passions hinder me from perceiving it,
But his
Light of Great Compassion never ceases to shine on me untiringly.’
(Shoshinge)
These words
are originally from Master Genshin. Master Genshin was a great master who
resided on Mount Hiei all his life, from beginning to end. He was an
influential gakusho (Tendai scholar)
and the founder of the Enshin school which brought Tendai Buddhism in Japan to
a great height of development. He expounded on the Lotus Sutra his whole life
long and taught his students about this sutra. Though he was such a great
master, he was reverently called ‘Eshin Sozu’ because he lived in Eshin-in. Though
a Tendai monk, he practiced personally and taught others to practice the Primal
Vow. He inherited the teaching of Master Shan-tao, was the spiritual ancestor of
Honen Shonin, and also the seventh patriarch of the seven Pure Land Masters of
Jodo Shinshu.
Zuiken Sama
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