Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Essay 154

The Buddha-Dharma is
After having listened to it
And known about it
Discard it
Look up to it
Remain foolish
Just as you are


For birth in the Pure Land you don’t need to put on a make-up and get prepared. It is no good to put on a countenance of shinjin as though you have owned it and no need to show your diligence in repaying the kindness of Buddha whenever you think on the Buddha’s compassion so that you will not forget about it. Why? These are the self-power “calculations” of bombu, and delusion. What use of you to embrace your delusion so cautiously? When you are able to think this way, meanwhile you are able to know that Jodo Shinshu is a religion that embraces bombu, and about the inconceivability of the Primal Vow-power, only you will begin to savour the taste of twofold deep conviction! The “deep-faith of the object” refers to the Buddha-wisdom, also Primal Vow-power, which enables you to know yourself as a foolish being of karmic evil caught in birth-and-death. It is the faith-mind that knows the incapability and powerlessness of the foolish beings in light of the inconceivable Primal Vow-power, shone through the Buddha-wisdom. To look up and entrust to the Vow-power that “save even such a very foolish self of me” is the “deep-faith of the Dharma”. Apart from the “deep-faith of object” there isn’t the “deep-faith of the Dharma”. And, apart from the “deep-faith of the Dharma” there isn’t the “deep-faith of the object”. Either the object or Dharma, is the all-pervading light of Buddha-wisdom of Namu Amida Butsu. This one Namu Amida Butsu is the object in its entirety also the Dharma in its entirety; this is “the oneness of object and Dharma (kiho-ittai)”

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