A simple analogy between Vajrayana and Jodo Shinshu to help undecided practitioners

I know some people who come from a Vajrayana background and their thinking is still influenced by  Vajrayana terms and concepts but who sincerely wish to follow Jodo Shinshu.

For them I am going to make a short analogy between the two traditions to help them have an easy transition. Please listen carefully.

As you may know, in Vajrayana you cannot successfully practice without empowerment. When you receive empowerment from a realized Master you become connected with and blessed by an uninterrupted lineage of transmission which starts with a Buddha and continues with a series of Enlightened Masters. Then your practice can be successful if you are serious and put all your efforts into it. Without this empowerment and connection, your practice will not lead to realization. Also, once empowerment was given you must follow a samaya, that is, a specific set of rules and practices. However, breaking this samaya without repairing it will lead to birth in Vajra Hell.

Somehow, the same happens in Jodo Shinshu but in a different way. In our case, the guru or Enlightened Master is Amida Buddha and He empowers us at the moment we entrust to Him with genuine faith. This "empowerment" is called transference of merit, that is, Amida transfers His merits to us and makes us capable to attain Birth and Enlightenment in His Pure Land.

Many people can say His Name (Nembutsu) and is good to say it, but only those who say it with complete faith in Him will actually receive His merits and enter the stage of non-retrogression for birth in the Pure Land. It's the same difference between those who do a Vajrayana practice without empowerment and those who practice with empowerment. In our case, to say Nembutsu with empowerment is to say it as an expression of complete faith in Amida. The Nembutsu of faith is the Nembutsu of the Primal Vow and the only Path to the center of the Pure Land or  “the fulfilled land of the Pure Land” where we immediately attain Buddhahood. It is called the Tariki Nembutsu or Nembutsu of Amida centered Power.

The other Nembutsu, that is, the Nembutsu said while not having complete faith in Amida is the Nembutsu without empowerment or the jiriki Nembutsu (self-power nembutsu). With the jiriki Nembutsu one can only go to the borderland of the Pure Land if he is very serious in saying it until the end of his life. However, there he will not immediately attain Buddhahood like those who said the Nembutsu of faith or the empowered Nembutsu.

In our case, the samaya we naturally put into practice when we entrust to Amida are the eight elements of faith. These are manifested in our ordinary life by what we at Amidaji call, the eight  "precepts" of faith. In short, our samaya is the requirements of the Primal Vow of Amida: "entrust yourself to me, say my Name and wish to be born in my Land".

Breaking of this samaya can be done in a simple way by giving up faith in Amida and choosing another path in which case the practitioner no longer goes to the Pure Land after death, or in the evilest way by denying the existence of Amida Buddha and His Pure Land. Many false teachers nowadays are doing this while pretending to teach Jodo Shinshu and their karmic destination will also be the lowest hell.

In the case of a Vajrayana practitioner, he cannot receive empowerment without faith in the guru who is the embodiment of all Buddhas and the lineage, while in our case, we cannot receive the merit transference from Amida, which I dare to call it, the Nembutsu empowerment, if we do not entrust completely to Him.

So, as you see, despite the differences, the mechanism is the same. Amida Buddha is our Enlightened Master and Guru. We entrust to Him and we receive His empowerment (merits) which makes us successful in our aspiration to be born in His Pure Land after death and attainment of Buddhahood. 

Now you have to make a choice. Follow a guru in human form, have complete faith in him, receive empowerment from him, strive hard in the practices he prescribes to you and be strict in your samaya, or chose Amida Buddha himself as your guru and let Him empower you in the simplest of all the Dharma Gates - the Nembutsu of Faith which can be said in any circumstance and by everybody, no matter his or her spiritual capacities.

Both Vajrayana and Jodo Shinshu are genuine paths. However, the first is for people of high spiritual capacities while the latter is the universal gate through which all spiritual losers can be empowered to become Buddhas at the end of their lives.