MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Difficulty in Accepting the Name
On first hearing of this Easy Way out of our human predicament merely by calling the Name of Amida, our contemporary incredulity will at once dismiss it as too absurdly simple to be true or worth trying. Indoctrinated with a will-to-disbelief in the efficacy of any form of litany, prayer, mantra, or invocation, modern secularism will no doubt react adversely against the Nembutsu also and reject it out of hand. How could such childish make-believe provide a remedy for the ills of the modern world ? It is obviously mere pre-scientific superstition and pious wishful thinking, totally out of touch with the stern political, military, and economic realities of our time.
Even those of a younger generation who have reacted against this myopic Western outlook, already obsolescent, and who are prepared to give serious study to Eastern doctrines and a sincere trial to their methods still tend to be conditioned by some of the older sceptical attitudes. Most are immediately repelled by any reliance on suprahuman aid and remain confirmed believers in self-help. To let go and leave everything to the Buddha, to do nothing that will either help or hinder the working of Amida's Name, to abandon one's long-cherished self and submit wholly to the Other Power: this passive method required by Pure Land Buddhism is not, they argue, an easy way at all, but the most difficult path for the restless temperament of Westerners habituated to individual action and direct interference with nature. On the contrary, the Zen method, because of its emphasis on self-power, is more suited to the Western ethos, and so for them an easier way.
To the novice who feels quite confident that he can scale the spiritual heights alone by his own will-power and independent exertion and without the need to call on any influence higher than the human for aid, the vigorous austerities and self-reliance of Zen are bound to have a strong appeal. But though at the outset Zen may appear to offer an easy way, when the rigours of actual climbing begin, its discipline soon proves indeed to be a most difficult path. For the Zen aspirant must arduously overcome all those karmic obstacles of thought, word, and deed which by self-power he himself places in the way of his own Liberation. And at last he discovers that the ascent can only be accomplished with the help of the Other Power. His perverse view that reliance on the Other Power is the harder way is really caused by a stubborn refusal to give up all egoistic pride and pretensions, for nothing is harder for the self than to consent to its own annihilation and to realize that in truth it has never existed. The ego is ever ready to invent plausible excuses for an unwillingness to forgo its comfortable habits and pleasurable self-indulgences and never tires of devising ingenious schemes to safeguard its vested interests in its own vanity.
One of its cleverest subterfuges is to declare itself too wicked and unworthy to accept the rare jewel of the Name that Amida offers free of charge to all. It insists that it must work long and hard to earn enough moral merit to buy the jewel - unaware that it is not for sale and only to be had as an unconditional gift. So its diffidence refuses even to try calling the Name, which it is convinced in advance would prove useless. The self must, at all costs, protect its inviolable individuality, to which it clings with desperation; for it rightly suspects that the carefully preserved illusion of its existence is threatened by the Other Power of the Name.
The self-sufficient beginner, convinced that he can gain Enlightenment in this lifetime unaided by the Buddha, will need to spend many long hard years at his chosen shugyo, or religious practice, until at last he arrives laboriously at the obvious conclusion: there is nothing whatever that he can do, or not do, that will bring Liberation, because all self-effort is inevitably vitiated by a self. Then, when all such methods of self-power have been tried and proved of no avail and the dead-end of desperation has been reached, the defeated aspirant must turn as a last resort to the Other Power, that of Amida, Buddha of Boundless Light and Life, on whom his own mind and body depend for their very consciousness and being. Belatedly he realizes that there can be no such thing as self-power, because according to the basic Buddhist doctrine of anatma. there is no self. All power is graciously bestowed by Amida, who works directly through his Other Power and indirectly through the self-power that he has delegated gratuitously to all beings. Even the power to think, speak, and act comes from Amida and is an upaya, or skilful means to lead men back to him and so ultimately to Enlightenment. But first all the vain attempts of self-power must be exhausted, for 'man's extremity is Amida's opportunity'.
Thus to attain Enlightenment in this life, or even Rebirth in the Pure Land posthumously, by self-power alone is not only the most difficult path, it is strictly speaking impossible, since it asserts the very self that Realization denies as an illusion. One is powerless to reverse the working out of karma, the accumulated past of mankind, to remove the inevitable circumstances that it determines, or to overcome the inherent limitations of finite existence, for these are burdens that we must all bear. But no way could be easier than for Amida to transfer his spiritual merits to us, for he has not only attained Enlightenment, he is Enlightenment. As he has freely given us a share in his Buddha-nature, why should we, in our ignorance, seek that in which we even now participate? How can we gain that which, though still unaware of it, we already possess? We need only become what we are.