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There is no need to
create something special into your mind.
By saying Namo Amida Bu
in faith you accept that everything
necesary to your salvation depends entirely
on Amida Buddha.
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Give up to any expectations on what you should feel when you
receive shinjin (faith). Stop philosophyzing about faith, stop waiting for special things to happen. Stop thinking that your mind will become stable because one
day you will have faith. Even if you are not aware of this, you are confusing
shinjin with some kind of a smaller satori (enlightenment), and you are waiting for miracles to happen. But what miracles can happen with an unelightened mind?
Amida Buddha has absolutely no expectation from you and He offers you His
salvation without any condition, so why do you create your own conditions in
your head on how shinjin should be like?
Rather than imagining things about shinjin, you should simply
entrust yourself to Amida. Faith
does not presuposes any special states of mind. It is just a simple entrusting
to Amida Buddha regarding you birth in His Pure Land after death. When you
receive faith you enter the stage of those assured of birth in the Pure
Land as you are, with all your imperfections. Please remember that the cause of your salvation is NOT in your
mind and feelings, but in Amida. This
is why you should not associate your feelings with shinjin (faith). It really does not matter what you feel as
long as you simply entrust yourself to Amida. It is Amida's job to save you,
not yours, so stop worrying!
While you are still in this unenlightened environment,
itself the effect of your karma and the collective karma of unenlightened beings, you cannot expect to feel wonderful things in relation with anything!
Because your present mind is not yet a Buddha Mind, you will always find
something to worry about or be sad about, even if you would have everything you
want. You will always have ups and downs as long as you are not a Buddha.
All that happens when you receive shinjin is that the seed (or
the cause) of birth into the Pure Land is planted witthin you by Amida Buddha.
Then you become indestructibly connected to Amida and His Pure Land where you
will actually go when the ties with your samsaric body are broken, at the time of death. Unlike here, where everything is conducive to more attachements, fears,
delusions and blind passions - because this world is itself the effect of the
collective karma of unenlightened beings - there, in the Pure Land, you will
naturaly attain perfect Enlightenment because that Land is itself the effect of
Enlightenment, and everything there is conducive to Enlightenment.
So, if you really
want special things to happen, then wait until you are actually born in the
Pure Land after death. Now just entrust to Amida without any expectations
regarding your mind and feelings. You are like a person who knows he will soon
be released from prison, but until the liberation day arrives, it is normal
that he still experience the sufferings and limitations of prison life. You
have been a prisoner of Samsara since the beginigless past, and as Shinran said
in Tannisho, you are greatly attached
to this house of pain. Amida Buddha has never had any expectations from you to
act, feel and think like a free man while you are still in prison.
Namo Amida Butsu
- fragment from a
letter to a friend -
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