MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Morality and Goodness
In Shinran Shonin's masterpiece, the Kyogyoshinsho, at the end of the second book, entitled 'Gyo' or 'Practice', he summarizes his teachings in a gatha, or verse, called the 'Shoshinge. This hymn is written in seven-character lines of Chinese verse and is chanted in Shinshu services. In it, Shinran compares the virtual Enlightenment of those whom Amida has called through his Name but whose actual Nirvana is deferred until after death to the light under clouds that still partially obscure the sun. In an English version by the Ryukoku Translation Centre:
The embracing Spiritual Light eternally shines upon us in protection;
Although the darkness of Ignorance has already been rent,
The cloudy mists of greed, desire, anger, and hate
Always blanket the Heaven of True Faith.
It is as though the sun were obscured by misty clouds,
But beneath these it is light and there is no longer darkness (lines 29-34).
Thanks to Amida's karmic amnesty, the prisoner of Samsara feels as if his whole past record of evil has been wiped clean. Though he may still have to live out the remainder of unexhausted karma that is congealed as his present corporeal form, he is no longer bound by unredressed errors of thought, word, and deed and is set free from his former sufferings of guilt, shame, and remorse. The heavens may still be hidden by the intervening clouds, or the five transient aggregates that make up the ever-changing atmabhava, or self of becoming; but the morning light of awakened Faith gives positive assurance that the Sun of Buddhahood has arisen and will later shine, even though not till after death. We have already remarked that true spiritual regeneration naturally follows after the reception of Faith from Amida, rather than preceding it as a result of punctilious observance of religious prohibitions and precepts or a rigid conformity to ethical rules. The wilful ego strongly resents compulsory obedience to moral commandments, whether imposed from within or without, and refuses to tolerate any discipline that frustrates its desires, whose suppression only breeds revolt and insanity.
Because of his inability to reform his faults by his own power, the Shin Buddhist is brought to recognize his powerlessness. He comes to realize that his very klesha, or defilements, can help to induce the need for purification, that his doubts themselves may serve to lead him to seek Amida's aid. So he is not oppressed by a black sense of guilt or shame for his failure to obey the moral precepts.
Moralism, as the conscious effort by the individual or social will to be good or do good, is foredoomed to failure because, no matter how cleverly disguised by mankind's talent for personal deception or public hypocrisy, it is really motivated by the vested interests of the self and inadvertently betrays a lack of faith in any power higher than the human. Such attempts at self-help are at best palliatives, not remedies: they may prove partially efficacious, temporarily relieving our sufferings, but they never provide a complete and permanent cure. Even should the moralist be able to resist all temptations and overcome every difficulty by his own will, his power to obey the moral law with ease is still delegated from the Other Power or Will of Amida.
Unlike mere moralism, genuine goodness is far more than a negative abstention from what is forbidden or obedience to what is prescribed. It possesses positive spiritual and psychic qualities, such as the Four Infinite Virtues or Sublime Abodes: unlimited friendliness and good will (Sanskrit: maitri), boundless compassion for all suffering beings (karuna), sympathetic joy in the good fortune of others (mudita) and impartial detachment from partisan interests (upeksha). It is thus never pompous or priggish but expresses its innate sense of proportion in a spontaneous simplicity and naturalness, or jinen honi.
At the moment when, by Amida's First Call, Faith as clear, bright, and adamantine as the vajra, or diamond, is bestowed, such intrinsic goodness is embedded in the Heart, like a gem of dew in the petals of a lotus-bloom. Tender forbearance and kindly helpfulness well up unprompted, and an unforced obedience to shila, the ethical precepts, springs forth effortlessly and of its own accord. There is no need for suppression of the natural urges, for they have undergone transmutation, purged and refined in the abyss of abandonment of self-will. One cannot help but be good and do good once one has become a channel for the Other Power of Amida, who can now pour out his Wisdom and Compassion through his Name invoked by the devotee, to save ignoramus and sage alike. As we shall see in the two poems comprised in the next chapter, the first of the purified emotions to awaken in the Heart are Amida's Compassion and the Universal Friendliness of the Bodhisattva Maitreya.
Lao-tzu realized this difference between internal goodness and external morality, when he stated in the Tao Te Ching that only after Te, one's true virtue or the Tao within, has been lost, does morality appear; to which he wittily added: 'When the laws are overmuch in evidence, thieves and robbers abound'. Shinran's penetrating insight also saw that on the spiritual level the authentic virtues can only be received as a free gift from Amida himself; whereas on the mundane level, moral conduct, whilst necessary and useful for communal peace, order, and co-operation, merely conforms to a set of social conventions that vary with period and place and are relative to the class and rank into which one happens to be born. Even more than Shinran, his most influential successor, Rennyo Shonin (1415-99), enjoined on all his followers obedience to the laws of the society in which they had to live, which in traditional Japan was largely the Confucian ethical code; but always provided that this did not run counter to Amida's transference of Faith. Such obedience, which need be neither slavish nor blind, leaves one free and at peace to open one's heart to the sacred influence of the Buddha without unnecessary friction or conflict with the secular authorities. But when the shogunate or the local governments of the daimyos became guilty of flagrant injustice and tyranny, it was usually the Shinshu communities among the farming populace who led the protests demanding agrarian reform - often at the cost of their lives.