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| the altar of Amidaji temple |
Definition of reform: By reform I mean a
return to the roots of our religion and a refusal of the so-called modernist or
"progressive" ideas which deny our basic doctrines or redefine them to
conform to the worldly ideologies and faithless minds of various times.
First and foremost we must stand up and
counteract such horrible ideas supported by many deluded scholars nowadays which
present Amida as a myth, symbol, fictional character, etc, or His Pure Land as not being a real enlightened place to be attained after death but something in our heads or"here and now". This is the greatest of all evils and we must fight
against it with all our strength. I am already doing this in my book The True Teaching on Amida Buddha and His Pure Land as well as in the articles I wrote in the section dedicated to
this topic.
However, unlike many of my colleagues I
think that the reform of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism must go deeper than counteracting
such wrong views about Amida and His Pure Land. The problem is more complex
than that. Buddhism and religion in general is under constant attack by a hoard
of disturbed people who are not actually religious but who find religion very useful
as a tool to promote their worldly ideologies like gay marriage, destroying the
role of father and mother (or man and woman) and replacing them with so-called
parent 1 and parent 2, inventing new sex identities and denying that humans are
men and women or saying that sex is something we can chose and not a reality from birth, etc. The proponents
of such clearly insane ideas are LGBTQ, a group centered on destroying families
and normal relations between men and women and already promoted in various Jodo
Shinshu centers across the world, especially in USA, where gay marriage is
already an abnormal “normality”. Also, in clear disregard to Buddhist teachings
on the illusory differences between human beings, some Jodo Shinshu centers in
USA officially support racist or hateful ideologies like Black Lives Matter (click here to read) whose
members have done many killing, looting and beatings and who specifically
single out one race among the others. In the future I am afraid that if we
allow such attitude to continue, many other extremist ideologies will be
supported in the name of Jodo Shinshu in total disregard to general Buddhist
teachings, Buddhist morality and the real purpose of the temple or dojo.
We
might tend to think that these things are not so important, but I remind you
that many of those who promote such aberrant views also describe Amida and His
Pure Land as metaphors, symbols or fictional literature, deny the authenticity of
the Larger Sutra and Mahayana sutras in general or life after death. They are (with
some exceptions) part of the same group of beings who can't accept religion as
it is with all its values and beliefs from centuries past and always want to
change what they do not like.
The
mind who thinks that he can change or disregard (pretend that it does not
exist) the elements he doesn’t like in Buddha Dharma in general and Jodo
Shinshu (Amida Dharma) in particular is the cause from which all kinds of
distorted views appear. Buddha Dharma and Jodo Shinshu are not the property nor
the creation of unenlightened minds so it does not really matter if our egos
like some aspects of it or not. As sick patients (unenlightened beings) we must
accept the medicine prescribed by the Doctor (the Buddha). As Jodo Shinshu Buddhists we must
accept the specific teachings related with Amida Buddha and His Pure Land as
taught by Shakyamuni and the Masters of our lineage, but also the general
Buddhist teaching on cosmology, karma, life after death, morality and family.
Jodo Shinshu is NOT something separate from the whole Buddha Dharma and Mahayana.
If we respect Shakyamuni we will
consider that ALL His teachings are true. It does not mean that we must follow
all the practices He taught but that we can't deny or pretend that His other
teachings on various topics do not exist.
I
am telling you this in full responsibility - if we allow modernists or so-called progressive people to change
whatever they want in the general Buddhist teachings as long as they do not
touch Amida and His Pure Land, a day will come when they will distort (it is
already happening) the teaching on Amida and the Pure Land, too. It is what
these people do - they change, destroy and recreate a religion in their own
image. They are not religious but they use religion as a tool to satisfy their
hunger for approval and domination. So,
if we want to clear and heal the international Sangha we must do total
spiritual war against any type of modernist ideas and re-emphasize the
importance of all Buddhist teachings on family, parents and children relation,
morality, etc. Our orthodoxy and conservative approach must be applied in
all aspects of the general Buddhist teaching and Jodo Shinshu in particular or
we’ll fight a lost cause.
The denial of
the real existence of Amida and His Pure Land is not a separate incident but
part of a more general attempt to destroy religion and Buddha Dharma.
People who are working on this are all followers of the same worldly ideologies
and part of the same evil. With such a wide spread enemy we must fight on all
fronts in the same time. This is exactly why you can see me defending the
specific doctrines of our school as well as the natural union between man and
woman, or why I am against using the temples to justify and institutionalize
sexual misconduct (gay marriage). When Shakyamuni Buddha gave advice to
couples, He always did that to men and women, not men and men, or women and
women, so there is enough doctrinal basis to defend in our sanghas the union
between man and woman.
He also referred to parents as father and mother in all His sutras (discourses) and instructions on how to treat and respect them, so again we have the doctrinal bases and natural law on our part to defend normal family.
He also referred to parents as father and mother in all His sutras (discourses) and instructions on how to treat and respect them, so again we have the doctrinal bases and natural law on our part to defend normal family.
To
those who say we should not talk about such things in the sangha because they
are political I say that matters related with family and couples were already
taught and discussed by Shakyamuni in various sutras, so these are Buddhist
matters, not political. Also, how to organize our local sanghas and temple on
Buddhist principles is a healthy spiritual preoccupation, not a political
affair[1].
If
we have good temples with members and families devoted to the Buddha Dharma where
nobody picks and chose what they like and disregard what they don’t like, where followers do not bring worldly ideologies of any kind, there
will be natural openness towards Jodo Shinshu (Amida Dharma) as well. In a place where all Shakyamuni’s teaching
is accepted and any modernist view is rejected, His specific teaching on Amida
Buddha will have more chances to be received in faith.
It is like
trying to preserve one room (Jodo Shinshu) in a decayed building (general
Buddhism). No matter how clean we keep that room, if the entire house is neglected
our room will soon be infested by rats (fake teachers and followers) from other
rooms. Thus, we must treat our room (Jodo Shinshu) as part of the entire house
(general Buddhism/Mahayana teaching) and be orthodox and conservative with all
general Buddhist views and teachings while insisting of course, on our specific
Jodo Shinshu.
[1] However, sometimes religion must
act in the political arena to defend its rights, especially in a society where
unnatural marriage already started to be imposed in some churches across the
world – see the recent cases of priests or pastors who were accused and brought
to justice for refusing to perform gay marriages. In some places in our world
there are even talks of forcing the acceptance of gay marriage by law in the
society and churches, so a religious resistance in such matters is very
important.
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