MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
The Immortal Phoenix
The Pali scriptures compare the illusory Round of Samsara to a circle of fire produced by rapidly whirling a piece of rope burning at one end. Thousands of such fiery circles in the night can be seen on New Year's Eve, when the Japanese bring home from Shinto shrines the ‘first fire of the year’ on a piece of burning straw rope, to relight the family hearth the next morning.
As the visible sun lights this world, so Amida's aureole illuminates the mind in contemplation, enabling it to envision the next world in and through this, here and now. But the devotee who has once beheld that Other World henceforth lives in both. The Buddha transmits Enlightenment through the ray that darts from his frontal eye, symbolical of the sense of Eternity in time, and this arrow of Light strikes the Heart, or centre of conscious being, in his devotee. Thus the poetic spirit is liberated from its lifelong imprisonment, for like Faith, inspiration depends entirely on the Other Power and cannot be commanded by individual act of will. Then, phoenix-like, it seeks the bright extinction of Nirvana, an incandescent bird flying into the sunrise. Your poet is never more than an associate member of the human race, for his ancestry is half avian. Ultimately he hopes to retire altogether from his humanity and to transmigrate into an immortal Phoenix or supernal Swan. Like the Roman poet on his Sabine farm, already he feels the first pin-feathers begin to sprout from between his shoulder-blades.
By the power of the Forty-eight Vows that he has fulfilled, Amida creates and upholds his Pure Land, where in front of its palaces he raises his victorious standard. This hangs miraculously in mid-air, like a jewelled pagoda or the many-tiered umbrella held over the head of Indian royalty. It is surmounted by a golden lotus-throne, on which perches the Phoenix as king of birds; for by his Vows Amida can create apparitional birds to preach the Buddhist Law in the Western Paradise. Although the provisional doctrine is expounded here in words, the True Dharma is ineffable, so that the celestial birdsong of the Pure Land alone can give it voice.