Amidaji construction news 2016 (part III)

- last update August 8th - 

 Dear Dharma friends,

Here it is a short summary of what I did this summer, and what I plan to do in the next months at Amidaji temple. For more detailed information (including the funds I spent from your donations) and photos you can click on the links provided in the text:

1) What I did until now

the renovated Hondo (Dharma Hall)

(a)

- I renovated, arranged and did some repair on the inside of the Hondo (Dharma Hall). I also added some liquid thermal insulation and painted the walls.

- I paid half of the taxes that must be paid for this year and which are related with the land of Amidaji and the two wooden houses (Hondo and Library)

- I added a new altar with a new beautiful Amida scroll (a gift of Zuikoji temple Osaka)

Emotional instability does not mean absence of faith

My mind can never be at peace.

Since the Buddha and me both know this simple truth,

Namo Amida Butsu comes naturally on my lips.

There are people who confuse emotional instability with the absence of faith (shinjin), and so they hope that faith will give them some kind of constant emotional stability. However, it is normal for unenlightened beings (and people of faith remain unenlightened until death and birth in the Pure Land!) to experience various degrees of emotional instability. It is exactly why Amida urges us to entrust to Him, and not on our own so called, ”personal power” and "personal achievements or merits". Trully, nothing stable can be achieved by an unenlightened mind, especially not Nirvana or birth in the Pure Land.

We must bear in mind that faith will not give us absence of desires while we are still here in our samsaric bodies. Faith will only make us enter the stage of non-retrogression, which means that no matter how many desires we have or how low we are on the scale of spiritual evolution, we will surely reach the Pure Land in the moment of death.

Thus, an unenlightened person who entrusts to Amida continues to suffer while still in his/her samsaric body. For a non-Buddha mind clinging is always present, and so,  there will always be suffering, insatisfaction, and some kind of emotional instability. I often say this to my Dharma friends - shinjin (faith) is not satori (Enlightenment)! Not even a little satori, so much more a greater satori which leads to absence of desires and constant emotional stability!

I don't miss meditation since I met the Primal Vow of Amida Buddha

Question: Do you ever feel like anything is "missing" for you without regular meditation?

My answer: I really do not feel something is missing. For an ordinary person meditation is useless anyway because no one can attain Enlightenment through it in this last Dharma age. More than this, meditation can even be a distraction from the Primal Vow. If Amida wanted us to practice meditation and considered meditation to be helpful to us, then He would have included it in His Primal Vow, which He didn't. As Honen said, Amida chose only His Name from the myriad practices. Why? Because this Name is supreme and all-powerful, and will take us quickly to freedom from birth and death.

Nobody is beyond criticism - an example of Rennyo criticizing a Hongwanji family member

Rennyo Shonin, the eight Monshu (Patriarch)
of Hongwanji 

"Rennyo's criticism of divergent views and beliefs reached into the interior of Hongwanji.  In particular, in a letter dated the ninth month of 1473 (Bunmei 5), he severely admonishes the laziness of 'a certain young person' who was holding himself out as a member of the 'first family of the Hongwanji in Kyoto'. The content of the letter indicates that this person was likely one of Rennyo's sons who had been assigned to a temple in Kaga. The young man would always declare to others,

'I understand about the settled mind (anjin). I recite the nembutsu often. Also, I have never performed anything like the miscelaneous practices, nor worshipped other Buddhas or Bodhisattvas. I am, in particular, a member of the first family of Kyoto. Everyday I eat whatever I want to eat and if then feel like sleeping, I can lie back and sleep whenever and for as long as I like. No one can ever complain. I am not especially concerned about the Buddha-Dharma. Besides, I can learn about it through listening to what others say about any temple matter. As for the benevolence of the Master Shinran, I only think about it from time to time.'

(Other Letters, in SSS, P. 157)

Amidaji Construction News 2016 (part II) - THE LIBRARY

scroll down for the latest updates!

building the concrete platform for the library

1) The plan for the library

One of the most important steps in the Amidaji project is the library. The original plan was to build a bigger Hondo (Dharma Hall) near the actual one, which will be then transformed into the library. But as the funds needed for the new bigger Hondo are beyond my financial possibilities, I decided to build a little wooden house this summer and use it as a library. When that bigger Hondo will be built and the present one will be transformed into the library, this little house will be used only for the accomodation of visitors.

The truck with the building materials 

for the new wooden house arrived on June 13th. 

I also had a service and Dharma talk on  the12th 

and did various little works in the courtyard of the temple.

The thing is I have a great ammount of copies of my books (especially those printed in Romanian by the CBBEF), as well as various old and new Jodo Shinshu English translations that need to be stored in a proper building. Now many of them are kept in precarious conditions near the place dedicated to the temple, and in the homes of some of my trusted friends and readers. So, while many copies will still remain at these friends who help distribute them in their respective towns, I urgently need a suitable place to store the books I have at my disposal, and where the visitors can easily come in contact with them.