What does "equal to Maitreya Buddha" means?

A unique teaching of Jodo Shinshu is that followers who received shinjin (faith) are equal to perfect Enlightenment, equal to all Buddhas and equal to Maitreya Buddha. 

Maitreya, now residing in the Tusita heaven, was said by Shakyamuni to be a future great Buddha who will appear in this world after many billion years (5,670,000,000) from His time.

Shinran Shonin explained this in letter 3 of Mattosho:

“Since those who have realized shinjin necessarily abide in the stage of the truly settled, they are in the stage equal to the perfect Enlightenment. In the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life those who have been grasped, never to be abandoned, are said to be in the stage of the truly settled, and in the Sutra of the Tathagata of Immeasurable Life they are said to have attained the stage equal to perfect Enlightenment. Although they differ, the terms ‘truly settled’ and ‘equal to Enlightenment’ have the same meaning and indicate the same stage. Equal to the perfect Enlightenment is the same stage as that of Maitreya, who is in the rank of succession to Buddhahood. Since persons of shinjin will definitely attain the supreme Enlightenment, they are said to be the same as Maitreya.”

Faith is simple, nothing special

I noticed that some practitioners from other traditions or with previous experience in other schools,  who sometimes talk with me about Jodo Shinshu, perceive shinjin (faith in Amida Buddha) like a special state of mind that must be attained by them and which is hard to attain. Maybe this tendency comes from the practices they are used to within their traditions, where something has to be attained, felt or visualized, etc.   

But shinjin is different. It doesn’t necessarily imply a special state of mind, or special thing to be felt or experienced. It is simply to entrust in Amida Buddha. I rely on Amida for my attainment of Buddhahood in His Pure Land. That is all.

Aspiration to become a Buddha – the most important matter

It is of utmost importance for those who enter the Buddhist path to have the aspiration to become a Buddha. Without this aspiration there is no Buddhism. If we don’t want or don’t feel the urgency of complete freedom from the many sufferings of repeated births and deaths, then Buddhism will remain for us only an object of study, an interesting lecture of mythology or an intellectual delight. 

There are, so to speak, two visions one can have about himself and the world. The first is the ordinary vision depending on one's cultural education or daily concerns, and the other is the Dharmic vision. 

The first represents what is considered normal in various times, containing limited explanations of the world and almost no interest in the meaning of human existence or in something which is beyond the present life. The immediate utilitarianism is fundamental in the non-Dharmic vision of the world.

On the other hand, the Dharmic vision perceives the world and personal life through the perspective of the Buddhist teaching (Dharma) where everything is explained in terms of the preciousness of human birth, impermanence, the law of karma, and the suffering inherent in all the samsaric realms of existence (the Four Thoughts). Also, what is truly important is defined in a different way than immediate utility, and the attainment of Freedom from samsara for us and all beings is considered to be supreme. 

Entering the Jodo Shinshu path

---read this article first (Aspiration to become a Buddha - the most important matter)---

Entering the Jodo Shinshu path is like becoming a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and recognizing: “Hello, my name is Josho and I am an alcoholic”. 

Jodo Shinshu doesn’t state something like: “My name is Josho and I can become a Buddha”, but “my name is Josho and I am full of blind passions, incapable of healing myself”. 

While in other Buddhist schools, an important matter is the recognition of the possibility that every being can become a Buddha like Shakyamuni in this life, the Jodo Shinshu path begins with the sense of failure. When you are 100% convinced that you cannot attain Buddhahood in this life, then you are ready for the Jodo Shinshu path. As long as you still harbor in your mind the smallest thought of personal merit or “maybe I can”[1] kind of things, you cannot see and enter the Dharma gate of birth in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land. 

Amida Buddha’s Pure Land is like a country where everybody can emigrate without the least requirement: no visas, no special capacities, nor any other qualities. As Shinran said: 

“This is the way of easy practice to be followed by those of inferior capacity; it is the teaching that makes no distinction between the good and the evil.” 

Thus, the Jodo Shinshu sangha is like an “idiot’s club” or alcoholics anonymous, in comparison with the nice and good Buddhists, who believe they are always calm and ready to become Enlightened. 

If you hope to find here some interesting quotes about detachment or how capable people are for goodness, virtues and any kind of spiritual realizations, then this is not the place for you. But if you recognize yourself more and more in the group of spiritual alcoholics or those that are incapable of any important practice which leads to perfection here and now, in the middle of sufferings and miseries of any kind, then this teaching will be of much help, and I greet you with a warm “welcome to the club!” 

I repeat, Jodo Shinshu starts with the sense of failure….

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[1] Maybe I can attain perfect Enlightenment.

KOBAI SENSEI'S STATEMENT (VIDEO)- AMIDA IS A TRUE AND REAL BUDDHA, NOT A FICTIONAL CHARACTER

I added a subtitle to this video, because Eiken Sensei doesn't speak English very well and I wanted to be sure that everybody understand his statement. You can both watch the video and also read the transcript.

Here is the transcript:

"Josho Adrian: "Thank you for your paper. You talked about shinjin, about having or not having shinjin. I have a different question. Some people in our school are teaching that Amida is a symbol, a metaphor, a myth or a fictional character. Is that true, and if it is not true, can these people who say that Amida is a myth, a symbol or a fictional character have the same shinjin like Shinran? This is my question.

Kobai Sensei: Somebody say Amida is a symbol and myth

Josho Adrian: A myth … a myth or a fictional character… fictional character like in a movie … fictional character, like it was only a story, only a fictional story

Kobai Sensei: Fictional

Josho Adrian: Fictional, and not a true, a real Buddha.

Kobai Sensei: I think …. that person opinion, I think they or he don’t have shinjin. I think by having shinjin we understand Amida and the Jodo(Pure Land) and Hongan (Primal Vow).

Josho Adrian: As a Real Buddha, not a fictional character, not a symbol, but a real Buddha.

Kobai Sensei: I think

Rev Sato – chairman: Difficulties…

His question you know and his answer is those who say Amida is a fictional, myth, only a story, those people don’t have shinjin.

Rev Sato: That is his answer

Kobai Sensei: They don’t have the experience of salvation.

Rev Sato – chairman: They don’t have any experience of salvation

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This is the statement of Eiken Kobai Sensei, one of the most important Jodo Shinshu teachers of our times. It is a statement that I support and share from all my heart and spread it here in my country, in my dojo and in every temple or dojo I will open in the future.

After Kobai Sensei made that clear statement at the 15th European Shinshu Conference, almost everybody was astonished and some, the chairman too, tried to reduce the impact of his statement, by saying that “there is room also for different interpretations, etc”, but into my opinion, there is NO room for any other interpretations. In our school should be room and space only for the teaching we can find in the words of the sutras and the commentaries of Master Shinran and Rennyo. And in these sacred writings Amida is described as a real Buddha, manifesting a Form and a Name in order to save ordinary sentient beings. We have the explanations of the The Three Buddha bodies in the Trikaya doctrine and other explanations of our Masters and I think that we should not deviate from these explanations and invent our own teachings.
Who are we to modify the Dharma left to us by our Masters? Do we think we are like them? The Dharma is a medicine given by Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Masters and is given to sick people like us to take it exactly as it was prescribed. How can a sick person, an unenlightened person, be better than a doctor or an Enlightened One, and modify the medicine?
Are all these modern deluded teachers who support such false views as Amida being a fictional character, already Enlightened? Are they Buddhas, Bodhisattvas or the same with Shinran and Rennyo?
On what authority can they modify the sacred teaching, the medicine given to us by the Buddha, the Masters? My opinion is that we should be more concentrated on learning the sacred words of our teaching, humbly letting ourselves to be guided by them and stop changing them to accommodate with our changing minds.

Those who say that Amida is a symbol, a myth, a metaphor or a fictional character don’t have the experience of salvation and are not teaching the true Jodo Shinshu teaching, but their own ideas and opinions. How can one rely and entrust to a symbol or a fictional character and achieve something by it? Only to the real and living Amida Buddha (in his transcendental or sambhogakaya form) can we entrust and be sure of our birth in the Pure Land.
I urge again my fellow practitioners and nembutsu friends to entrust only in the words of the sutras and commentaries of our Masters, Shinran and Rennyo and not in the bubble talk of people who lack shinjin and are more interested in spreading their own ideas than the actual teaching.
Those people are false teachers and may their false opinions never enter my country, but disappear like dust in the wind.

Namo Amida Butsu


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More against the false understanding of Amida Buddha as a fictional character or only a symbol, you can read here. Please read carefully all the explanations.

related article:
Those who deny the existence of Amida, don't have shinjin

Immediate Buddhahood for ordinary people, without passing through bardo

"Being mindful of Him (Amida Buddha) always, we board the Vow Power. After death we attain birth in His land, where we meet Him, face to face, with unbounded joy."

Master Shan-tao 

Although it is not so well spread outside Asia, like Tibetan Buddhism, Jodo Shinshu deserves its place among the most advanced Mahayana teachings and practices.  

I know that in Tibetan Buddhism there are methods for attaining complete Buddhahood quicker than in other Mahayana schools. Some practices are hard and dangerous like those of the tantras, but some are easier like the practice of attaining Enlightenment in the bardo or the intermediate state between death and the next birth, in accordance with the Bardo Thodol. Through its methods, Tibetan Buddhism promises, if well practiced, Enlightenment in a few lives or even in the bardo, if one is not capable of attaining it in this very life.

Kitagaki - a person of shinjin

I received the last number of EKO magazine from my nembutsu friends in Jikoji (Belgium) and while I was looking through its pages, trying to find something in English, I came across a wonderful short article written by Zuio Inagaki Sensei about Mr.Motoyasu Kitagaki, a famous Buddhist calligrapher, but about whom I have never heard before. I read about his life and work which was described in short at the beginning of the article, then while reading the last two passages, I was suddenly filled with spontaneous joy and veneration. I kissed those words and raised the text to the forehead, reciting nembutsu. What a wonderful person of shinjin! I cannot abstain not to share with you those two passages which gave me so much joy and hope, that you can't imagine:

“Being a devout follower of the Jodoshinshu, Mr. Kitagaki lived a life of Nembutsu. Anyone who met him never failed to feel Amida’s compassion emanating through his warm and sincere personality. He was really a white lotus in the muddy pool of the human society.

According to what his widow, Maki, humbly recounts, a few days before Mr. Kitagaki died, he exclaimed to her: “Amida Sama has come to welcome me!”
“Where?” she asked.
“Can you see, Maki? Right there! How beautiful! With all the flowers, purple and yellow! Just as they are described in the sutras!”
“Do you see golden and silver towers, too?”
“Yes, I do, indeed!”
Mrs. Kitagaki had never seen her husband look so happy.

His life-teacher of Buddhism was Rev. Zuiken S. Inagaki. One day Mr. Kitagaki called to see him. Dispensing with the usual greetings, he opened his mouth to ask the teacher: “It is true that Amida Sama calls me to come to him just as I am?”
Rev. Inagaki replied: “Yes, he does.”
Mr. Kitagaki asked him the same question three times, to which the same answer was given three times. Then he left the teacher’s house.”

I wish to die exactly like him with the same joy of being received by Amida.

Without any formalities and introduction, he came and asked that simple and yet most important question three times! He came to his teacher's house only to ask that question! And then he left. No more questions, just one fundamental question to solve the matter of birth and death for ever.
What a wonderful person of shinjin he was. I can feel this just by reading those two passages. I have no doubt he is a Buddha now helping all beings to entrust in Amida and be born in the Pure Land.
Namo Amida Butsu

Conditions to believe in the Name

The late Master Zuiken Inagaki said:

"In order to ‘truly hear (believe in) the Name’, one should fulfill the following conditions:

1. One should believe in the law of causation.
2. One should believe in the Three Treasures - the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
3. One should believe deeply that one has been sinking in the sea of birth-and-death for innumerable kalpas, and that one has no hope of emancipation from evil karmas, for one is full of delusion, attachment and evil passions of love-and-hatred.
4. One should have an ardent aspiration for attaining enlightenment and becoming a Buddha.
5. One should think of one's own death, which is coming at one's heels, that is, one is ever threatened by death that may come at any moment.
6. One should think that one is now at one's deathbed.
7. One should remember that at their deathbed all dying persons must experience utter darkness, fear, hopelessness and solitude.
8. One should remember that the hell-fire is waiting for one.
9. One should realize that one has no ability to practice the highest good or the highest meditation for the attainment of salvation for oneself.
10. One should realize that one is like a man who is thrown into the rough sea in the dark night.
11. One should be free from all superstitions that falsely promise exemption from diseases, calamities and poverty through prayer and worship, or through divination and fortune-telling."

Question - discrimination in the saving activity of Amida?

"There is no heart far from Amida,

but a covered bowl of water cannot reflect the moon.

Once a friend asked me the following question:

"Why is that one person is ready for the nembutsu and others obviously not. And assumed the nembutsu comes only from the Buddha to us, as taught by Shinran, does the Buddha chose between those he wants to save now and those he does´nt want to save yet?"

This article was updated and moved to this link,

http://amida-ji-retreat-temple-romania.blogspot.ro/2018/05/faith-in-amida-buddha-is-not-creation.html

I was a "good" Buddhist

Many Buddhist practitioners are like a man staring at the sun, but with his body in a hole full of excrement.

Here the sun represents the ideal – Buddhahood to be attained through his own power. This ideal is of course very beautiful and the practitioner always likes to stare at it and to take delight in many beautiful words about Enlightenment, emptiness, Buddha-nature, that we are all Buddhas-to-be, etc. The hole with excrement is his true reality in the here and now, his deep karmic evil, his limitations, attachments and blind passions that cover all his body and mind.

However, he likes to dream about Enlightenment: he even thinks that this is something that can be attained in this very life. After all, we all have Buddha-nature, don’t we? …

And this dream continues as he practices in self-power for 20, 30, 40 years or more, until he finally dies like an ordinary unenlightened person, going to the next life with all his karma, attachments and his so-called “merits” accumulated in this life. 

THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS FOR ME

"If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings of the ten quarters who sincerely entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and say my Name perhaps even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme Enlightenment."

The Primal Vow (18th Vow) of Amida Buddha

The words of the Primal Vow are the most precious words for me in the whole Buddhism. I like to repeat them in my mind or loudly. I like to contemplate them. I like to savor them.
While reading them again and again I cannot stop my joy that these words really exists – they are true and real words said by a true and real Buddha called Amida. And they were said especially for people like myself.

I put all my trust in these words because they are the promise of Amida Buddha. Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, told in the Larger Sutra the story of Amida . I accept this story and promise with simple faith. As a simple, stupid and full of blind passion Buddhist peasant that I am, I need nothing else – for me its enough to accept the words of the Primal Vow in faith.

Other Buddhists may be wiser than me, more virtuous, very much advanced in meditation, maybe they can understand the ultimate nature of all things, and to them I may look like a stupid person that have a very low level of Buddhist understanding. I do not mind, because this is exactly what I am. For me the words of the Primal Vow are enough. They represent Buddhism to me and through them I become a disciple of Shakyamuni and all Buddhas. These words are not a koan (1) or a subtle metaphor, but a simple and direct promise so that all stupid and low level Buddhists can understand. These words are the only one that make me to accept my life as it is, with ups and downs, and to accept my death that can come at any time. These words are the only one who can make me say: “It’s all right if I live and all right if I die”.

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Notes:
(1) Koan is a word or a phrase of nonsensical language which cannot be “solved” by the intellect. It is used as an exercise to break through the limitations of conventional thought and to develop intuition, giving the practitioner the chance to reach an awareness beyond duality. They are used as meditation objects in Rinzai Zen. However, very often these koans are treated by many as mere intellectual interesting games, loosing in this way their original function.

Bodhi Mind in Jodo Shinshu Buddhism (updated with a video teaching on August 2023)

Question:
What is Bodhi Mind or bodhicitta in Jodo Shinshu? What is the relation between Bodhi Mind and Shinjin?

Answer:
The Awakening of the Bodhi Mind – the aspiration to attain Budhahood for saving oneself and all beings – is fulfilled in the Awakening of Faith (shinjin) in the Primal Vow of Amida Buddha. Shan-tao said: “Awake your Bodhi Mind to Amida’s Compasion”, that is, aspire to your and other beings Liberation by relying on the Compasion of Amida (his Primal Vow).

So, the Awakening of the Bodhi Mind, the obligatory condition in Mahayana of attaining the supreme Enlightenment, appears in Jodo Shinshu in the form of the entrusting heart (shinjin).

Shinran Shonin said in the “Hymns on Patriarchs”:

“Faith is One Mind
One Mind is the Diamond-like Mind;
The Diamond-like Mind is the Bodhi-Mind;
This mind is given us by the Other-Power.”

The One Mind represents the cause of Enlightenment. Since this is the Bodhi-
Mind, it has two aspects[1]:

“To take refuge with One Mind in the Buddha
Of Unhindered Light Shining throughout the Ten Directions
Is the mind aspiring to become Buddha;
So says Vasubandhu, the Master of Discourse[2].”
(Hymn on the Patriachs 17)

“The mind aspiring to become Buddha
Is the mind seeking to save sentient beings;
The mind that seeks to save sentient beings
Is True Faith endowed by Amida’s Compassion.”
(Hymn on the Patriachs 18)

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[1] The two aspects of the Bodhi-Mind are to aspire to the attainment of Buddhahood for himself and others.

[3] “Discourse on the Pure Land”, a work which author is Master Vasubandhu.