Dharmavidya

A few questions on the Amida-shu perspective

Q: A commentator recently queried why the Amida sangha use the term Pureland rather than Pure Land which this commentator thought more correct.

A: We read Sukhavati and Jodo, not Sukha Vati or Jo Do, so Pureland is actually closer to the Sanskrit and Japanese. There is no particular basis for thinking that "Pure Land" is somehow "correct". However, that matters little. Language should not be a strait jacket. Language is a convention for communication. There is a usefulness in having separate terms to indicate the style of Buddhism on the one hand and the domain of a Buddha on the other, so the Amida sangha has adopted the convention of using Pureland for the former and Pure Land for the latter. It works. If other like it they can follow. If they don't they don't have to.

Q: The same commentator asks by what right Amida-shu has produced its own version of the Larger Pureland Sutra

A: Well, it's a free country. There is no particular reason why they shouldn't. Actually there are about seven extant versions of the supposedly "original" sutra. The one that has become standard in East Asia and is used by, for instance, Jodoshinshu almost certainly is not the original Indian version. About a third or more of the text originated in China at a later date. Also, much of the "original" material is, in fact, extremely confused. The main point is that the craving to get a pure orthodox text is a Western obsession that has its roots in Western religious history and the persecution of heresies. The Buddhists of the past were not bothered about this. What they wanted was a text that would work as a vehicle for conveying the Dharma. Texts are tools, not criteria. The teacher Shinran, for instance, takes huge liberties with the texts that he quotes in his works. This is in order to convey the Dharma. This is why there are so many versions. Teachers of old thought nothing of redrafting a passage if the old version was not working for their disciples. Amida shu likewise is a group of sincere practitioners who need a text that works, not an academic shibboleth. There is, of course, nothing wrong with people debating the value of the particular rendering, but trying to imply that only some people have the right to produce one is censorship and elitism.

Q: Why does the Amida-shu version of the three core vows differ from the currently established East Asian one?

A: The point in question is the exclusion verse. In the Jodoshinshu version there is a passage at the end of the faith vow that excludes all those who have committed the most grievous sins. This is a doctrinal problem for Jodoshinshu because all of us must have committed them at some time in our many lives so the implication is that the vow is non-functional. This would mean that salvation by faith did not work and the whole Jodoshinshu doctrine would collapse. Various scholars have tried to get round this in various ways. However, not every early version of the sutra has this exclusion phrase situated in this vow. It makes much more sense that this exclusion goes with the vow on salvation by perfecting all virtues. This is logical. The sutra then makes sense and supports the essential Pureland position (whether Amida-shu, Jodoshin, or Jodo) that perfecting all virtues works in principle but is unattainable in practice so that salvation by faith is the only practical gate. This was the position of Honen and Shinran. This is why the Amida-shu version has it this way.

Q: Surely it is illegitimate for Amida-shu to disagree with Jodoshin-shu, given that Jodoshin-shu is big and Amida-shu is small?

A: This, of course is a silly point on several counts. Firstly, size has nothing to do with it. Secondly, in any case, every year Amida-shu gets bigger and Jodoshin-shu gets smaller. But aside from such frivolity, Amida-shu does not actually disagree with Jodoshin-shu doctrinally on anything much so it is an empty debate.

Q: Why does Amida-shu psychologise the Buddhist teaching?

A: The Buddhist teaching does not need psychologising, Buddhism is psychology. Buddhism is, as the Dalai Lama has said, a science of mind. It is also various other things - a culture, a philosophy, a religion - but first and foremost it is about the mind. "All states flow from the mind", says Buddha at the beginning of the Dhammapada. Some people have said to me that Buddhism does not need psychology - meaning Western psychology. In a sense this is true because Buddhism already is a comprehensive psychology in itself. But that does not mean that it can't absorb technical details from other sources - it has been doing so throughout its history. In any case, if you strip Buddhism of its psychology and take all the texts literally then as far as the vast majority of Western people are concerned it would be reduced to superstition. No, psychology is a crucially important gate to the Dharma and the Dharma is psychological. Again, some people have said that psychology and Dharma are separate in the sense that one could be enlightened and yet still neurotic - I disagree. If you are neurotic you are certainly not enlightened.

Q: What is the Amida-shu perspective on lineage?

A: A lineage is a succession of teachers. Most lineages in Buddhism die out. Some new ones form. Each school of Buddhism has its own conventions about lineage. Each as every right to have its own approach, but should not criticise others. The Jodoshin approach is that only blood descendents of the founder should hold high office. If that's what they think, that's fine for them. Those who agree can join, those who disagree can leave. Some schools think that their lineage goes all the way back to Shakyamuni in an unbroken line. This is almost certainly not true, but if it works for them I have no objection so long as they don't start saying that everybody else should think the same. Some say that lineage ensures purity of teaching and conduct. However, some of the worst scandals in the modern history of Buddhism have been committed by long lineage holders. Half the Zen teachers in the USA belong to lineages that derive from Yasutani Roshi who was, apparently, a Nazi. Some may think that you can be enlightened and still be a Nazi, but I disagree. Knowing who somebody's teachers were is an indicator, but i is not the only indicator and it is certainly not a guarantee.

 

Some Q&A on Zen Therapy

Q: What is the view of Human Nature in Zen Therapy?
A: The core of human nature is love. Our love is never totally unconditional, but we can intuit unconditional love and strive toward it. Actual love in a conditioned world inevitably involves choices, conflicts, frustrations and disappointments as well as joys, satisfactions, creativity and growth. How we cope with and respond to these various challenges and graces makes us the characters that we are. The elements in this mix that we have difficulty resolving crystalize as our personal koan which is our individual manifestation of the universal existential questions about mortality, life, existence and meaning.

Q:What are the therapeutic techniques and procedures used in Zen therapy?
A: Zen therapy is an approach not a technique. It can make use of almost any therapeutic method - conversation, psychodrama, art therapy, outdoor pursuits, dance therapy, whatever. However whatever method it uses it will tailor to the principles of Buddhist psychology.

Q: How has your thinking changed about therapy since writing Zen therapy?
A: The Zen Therapy book was written while I was still considerably under the influence of Thich Nhat Hanh. Most of the theory in the book I will still stand by. There are, however, some specific areas where my interpretation has changed. First there is the reinterpretation of the Four Noble Truths as set out in The Feeling Buddha. Second there is a different take on dependent arising as set out in The New Buddhism. I do not think that it is useful to think in terms of "everything being part of everything else" or "everything depending on everything else" any more because I realised that if you follow such ideas through consistently they undermine ethics. Ethics has to involve choices in which we accept relations with some things and reject others. Also many actual relationships are one way. I need the sun but the sun does not need me. I have come to think, therefore, that while interdependence sounds good, the real challenge is to accept our dependency. This also chimes with a growing appreciation of the Pureland perspective on human nature as vulnerable and fallible. So I would only use concepts like Buiddha nature now in a very restricted manner as they too easily play into a human weakness for grandiosity.

Q: Can you say more about what you mean by Buddha Nature and how it reconciles with Carl Rogers view that "if one is able to get to the core of an individual, one finds a trustworthy, positive center" (Rogers, 1987)

A: Buddha nature is no nature. A person is as shunya as anything else which means that one can be many things. Some say BN is the potential to be a Buddha, but that is like saying every plot has palace nature - you still have to build the palace and many people are far from having got it together to build a palace and are busy building casinoes, abatoirs or shanties instead. Many Western people have conflated BN with the Rogerian idea and/or with "that of God in everyman" and this expresses the inevitable invasion of Buddhism by Western popular spirituality. Inasmuch as it means "Have a positive regard for others" I have no quarrel with it, except insofar as it confuses the real Buddhist idea. A Buddha is not attached to being reliable or non-reliable, good or bad, trustworthy or non-trustworthy. It is because they are not attached and are able to adapt that, in the ultimate analysis, they really are trustworthy, but this does not mean that they conform to any conventional idea of what that looks like. A Buddha is willing to be whatever the situation requires. Buddhism basically does not have the idea of a "core" in the person. Many people want to introduce this idea and it has been a perennial struggle in Buddhism, at least since Nagarjuna, to resist and refute this notion. It is well meant, but the Buddhist truth goes beyond it. To me the Rogerian statement comes out like this: when he says "if one is able to get to the core of an individual" he is referring to being genuinely empathic and warm toward that person. If you are genuinely empathic and warm toward a person you will sooner or later encounter the best aspect of that person and you will provide the conditions that maximise their chance of growing in a constructive manner. Buddhism agrees that treating people well is to be recommended and that good things result, but it does not conceptualise this as being due to the existence of a "core", it conceptualises it in terms of likely outcomes from providing conducive conditions.

Q: "Modernists believe in objective reality that can be observed and systematically known through the scientific method. They further believe reality exists independent or any attempt to observe it" (Corey 2009) "Postmodernists, in contrast believe that realities do not exist independent of observational processes. Social constructionism is a therapeutic perspective within a postmodern worldview: it stresses the clients's reality without disputing whether it is accurate or rational". Can you comment on these two statements and how they relate to the phenomenological approach to Zen therapy? 
A: I believe in an objective reality and that Buddhism is about bring a special kind of objectivity to areas that are often considered subjective. Measuring reality does involve interfering with it. In some domains, such as sub-nuclear physics, the necessary interference substantially changes the entity being measured and this puts a limit on what one can know. However, what we measure is not the reality itself, it is an abstraction related to the reality. You cannot measure tableness, you can only measure heights or lengths or weights of tables. Heights, weights etc do not exist. Tables exist. Science concerns itself with the relationships between abstractions, many of which have great concrete usefulness. The scientific method is not, however, some kind of ultimate truth, it is simply a useful method. There has been an unfortunate tendency, well described by philosopher Mary Midgley, to treat science as a kind of neo-religion and scientific method as a kind of religious dogma. This undermines good science as well as leading people astray. Scientific method does some things very well, but cannot, for instance, tell us what we should do. If we know what we want to do then science can often help us to do it. This is like art. An artist may be assisted by science that tells us about how pigments work, but the artist has to do the painting. Therapy is an art. It can be assisted by science but it is not a scientific procedure. Science yields knowledge of a certain kind, but you could have a vast amount of such knowledge about a client and the client still not be healed, or you might heal them with very little knowledge, just as painter might produce a very effective minimalist design. However, whether what the client is saying and doing chimes with reality matters. Acting unrealistically leads to disasters. Therapy always challenges the client's frame of reference. An empathic reflection, for instance, implicitly calls what is reflected into question. Why does one look into a mirror if not to consider the possibility of altering something? If you don't want to have the possibility of reconsidering your life, don't look into the mirror that the therapist/spiritual guide holds up. However, as therapist, I do not actually always need to know whether what the client says is accurate or rational. If I show him what he is saying he can decide for himself. If he decides well his life will go better. If he decides badly it will probably go worse. Well and badly do, here, however, refer to congruence with an objective reality. So the ZT position is neither modernist nor post-modernist. There is a reality but there are limits to our ability to know it. Whether our lives conform to it affects well-being even though our knowledge of it cannot be total. Life cannot, therefore, be perfected in the sense of becoming totally harmonised with reality. However, we can accept and have faith that if we are of a generous spirit and a happy disposition, good will come of it one way or another.

 

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No "how to" in nirvana

QUESTION: How can one enter Nirvana, if to do so is to extinguish all craving. And if to love is entwined in craving. Or isn't it...? But I can't see how it isn't.

SHORT ANSWER: Our love involves desire. We are what we are: that is nirvana enough.

FULL ANSWER: We sometimes intuit "unconditional love" and that intuition is itself an ecstacy because it is knowledge of what we are not. We ourselves are conditioned and conditional beings. Consequently, there is no "how" to entering nirvana. Nirvana is not part of a sequence in time, but we are. To know nirvana is a grace, a gift that comes to us sometimes, but we cannot have the receiving of such a gift under our control. Were we to do so it would no longer be the gift.

People tend to interpret Buddhism on a technical model: if you do this and this that will happen. I don't interpret it that way. To me, the things that are slated as steps toward are actually consequences. The eightfold path did not get Buddha enlightened. He discovered the eightfold path as a result of being enlightened. If nirvana touches your life you may be inspired to love more, but if you try to love more "in order to" touch nirvana you will fail. Paradoxically, it is when you fail that nirvana may touch you, but it is in the nature of things that you can never have guarantees or be in control of this.

A mother loves her child. This is, perhaps, as near to unconditional as it gets for us mortals. But the unconditional part of this love is very deep. At a day to day level, the mother may lose her temper with the child and the mother seeks various satisfactions in the child. There is a power struggle between the growing child and the parent and if the child is unable to defeat the parent's ego in this struggle, it will not thrive. Even in this quasi-unconditional love there has to be struggle, victory and defeat.

Nirvana, on the other hand, is complete peace. Can I be at peace with the fact that I am at war? This is the paradox of a real spiritual life. Nirvana is without strife, yet Buddha said that a day without striving is a wasted day. Our nirvana is to be in samsara, inspired by our fragmentary intuition of nirvana.

Buddha had no method for becoming enlightened and all the teachings that various schools offer on the basis of the idea that he did are mistaken. Neither sitting still, nor doing good deeds, nor controlling his mind, nor anything else he chose to do caused Buddha to be enlightened. He was enlightened when, being totally defeated, he was nonetheless helped and then blessed by the sight of the natural beauty of the morning star rising.

Problems with ideas of loss. love, & attachment

QUESTION: I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on love and loss from a Buddhist perspective. Especially as they relate to the the creation of a world view. Everyone will experience losing someone they love through either a change of conditions in life or through death. In reaction to this fact, everyone will create their own world view. From a Buddhist perspective you can avoid suffering through non-attachment. By not holding on to what we can't have. And not struggling against what we can't avoid. But where does love fit into this? The whole non-attachment thng works great until I try to apply it to the loss of someone I love. Then it all falls apart. For example, I can be with grief when a relationship fails, and not get lost in any of the usual other strategies I might have once used to avoid pain. Then grief is just grief. But I seem stuck when it comes to the thought even of a parent losing a child...If you had some time, to share any thoughts you have on this I would appreciate it. Or maybe you already have some writings on this? Hope you are well.

SHORT ANSWER: We will love, we will lose, we will form some kind of world view as we try to make sense of this experience, what view we form will condition our ability to love again, and whether we can love again will determine whether our life is a noble one or not.

FULL ANSWER: I agree with your observation that everyone will lose somebody close sooner or later and that this will shape their view of the world. That will, in turn, affect their identity and their effectiveness and will condition their ability to live a noble and meaningful life. If a person has a depth of spiritual training or experience then they can put the loss in a bigger context. They suffer and the suffering is meaningful. If they do not have that level of spiritual maturity, then they suffer and believe that the suffering renders life meaningless. The spiritually mature person has faith in a greater meaningfulness - in there being meaning beyond what one can oneself discern. One has a sense of "Even though I do not see it, these things somehow fit into a bigger meaning, one that only Buddha (or God) sees". 

As I see it the basic meaning of life is love and love intrinsically involves a great range of feeling, sentiment and experience, ranging from bliss to despair. We are vehicles for love, mediums in which love takes place and all the currents that flow as a result are what we experience as the peak of being alive. The actual form that that takes - love of a partner, love of country, love of an ideal, love of God, etc., etc., - will give particularity to the meaning of an individual life. Unlike most commentators, I do not take the purpose of Buddha's teaching as being that we no longer experience pain and certainly not that we be so detached that nothing matters any more. That would be a pathology, not a nobility. I think that what Buddhas want is that we live noble lives - which means ones that are true to our love. In being so that we rise above suffering and set-backs. 

When Buddha teaches detachment he is teaching us to detach from our tendency to be self-serving. The real target of Buddha's attack is conceit. If I lose somebody and fall into self-pity, that would be unbuddhistic, but that I mourn is perfectly natural and proper. To grieve is simply one side of loving.

Take the simple case of being separated from the person one loves. On the one hand, one misses them. On the other hand, one feels blessed that they exist. One suffers that s/he is not here, yet rejoices that they are somewhere. By extension, were the person to die, one feels, as I feel in regard to my mother, for instance, sad that she is gone, yet blessed that we had what we had. Equanimity is like that. Initially I wept for her loss. Now I rejoice in her memory. None of this is totally cool, calm and collected, but it is real and there is nothing ignoble in that. When the loss is tragic, as in the loss of a child, say, the challenge is greater. Children do die. It is part of the great scheme of things. We are inclined to ask "Why did this happen to me?" which has an element of conceit in it, but what such a loss teaches us is that this is part of the human lot. If the self-pity gets the upper hand, it will destroy us; if it does not we shall find a depth of compassion that goes beyond anything we have known before. Of course, in such a situation, a measure of self-pity is normal, and there will be a natural struggle between the different parts of the person as they go through this awful experience. The relevant Buddhist story is that of Kisagotami. Note that Buddha did not tell her to practice detachment. He told her to encounter the losses that others had also suffered. By realising the universality of her lot, she found a new view of life which eventually transformed her into a spiritual teacher herself. No doubt she mourned bitterly for her lost child, but this suffering was not in vain for it was part of her transformation into one who benefits all sentient beings.

The spiritual path is tough. It is love and love requires courage and perseverence, vigour and restraint, wholeheartedness and willingness. On this path we learn everything that we need to make us into the kind of beings that the Buddhas want us to be.

Other lives

QUESTION: What is your take on the afterlife?

ANSWER: 

My sense is based principally upon my own memory of having had the kind of experiences that people call visionary both as a child and, during intense spiritual practice and occasionally other times, as an adult. This has left me in the position where, if I believe my experience rather than my education, it appears to me that there are other lives before and after this one and there are realms of light or great radiance where one might be reborn or have spent time in the past. My Buddhist beliefs concur with these experiences and add that none of these resting places is permanent. They also add theories about karma which suggest that one's destiny in one life is a function of one's wilful behaviour or state of mind in previous ones. However, if there are many lives in this way, the complexity of one's karma must be so astronomical that this probably does not help a lot as far as prediction might go. Where this leaves me, in terms of how such belief may affect this life is that since the powers in the universe may take us to all manner of destinies including some beyond our current imagination, what matters is primarily to live in a state of faith and willingness, open to whatever comes. Such faith and willingness is, in my thinking, closely allied with love, both the sense of being loved and the need to love. We are wandering through many lives longing to love as completely as possible, meeting with many obstacles, frustrations and disappointments, yet endlessly recharged by the love that we receive, whether we acknowledge it or not. This perspective is not entirely orthodox for Buddhism - it is my own attempt to make sense of my own experience with a bit of help from the tradition. 

 

Experiencing universal love

A member of the sangha wrote to me as follows:
While I am on a daily basis chanting Namo Amida Bu for three years, just last week I received some insights. In my experience and my process I recognized three stages:
1. Calling out to Amida.
Having faith about Other Power, Amida, trusting and finding a safe space. Feeling at ease when my mind goes crazy. When having nightmares I call out to Amida and feel safe again.
2. Receiving
Just last week  when I did my nembutsu I suddenly and very unexpected I received love. When I call out I feel love, being held. The Light of Amida is shining on me and in me.
3. Giving
Then a miracle happened. Just after stage 2. Calling out to Amida I recognized that I am love. I am giving love. Light pours out of me. Calling out to Amida is giving love to the world.
Is this something you recognize and/or can comment on?



ANSWER: 

Yes, thank you. Excellent. This kind of experience is most likely to happen when one is a bit separated from one's normal everyday routine. When we create a kind of safe space away from our everyday stimuli it is easier for Amida to reach us. Even if we are at home it helps if we create a space with some boundaries (even a quarter hour in a special place). This is similar to therapy, there has to be a safe space. Simply having faith is a way of creating such a space. But if one has enough faith one has such a space wherever one is. 

Then within that space, if there is an open heart, light may enter. Then occasionally one maybe has such an experience. This experience will fade but it will never go away completely. It will remain like a candle burning in the depths of the cave of one's mind and it will give one strength in the future, helping one to make wiser decisions and to cope with set-backs without despair. It is a glimpse of how life would be if one were free from one's "ordinary neurosis". We all suffer from a variety of ordinary neuroses that give us stress and bad dreams and impede our daily life, but we also have intermittent access to the sacred light which is liberation.

Occasionally, usually when we are in retreat of some kind, the neurosis temporarily drops away or is over-whelmed by the light. This glimpse is precious. We cannot demand that the light come back, but our nembutsu is a reminder of it and an expression of gratitude for it and this helps us to remain open. 
The more we remain open to this light, the more it appears in our life. The angels speak to us if we go on listening. This is really the root of all creativity. Different people will talk about it in different ways. Amida communicates in whatever way might work for the particular person. After we have had such experience we return to ordinary life. We cannot hang onto the experience, but it remains an important landmark that we can refer back to in our mind. It strengthens our faith and helps us in life. Our ordinary neurosis continues, but, as it were, alongside it, there is now another thread.

Recognising stages in the process is fine, but do not then think that this is some kind of formula that can be repeated. We cannot coerce Amida in any way. In fact, it is a major element in having faith that one realise this. No procedure or routine will make Amida behave the way we want. One has to let go of that element of self-power. Just live your life. Enjoy; play; create; help and be helped; and, from time to time, the angels will touch you. 

what is Amida Pureland about anyway?

I had the following exchange with a correspondent:

Question: "Can you point me to someone who can fairly clearly explain Amida Pureland? Does it point to Buddha as a god like in Christianity? If we have faith or trust, what is it we are trusting? Life? I would greatly appreciate some help here. I was a bit indoctrinated in fundamental Christianity and it's a tough one to shake. Thanks so much."

 Answer: "Well, I can try to help. I appreciate the difficulty. Fundamentalist Christianity has gone to such an extreme that it is easy to swing to the opposite one and throw out the baby with the bathwater. Mahayana Buddhism has the sense that there is more to Buddha-ness than just a human body that died and rotted twenty five centuries ago. There is a spirit at work that has continued to influence history and will go on doing so as long as people believe in it - and that spirit was probably around even before Shakyamuni revealed it so precisely in his own time. Then again there is also an abosute truth that is difficult for us relative, contingent beings to grasp but which we may have an intuition of. These three things - the historical, the spiritual and the absolute - are called the three incorporation of buddha (Trikaya in Sanskrit). Amida is the personification of the second of these. In a comparison with Christianity, Amida is, more or less, the Holy Spirit. So in Pureland we do not have God in the Christian sense, but we do have the Spirit. In Amida Pureland faith is important, but science is not rejected - it is the middle way, after all. Does that help at all? I'm quite happy to respond to follow up questions. Thanks for asking."

Question 38: Is attachment to the guru OK?

Quick answer: Yes, if it helps practice.

Question 37: How to regard Amida?

Quick answer: Amida is a real person and is a Buddha Tathagata.

Question 36: What happens when an Amidist dies?

Quick answer: He or she goes directly to the Pure Land.