(transcript made by Kepa Egiluz)
Hi, my name is Paul Roberts and I'm here to talk to you
today about the only practice in True Shin Buddhism - True Shin Buddhism of
Master Shinran and Master Rennyo.
This is an extremely confusing topic for many people [and]
it was extremely confusing for me when I first felt myself drawn to Shin
Buddhism. An It's confusion for a couple of reasons:
One reason is confusing is because many of us have come to
Shin Buddhism from other Buddhist paths. And in any other Buddhist path you can
think of, whether it's part of the Hinayana or the Mahayana or the Vajrayana,
the Tibetan path, it's always about your [own] practice.
Practice involves discipline, it can involve study, it can
involve keeping precepts, it can involve engaging in particular good works
so-called "six paramitas"... And its all these things that Buddhists
are told to do diligently, continually, over and over again, which supposedly
will make you clear your mind stream and eventually become a Buddha if you continue
to practice.
Now, one of the fundamental ideas in Shin Buddhism that
Master Shinran says is that none of these paths work anymore for anybody. The
Paths of Self-Power are closed to us. I have recorded that in another video.
But instead, in Shin Buddhism, there's only one practice and that practice is
listening deeply: deep hearing of the Dharma called "Mappo" [“of the
Decline Age”] in the Japanese.
Now, [other reason] this ideas have also become very
confusing because many of the people who are teaching Shin Buddhism today are
actually not people of the same Shinjin as Master Shinran. Here are many of
these people who are very famous in the Sangha, who don't even believe that
Amida Buddha is a real Buddha or that the Pure Land is a real place. And
because there are such variants with Master Shinran's teachings, nothing that
they say in terms of their Dharma Talks can really be counted on to be true.
Anf finally, what's really important to understand then is
that Amida Buddha, billions and billions of years ago, over sixty billion years
ago, conceived of and came up with a Dharma path that was going to be just as
useful to people of no particular ability, people who are ignorant, people who
are illiterate, people who have Buddhist Attention Deficit Disorder and can't
calm their minds, not to meditate or contemplate. And the Dharma path he came
up with was for these people first; as Master Shinran says, "for the evil
person first" and then for the good person; for the ignorant person first,
and then for the wise person; for the person who can't do any self-powered
Buddhist works first, and then for the persona who has a capacity.
Now, there are three components to listening deeply, and I'm
going to explain them. I'm going to tell you what they are in a language simple
enough that anybody can understand, whether you've been studying Buddhism for
forty years or you're just now looking at Buddhism for the very first time.
The first part of listening deeply is listening with the
head, listening with your intellect to understand a very simple basic teachings
of True Shin Buddhism: the true teaching of the Pure Land Way. These teachings
are understandable by anybody. Master Shinran tells in one of the stories how
when he was a young man he went out with Master Honen, his teacher, and the
first person they run to was an illiterate peasant who didn't know anything
about anything. And Master Honen talked to him for a short period of time
-maybe half an hour, maybe an hour, I'm not sure- but at the end of the time
when they parted ways, Master Honen turned to Master Shinran -young Shinran, I
should say- and he said: "that man's Birth is assured. That's how easy it
is to transmit and to intellectually understand the essential content of True
Shin Buddhism.
But, at the same time, Master Shinran says that coming to
become a person of Shinjin is actually the most difficult of difficulties. And
the reason that's so is because is not just a matter of listening with the
head.
After we've listened with the head and understood the
content intellectually, now we have to listen with the heart. We have to listen
in our deep inmost being to decide, to find out whether or not this Dharma
message is true. And thats's what most people are not willing to do,
unfortunately.
But let me explain to you exactly what listening with the
heart is all about. And to start I want to tell you a quick story you may have
heard before about a man who went to see a Dharma teacher because he decided he
was excited about becoming enlightened. He wanted to become a Buddha. So he
sought out a Dharma teacher and he went to see him and he knocked on the door.
The Dharma teacher opened the door, the man said "I want to be a Buddha, I
want to become a Buddha, I want to become enlightened". And the teacher
invited him: "come in", he said, "I'll make you some tea, we'll
have tea together while talk". So the man comes in and sits down. The
Dharma master puts the kittle on and then he begins to make the man some tea.
All this time the man is talking, talking, talking, talking. He just never
stops. He doesn't shut up for a minute. "I think this, I think that, I
have this opinion, I have that opinion... yabi dabi dab dabi, yaba dabi dabi
dabi". He goes on and on an on. He doesn't take a break even for a minute
as he is giving the brain dump of everything he has in his head. So the master
starts to pour some tea and he pours and he pours into the man's cup. The cup
gets filled up and the master keeps pouring and pouring and pouring, and the
filled cup is overflowing, and the tea is running all over the table and down
into the man's lap. And the man stands up, "excuse, what are you doing?,
what are you doing?" And the master looks at him and says: "Listen,
you came to me asking to hear the teachings so you could become enlightened, and
yet you are so full of your own ideas you just don't have any room in your head
for what I have to say. It's like this tea cup: your cup is full, and therefore
I can't pour you any of my tea".
So that's really the point here. In order to begin to listen
to this Dharma, you have to be able to empty your cup. You have to be able to
lay aside all your own ideas, your thoughts, everything you understand,
everything you think you understand, everything you learned in college,
everything you read from Carl Jung, from Joseph Campbell, or from watching Star
Wars, or from studying Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism or any other kind of
Buddhism, or any other kind of metaphysical literature, or listening to any
other teachers... You've got to temporarily put it all aside. You must empty
your cup in order to evaluate the Dharma propositions of the Masters.
You don't have to let go of your ideas permanently, but
temporalily. While you're listening deeply you have to let go. Is Amida Buddha
a real Buddha, as Shakyamuni says and Shinran says? Or is he just a mythic
metaphor so many modern Shin Buddhist teachers say?
Unless you are willing to empty your cup, and lay aside you
predispositions and thoughts, you'll never know.
But, if you empty your cup, and you ask the Buddha within,
you will eventually hear a definitive answer. You may hear words... you may
just get an intuitive sense... You will hear from the Buddha within that yes,
Amida Buddha is a real Buddha, and, yes, the Pure Land is a real place. And,
yes, there is no other path to Buddhahood for us in this day and age. All these
are basic Dharma thoughts that we hear from our Dharma Masters over and over
again.
Now, let me tell you this idea of listening deeply is
actually exactly what the Buddha himself said to do. There is a famous story
-it's actually a sutra called "the Kalama Sutra"- and it talks about
a time when the Kalama people went to speak to Shakyamuni. And they said:
"We are just really confused. We hear this from one teacher, we hear this
from another teacher, we hear something else from you... We don't know who to
believe. What should we do?"
And the Buddha, being absolutely the smartest guy in the
room, the singular world *turner*, the truly enlightened one, he said to the
Kalama people this. He said: "Listen, don't believe anything that anyone
says, including me, just because we say it. You have the responsibility to
listen to what we say and then to take it inside and to ponder it deeply. And
only if you can sense that it's the right stuff, that it's the true teaching,
should you take it to heart.
It's exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about
listening deeply.
So there are three parts of listening deeply: The first is
listening with the head, to understand the basic content of our Dharma message.
The second is listening with the heart: empty your cup setting aside your
pre-existing ideas so that you can understand and listen into your heart from
the Buddha within whether these teachings are in fact true. And the third part
of listening deeply is being willing to talk to somebody who can serve you as a
true teacher, so you can ask every question that you have and answer every
doubt that might be in your heart, because until you ask all your questions and
answer all your doubts "you have not cleared the channels of faith".
That's a phrase Master Rennyo used: "clearing the channels of faith".
And you will not become a person of Shinjin.
As a close, I just going to read you these little passages
from Master Rennyo's writings that talk about this in a very straightforward
way. So, Master Rennyo says: "Meetings are occasions when, even if only
once a month, just those who practice in the Nembutsu should at least gather in
the meeting place and discuss their own faith and the faith of others. Recently,
however, because matters of faith are never discussed in terms of right and
wrong, the situation is deplorable beyond words. In conclusion, there must
definitely be discussions of faith from now on amor those at the meetings. For
this is how we are to attain Birth in the true and real land of Utmost
Bliss".
An Master Rennyo also wrote this: "Even if you feel
that you understand the significance of the Buddha Dharma -having listened
through sliding doors or over a hedge- faith will be decisively settled only by
your repeatedly and carefully asking others about its meanings. If you leave
things to your own way of thinking, there will invariably be mistakes. It has
been said recently said that there are many such instances these days. You
should ask others, time after time, about what you have understood of faith,
until Other-Power faith is decisively settled. If you listen but once, there
will surely be mistakes".
So I'm saying to everybody who's listening to this video
that listening deeply is the only practice in True Shin Buddhism. It is the
singular practice for us. It is so critical that we actually listen deeply.
It's critical if you're going to become a person of Shinjin in this life, a
Buddha when this life is over.
First you understand the intellectual content of the Dharma
message and then, once you've understood the intellectual content, you
basically go inside and you ask the Buddha within to bear witness to whether or
not this teaching is true. That's the only thing that matters if you're going
to become a Buddha: "Is this teaching true?" "Can you entrust
yourself entirely to this teaching?" If you can't answer to that question
you're never going to be a person of Shinjin. And finally, don't be ashamed,
don't be afraid, don't be proud; go find a good teacher of the Dharma, a person
of Shinjin and ask every question you have. Ask once, ask twice, ask a hundred
times until you get every answer you need to get, so that you could have no
more doubts and that you can freely entrust yourself to Amida.
I wish you all the best. If you have any questions, feel
free to contact me through this video. Now, I'll be glad to answer them, and
I'll see you again soon with several videos that I'm putting together on the
three pillars of True Shin Buddhism, the three fundamental ideas that define
our simple universal Dharma message.
