SUMMARY OF FAITH & PRACTICE
(Dharmavidya, inspired by Honen’s Ichimai Kishomon)
For those having a karmic affinity with Amitabha Buddha wishing to practise a religious life in truly simple faith, freeing themselves of sophistication and attachment to all forms of cleverness, the method of opening oneself to Amitabha’s grace is the practice of Nien Fo with body, speech and mind, particularly verbal recitation of “Namo Amida Bu”. This is not something done as a form of meditation, nor is it based on study, understanding and wisdom, or the revelation of deep meaning. Deep meaning is indeed there for the nembutsu is a window through which the whole universe of Buddha’s teaching can be perceived in all its depth, but none of this is either necessary or even helpful to success in the practice. Rather such study cultivates secondary faculties to be held separate from the mind of practice itself.
The primary practice requires only one essential: realise that you are a totally foolish being who understands nothing, but who can with complete trust recite “Namo Amida Bu”; know that this will generate rebirth in the Pure Land, without even knowing what rebirth in the Pure Land truly is. This is the practice for ignorant beings and ignorance is essential for its accomplishment. This practice automatically encompasses the three minds and the mind of contrition as a fourth. To pursue something more profound or more sophisticated, or to have a theory, or to think that understanding will yield greater enlightenment than this is to be mislead and to fall back into self-power whereby the whole practice is spoilt. However wise, learned or skilled you may be, set it aside and be the foolish being completely in the performance of the practice. Nothing else is required and anything else is too much. Faith and practice cannot be differentiated.
The Buddha-body is delineated by the precepts. How deficient we are by comparison! By our daily difficulty in the preceptual life, we awaken to the presence of the myriad karmic obstacles without which we would already perceive the land of love and bliss, we would be as the vow-body of Buddha. Thus we know in experience that we are foolish beings of wayward passion. This knowledge of our condition is part of the essential basis when it gives rise to contrition. Thus all obstacles become impediments to faith unless we experience contrition and letting go. Saving grace, as was made clear by Shan Tao’s dream and advice to Tao Cho, only comes through the sange-mon.
If you can perform the practice in this simple minded way, Amida will receive you and you may fear for nothing since all is completely assured. Dwelling in this settled faith you may then use your secondary faculties, your knowledge and skills and accumulated experience, as tools for helping all sentient beings. But do not then think that anything of relevance to your own salvation is thereby accomplished, nor that you are making something of yourself. Whatever merit there may be in your actions of this kind, immediately and totally dedicate it to the benefit of others, that they may enter the Pure Land and that you yourself may not be encumbered by consciousness of virtue which will only contaminate the practice. As Honen says, “without pedantic airs, fervently recite the Name.” *
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:: An essay about the Ichimai Kishomon
and :: another link
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The Three Minds
In the Contemplation Sutra it refers to the three minds. The three minds are
# sincere mind
# deep mind
# longing mind
These correspond, respectively, with the mind of nei quan, the mind of chih quan and the mind of nembutsu.
Sincere mind means being free from hypocrisy. This is the mind that is willing to look at oneself as one actually is. It is the willingness to face and admit to one's bombu-nature. People with this first kind of mind are not too certain about themselves. This does not mean that they are ineffective in life - often the reverse - but they know that they have many limitations and so are able to empathise easily with others. They are not full of themselves. They know that their life is caught in a matrix of conditions and that this can bring good and bad alike. Sometimes it results in harm. None of us is innocent or pure. The person of sincere mind does not feel superior. This, therefore, is the mind of nei quan: the mind that looks into the dependently originating state of all aspects of oneself and one's world.
Deep mind means willingness to trust in a deep support under-pinning one's existence. There is a lttle poem by the myokonin Saichi:
The great ocean is full of delusion;
It has the seabed to support it.
Saichi is full of bad karma;
There is Amida to support it.
This is the mind of chih quan: the mind that is willing to give everything into the hands of the Buddha and enjoy the Buddha's blessing and peace in a condition of complete entrustment.
Longing mind is, in Japanese, eko-hotsu-gan-shin. This means the mind that reaches out toward the Pure Land and also the mind that relies upon Amida's vows. It is the mind of faith. When each incident in life occurs, one says Namo Amida Bu. This brings the thought of Amida into each incident. In such a single moment one gives up self-power and accepts other-power; one longs to be with that Buddha as one might long to have one's beloved present. The Pure Land is wherever Amida is. If the Beloved is present then that very place is a Pure Land. So although we do not fully enter the Pure Land in this life, every time that we say the nembutsu we do connect with that land. This is all through the power of the Buddha's vow connecting with the openness created by our longing.
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