The Maxim of Faith
the essence of Jodo-Shinshu1
by Zuiken
Never chase your own conceptions: the mind changes according to the environment. Amida’s salvation has nothing whatever to do with good and evil that men do. The three phases of human deeds; that is, bodily actions, speaking and thinking are all sinful and defiled, so sinful that they cannot be purified by human power. Do not be irritable, wishing to acquire peace of mind quickly. The Pure Land cannot be entered simply by dint of peace of mind. Do not depend too much on your own conceptions, or upon your knowledge, or upon your understanding. The mind or the consciousness ever flows, ever changes, like a stream, and it knows no stopping, even for a minute. Do not depend upon tomorrow; the 'King of Terrors' may come at any time. The Law of Causality (the law of cause and effect) is irrevocable, and it is really to be feared. Good seeds produce good fruits, and bad seeds produce bad fruits. No one can deny this Law.
Do not wish to grasp faith. Reflect upon yourself and consider: who is the master that wishes to acquire faith? Is he not a bombu (ordinary person) whose mind is defiled with error and imbued with 'jiriki' (self-power)? Is he able to grasp faith? The great mind of the Tathagata, fully enlightened, is likened to the moon, clear and serene. His mind cannot be grasped by the mind of an ignorant and selfish bombu. We cannot, in our minds, store up the faith created by our conceit. Do not be deceived by your own conceptions. Be not falsely enmeshed in your own reason, or in your memory. It is I who am groaning under the heavy burden of karmic evil, a fool whose mind is always disturbed by passions. Let not your faith be influenced by your deeds, whether they may be good or evil.
Standing aside for the moment from moral conduct – good and evil – there is a way that you can be saved. The way is namu-amida-butsu – the Buddha's sacred Name. It is the voice of our father. Calling on us, his Call is the embodiment of his Vow-power: only by his Call can we be saved. The virtues and power of the Tathagata Amitabha, whose light shines on all the worlds in the ten quarters, illuminating all the sentient beings therein and dispersing the darkness of their minds, are truly wonderful. His Vow-power is manifested in the sacred Name of the 'Buddha of light of no-hindrance.' We believe in him. Our faith is nothing but the virtue and power of his enlightenment.
Most people say, 'I believe in Buddha,' but the true faith is given – the free gift of Buddha. It is not the fruit of their own intellectual exertion or moral efforts, but the activities of compassion and wisdom. People say, 'I chant, recite and glorify the sacred Name.' But the glorification is not their own power, but the virtue of the Name. Therefore the sacred Name namu-amida-butsu is all powerful, and is independent of the powers of men.
Buddha Amitabha, our father, sees into the very bottom of our hearts, into the depth of the mind, where the eternal 'Darkness of Ignorance' resides. The karmic evil we have committed since innumerable kalpas ago are all well known by him. We can by no means find the way to be enlightened, that is, to reach the great nirvana by our own power. We are doomed to suffer the eternal pains of birth-and-death. But we fortunately can hear the call (the virtue of the sacred Name), 'Come to me at once!' His gracious command, 'Come to me at once!' is his words of infinite wisdom and boundless compassion. The power of his original Vow (the 18th Vow) and his sacred Name (na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu) are conveyed into the mind of the people in the form of this simple command.
Amitabha’s 'Vow and Name' is nothing but this simple command, 'Come to me at once!' This way of salvation is his wisdom and good device. Without this device, we, simple persons, cannot be saved.
His command is simple, but profound and wonderful and all-powerful. He never demands us to fulfil all moral or religious disciplines for he knows we, ignorant and depraved beings, can not be sincere, nor do anything good.
'Come to me at once!' is the only way of our being saved. The property of faith should be simple for simple, ordinary people. We ignorant, sinful mortals are incompetent to understand and digest the different doctrines of self-power Buddhism. This is one of the chief reasons that all of the sects of self-power Buddhism in Japan have witnessed - and are going into - decay day by day. Amida’s command is simple, but it is so sincere, so truthful, and so powerful that we can at once hear and obey his call, without caring for our own karmic evil, and even forgetting ourselves. Nevertheless, only the man who deeply believes that he himself is in the same predicament as the traveller in the parable 'Two Rivers and a White Road' can hear and obey his command.
Faith is not knowledge, nor understanding nor memory, but it is the heartfelt gratitude moved by Amida's wisdom-and-compassion (or Vow-power). We are like dead people who have no power to believe but can be moved by the Buddha’s sincerity-and-compassion through inconceivable and spiritual communication. Amida's command 'Come to me at once!' denotes Amida's Vow-power, i.e., Amida's sacred Name, namu-amida-butsu.
In the beginning Amida Buddha vowed: 'I would save all beings with my sacred Name.' The property or substance of the Name is his light-and-life, wisdom-and-compassion. To obey his command is to believe in him and his Vow-power; it is to receive his transference of his wisdom-and-compassion. Therefore, we can be born in his Country only by obeying his command. To obey his command is the pure faith. We must not make light of his sincere Call. I am quite satisfied and fully contented with gratitude and thankfulness to hear his gracious Call.
The true faith is to hear his gracious Call and say, 'Yes,' which is the purport of his Vow, and to be so moved by his compassion as to forget ourselves: to stand aloof from our sinfulness and wickedness, firmly believing his 'Vow of joyous, serene faith' (the 18th Vow). The true faith, which makes the followers forget themselves, is by nature in unity with his Call and with his wisdom-and-compassion. This faith is called 'pure faith' or 'other-power faith'. If 'pure faith' arises within us even for a moment, we can abruptly (at a jump) attain the great nirvana, the Buddha's supreme enlightenment, even though we do not destroy our passions, nor accumulate merits, nor perform religious disciplines, nor practice samadhi (meditation), which is taught in the schools of the difficult way.
This is the essence of Jodo-Shinshu, which was founded by Shinran Shonin.
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