Cultivating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology

Chapter 5: The Nature of My Faith

90 @#¤†š|€|&|# truth, so we can safely infer that this essay was written with the Shin clergy in mind, if not directed solely to them.  ” @ >^             ;    ultimate truth does not require abandoning the worldly truth; instead the latter is embraced as provisional but indispensable. See the discussion of      Wuliangshou jing. 3. The terms zen 善 and aku 悪 have very broad usage in Japanese,          ;            pairs as “good and bad,” “good and evil,” “right and wrong,” “wholesome and harmful,” “supportive and deleterious,” and so forth. Kiyozawa never                          ;        %         #       \       ; 4. Suffering and joy are standard Buddhist terms for the two poles of how we process sensation: we are either repulsed by what perceive as leading      ;  }! ) or attracted to what we think will bring us joy or happiness (sukha). 5. Shinjin 信心         %      in the Jødo Shinsh¨             #    ; Kiyozawa appears to be referring to an assumption that those who have attained this awakening are de facto capable of proper moral discernment    ;       _  ; {  ‹ ^           _ {     ;         %                               ^     on hearing (mon 聞~  ƒ            ƒ              mon refers to discerning or encountering the truth through hearing the preaching of theƒ | @ >^                          14. The word translated here as “anguish” (hanmon 煩悶) has political associations because of the situation in Japan at the turn of the century when the nation was directed into wars against both China and Russia, and young people were under enormous pressure to conform to the new imperialist model for Japan created by its leaders, often supported by Buddhist clergy,      %   * <   Œ*  &        <  ‚   ;   ;            15. This phrasing comes from the standard translation of the so-called Sutra of Immeasurable Life %  ª   Wuliangshou jing, an early work where the Sanskrit term ' #$ ¥la} œ~    _  { (gozen 五善~                     _   { (gokai 五戒~  %       _% acts” (goaku 五悪). 16. This phrase is added as a disclaimer in the famous eighteenth vow of the Sutra of Immeasurable Life,            ; from this promise to all sentient beings by Amida Buddha to guarantee birth  ! "<Guanwuliangshoujing seems to make up for this lapse     %                   |^             than a proscriptive sense.‰˜  humanist translates jindø 人道, a word with Confucian roots that was transformed in the modern period to represent humane, humanitarian, and     ` #X    received by Kiyozawa when growing up, jindø ;  X  moral principles as the basis for individual values. But when Kiyozawa was at university studying philosophy, he would have studied ideas like “humanist teachings” as a form of religion, as in the phrase “la religion d’humanité” coined by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), and often translated into Japanese as jindøkyø 人道教. The language used by Kiyozawa similarly contrasts jindø no kyø 人道の教 with butsudø no kyø 仏道の教. As Comte was arguing for a new form of religion based on ethics, it is entirely possible that Comte is the reference here, rather than Confucius. Chapter 5 The Nature of My Faith* by Kiyozawa Manshi Translated by Mark L. Blum As is my wont, I frequently speak about such things as “faith” (shinnen 信念) or “tathågata” (nyorai 如來). But what do I mean by “my faith”? What is this tathågata to which I profess my faith? Here, I will try to answer these questions. It should be obvious at this point that faith for me refers to how I believe in the tathågata. This, then, calls forth two issues: believing and tathågata. The two may appear to be completely separate things but as far as I am concerned, they are absolutely indivisible. On the question of what my faith is about, the answer is that it is about believing in the tathågata. On the question of what this tathågata is, the answer is that it is the fundamental basis of what I believe in. If we divide them, we could call one believing and the other what is believed in. In other words, my believing is precisely my faith, and that which is believed in by me is the tathågata. Another way of putting it is to use the traditional categories of the individual who believes (ki 機) and the Dharma which is believed in (hø 法). But if we insist on only using traditional categories such as believer and what is 93 *Original title, Ware wa kono gotoku nyorai wo shinzu 我は此の如く如来を信ず, but when it appeared in print posthumously in the journal Seishinkai, the original title was replaced with Waga shinnen 我信念. This is arguably the most well read of all of Kiyozawa’s writings, thus to this day is best known by Waga shinnen. In the newly edited KMZ 6:330, both titles appear. Cf. previous translations by Kunji Tajima and Floyd Shacklock (1936), Bandø Shøjun (1972), and Nobuo Haneda (1984). 94 KIYOZAWA MANSHI believed, and so forth, we run the risk of losing our understanding of what is in fact understood, so I will not pursue this line of thought. What is it that I believe in, and why do I do this? What sort of effects are produced by such a thing? There are various points to     "   < %#   the primary effect of removing distress and pain from my life. One    €  #   during those moments when I have feelings of anxiety or even agony, emotions that can be brought on by a variety of different causes and conditions, if this faith should manifest in my heart I suddenly feel calmed and even joyful. The way it happens is that when my faith becomes manifest, it takes over my mind completely such that there is simply no place left for deluded perceptions or deluded thoughts to settle [and play a role in my consciousness]. At that point, no  ¢    %£       as long as my faith is present such things will not be able to provoke feelings of distress or anxiety within me. Particularly for someone hypersensitive like myself, and especially now when my emotional state is aggravated by illness, if this thing I am calling faith were not there, it would be impossible to avoid extremes of distress and anxiety. I think, however, that such faith is just as essential for a healthy person as it is for someone who frequently suffers the debilitations of sickness. When I speak of a religious sense of gratitude, what I am referring to is the elation that comes from having my agonies actually swept away by my faith. The second question concerns why I believe in the tathågata. As I stated earlier, this [situation] is the result of the effects [of my £ %                %    the effects is only relevant after this believing has begun, for before believing one has no idea what the effects will be, if any. Of course, one hears of the effects from others and at that point one may have no reason not to believe them, but the impact of what amounts to hearsay never really goes beyond supposition. It is only through personal experience that one can truly know the presence or absence %   But my belief in the tathågata is not just the result of seeing the effects of this faith. It has another important basis. My belief in the tathågata occurs at the limit of everything that I know. Aside from a time in my life when I lacked real concern for human affairs, once I seriously began to take even the slighest interest in the human condition I felt obsessed with the question of the meaning of life. And when I reached the conclusion that the meaning of life is incomprehensible, 95 THE NATURE OF MY FAITH it was at that point that my faith in the tathågata arose. Gaining faith probably does not require that one go through such a lengthy process of inquiry, so the course of events that led me to this conclusion may indeed seem accidental. But in fact in my case, it could not have been any other way. Within my faith there is an element that believes in the ineffectiveness of my own efforts.1 And to believe in my own             ;        intellectual faculties to the point where I could not longer even raise    <        %    #   reached this limit I speak of, time and again I concluded that religious truth must be such and such, only to have that conviction destroyed by subsequent experience. As long as one attempts to establish their religious grounding by means of logic or research, such upheavals are inevitable. What is good, what is bad? What is truth, what is falsehood? What is happiness and what is unhappiness? One cannot possibly understand any of these. When I stood on that ground of understanding nothing, I threw up my hands and came to trust in the tathågata, and this became the focal point of my faith. The third question queries the nature of my faith itself. The answer to this is that my faith believes in the tathågata. The tathågata is the embodiment of the sacred (hontai 本体) that I am able to believe in and, moreover, cannot help but believe in. Faced with the truth of the powerlessness of my own efforts, I [know I] lack the ability to stand on my own, but this tathågata in whom I am able to believe as the fundamental embodiment of the sacred has the power to make me #Œ  %  falsehood, happiness and unhappiness, and yet personally lacking the ability to know one from the other, I am unable to move right or left, forward or backward [to accommodate these things]. This tathågata in whom I am able to believe as the fundamental embodiment of the sacred is capable of enabling such a person as myself to course through this world calmly, without malice.2 Without believing in this tathågata, I would neither know how to live nor how to die. I could not exist without believing in the tathågata. This tathågata is a tathågata that I am incapable of not believing in. <      #      % [of anxiety], the tathå     #    my second problem [of ignorance], the tathå       wisdom. In terms of my third problem [of practice], the tathågata for    |    %             96 KIYOZAWA MANSHI Because the tathå      my faith was resolved the tathågata enabled me to immediately gain peace and tranquility. The tathågata in whom I believe did not wait for the next world, but brought me enormous happiness here and now. I am not saying that I have not gained various degrees of happiness from other things, but none surpass the joys of this faith. For that reason, the happiness of my faith is my greatest happiness in this world. This happiness is something that I experience every day and every night. As I have not experienced happiness in the next life yet, I cannot comment on that. Because the tathå   #   protection and am liberated from the delusions that stem from wrong     |      #  drawn into inquiry and research by force of habit, and easily fall into a host of useless arguments. There are times when I have even       ;        %         <      %     faith, however, were I to fall into such illusory thinking for a period      %               this activity and abandon such theorizing. The aphorism, “To admit to what you do not know, this is to know,”3 may be the apogee of human wisdom, but we have a hard time accepting this. I used to hold truly presumptuous opinions about things. But now I appreciate expressions like “ignorant Hønen,” or “foolish and bald Shinran,”4 for I, too, have learned to be truly content with ignorance. In the past,   #   % ¢    £       #    hard time freeing myself from the mistake of using that limited and imperfect human knowledge to pursue a perfect standard or the reality # #      norms for judging truth or good and evil, that heaven and earth would crumble and society would become unmanageable. But now I have reached the conclusion that human knowledge could never create standards for truth or goodness. Because the tathå              great power. Under normal conditions our own considerations and discriminations lead us to determine how we will respond to things, but when things become even a little complicated that same ability to consider and discriminate easily becomes indeterminate. That is why these inquiries and researches gain momentum. But when, as mentioned                of deciding how to act mounts precipitously and we become nearly completely nonplussed. One should carefully choose their words, one should conduct oneself properly, one must not break the law, one 97 THE NATURE OF MY FAITH must not violate the codes of morality, one must not breach the rules of propriety, one must not go against accepted modes of behavior. There are obligations to oneself, obligations to others, obligations to family, obligations to society, obligations to parents, obligations to one’s lord, obligations to one’s husband, obligations to one’s wife, obligations to siblings, obligations to friends, obligations to good people, obligations to bad people, obligations to the old, obligations to the young, and so on. Such duties and obligations that arise out of    `    ;     #      %   %   end he or she will only end up faced with the depressing truth of the impossibility of the entire enterprise. When I ran up against this impossibility it distressed me immensely. If I had thought that there were no alternative but to agonize interminably over the reality of this impossibility, I would have ultimately killed myself. But through religion I have shed this anguish and now feel no need for suicide. #          %          tathågata, today I have gained peace and calm. How has the tathå       %    gain this peace? [The tathågata] has saved me by taking responsibility for everything that is not external. No matter what sins I may have committed, before the tathågata such things matter not a whit. I no longer have any need to discern good from bad, right from wrong. In whatever I do, I simply follow my inclinations and act according to what my heart dictates, without hesitation. I have no concern whatsoever as to whether or not my behavior is in error or in sin. The tathågata graciously takes responsibility for all my actions. Simply by believing in this tathågata I am able to live in continual peace. The power of the tathå <   ågata is unsurpassed. The power of the tathågata is ubiquitous. The power of the tathå                 activity. Entrusting myself to this miraculous power of the tathågata, I gain a great calm and a great peace. Entrusting my very life to the tathågata, I feel no anxiety and no unease. It is said, “In life and death it is destiny, in wealth and poverty it is ordained by heaven.”5 The tathågata in which I believe is the sacred embodiment of heaven and of destiny. Notes 1. This translation of 自力の無功 is actually reading the last character as 効 instead of 功. This is because I take this phrase to be in conscious contrast ...