MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Distractions
I am struck by my complete failure to discipline my simian mind to concentrate on one point, the Buddha's Name, by using my individual will power. Try as I may, by self-effort alone I cannot eliminate distractions or prevent attention from wandering away from steady mindfulness of the Nembutsu. For such concentration is stubbornly resisted by the samskaras of egoism, restlessness, and sloth, which still remain uneradicated. To the dispersed and doubtful mind passing alternately through the phases of self-conscious striving and semi-conscious reverie, distractions can come from within or without. Though on attaining Enlightenment the Buddha Shakyamuni is said to have maintained a noble silence, for the noisy mundane mind not yet accustomed to quiet and solitude those preconditions most favourable to contemplation may themselves serve as pretexts for distraction. So, too, with space, symbolizing that Emptiness which is not blank vacancy but the void of infinite possibilities.
Yet these very interruptions finally lead me to a realization that my mind has been absent and so serve to recall it to its former mindfulness. Finally, mounting physical discomfort and pain defeat my repeated struggle to concentrate by self-will and deflect attention to a concern with the tired body and its demands for comfort. The impossibility of success in the mind's self-conscious straining to transcend its own limitations, the ego's futile endeavours to become egoless, is at last realized.
The nullifying flaw in such regimens of self-improvement is that basically they are subterfuges for the enhancement of the ego, which vainly believes that it can bring about its own spiritual elevation by embarking on a rocketship. But the would-be self-reformer, no matter how proud of his moral achievements, is still inevitably caught up in the unrighteous karma of the remainder of mankind. Every attempt at self-betterment is motivated by a conceit that tacitly asserts a self, an illusion negated by the Buddha as Original Ignorance. This inadvertently betrays a latent doubt in the boundless Compassion of Amida, who has vowed to save sheep and goats alike - but is especially lenient toward the goats. Such self-sufficiency exposes a lack of total reliance on the Other Power, a prerequisite for ethical regeneration. The spiritual transformation of one's whole being, and not merely its moral aspect, from its central Heart outwards cannot be accomplished by any human contrivance but only by a transfusion of Light and Life from Amida's inexhaustible store.
Like the Jodo sect of Honen Shonin, the Ching-t'u, or Chinese Pure Land school, from which the Japanese derived, held that constant repetition of the Nien-Fo (or Nembutsu) with every breath, with every heartbeat, throughout one's lifetime was necessary to ensure Rebirth posthumously in the Western Paradise. It was this doctrine that was fused with Ch'an in China to produce the syncretic method of Huang Po, or Obaku. It has already been argued that no ego can be present when the mind is absorbed in reciting the Name, but if this is not continually repeated, the 'I' will assert itself again in the next nen, or instant of awareness, because of the remanifestation of the samskaras, or latent habits and tendencies of unresolved karma.
But concentration on counting the immense number of repetitions of the Nembutsu day and night during a lifetime, needed to amass enough merit for Rebirth, must surely distract the mind from remembrance of Amida himself. Whether one counts the number of times the Name is recited on a nenju, or string of invocatory beads, while beating the mokugyo in accompaniment or records them in one's own blood on a wood-block print of Amida, as the Chinese Pure Land Buddhists were in the habit of doing, one is really concentrating on the number and not the Name.
So according to Shin teaching, after receiving Faith the number of repetitions should not be counted, because henceforth all are offered as an expression of thanks to Amida for his priceless gift. In the life of whole-hearted gratitude that one leads from that moment on, one's every thought, word, and deed is consecrated to the recollection of Amida and so becomes the practice of the Nembutsu. There is no moment during one's whole lifetime thereafter without the presence of Amida in his Name and perfect trust in his Vows. Unlike the impure and ego-limited faith of the devotee, pure limitless Faith bestowed by Amida prefigures Enlightenment, to be attained posthumously on hearing the Buddha preach the Dharma in his Western Paradise.