“Hokyo-bo said to Rennyo Shonin, ‘The Myogo (six
character NA MO A MI DA BUTSU) you have painted has been destroyed by fire but
it has become six Buddhas. How extraordinary!’ The Shonin remarked, ‘It is nothing extraordinary. Since the Buddha (that
the Name represents) has become a Buddha, it is nothing extraordinary. What is
extraordinary is that an evil bombu
becomes a Buddha through a single thought of entrusting to Amida’.”
If you hear that a Buddha or a saint performed miracles, you might become happy
and want to see that miracle for yourself, but you will always feel it is quite
natural for such superior beings to perform miracles.
However, to hear that you, an ordinary person with strong
attachments and blind passions, some of them known only to yourself and kept
hidden with shame in the depths of your heart where no one can see them.... you
the reader of this book and internet addict who likes to read a lot about
Buddhism, Nirvana, Buddha-nature, ultimate reality, and virtuous Masters of the
past, but always finding yourself incapable to be like them…..
imagine that
you will become a Buddha!
You are sitting in front of your computer for many hours,
surfing the internet, reading a lot of good teachings and wise Buddhist quotes,
but never really being able to put them into practice for even 24 hours a day.
From time to time, you practice a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
some zazen, some
vipassana, etc.,
and then you come back to internet or books to read about the spiritual
realizations of others. You read all those pages and try to practice this or
that, but in the end you return to your true reality – the everyday misery of
living with your own ego and fighting with the ego of others.
You, who recognize yourself in my description, imagine that you will become a
Buddha! And to become a Buddha at the end of your life, you need nothing else
than to entrust yourself completely to Amida!
When I heard for the first time about the promise of Amida,
that ordinary people will become Buddhas through simple faith in Him, I was
struck with wonder and couldn’t believe my eyes and ears, as if I had seen or
heard someone from another planet. Soon, after realizing this is true and not
just a parable with esoteric and hidden meaning, I found myself saying: “What
am I waiting for?” For the first time I felt that Buddhism was speaking to
me, and not only to supermen. Since then,
every time I recall to my mind the promise of Amida’s Primal Vow that everybody
who entrusts in him and recite his Name will become Buddha, and realize that I
myself will become a Buddha, I feel there is no greater miracle.
A bombu is a being full of illusions and blind passions and who cannot attain
Nirvana by his own power.
According to the Jodo Shinshu teaching of Shinran and
Rennyo, a person who entrusts in Amida enters in the same moment in the stage
of non-retrogression or the stage of being assured of Nirvana, and becomes a
Buddha in the moment of death, when he is born in the Pure Land.
