Tricycle | Awake in the World

Do you think, as Honen did, that there’s benefit in chanting the nembutsu as often as possible?

MU: Most people, myself included, want to get some benefit from something. But in Buddhism, what we’re actually trying to do is to become released from the suffering that comes from wanting to get something. Chanting the nembutsu over and over is not very beneficial if I’m trying to get someplace like enlightenment by repeating the nembutsu over and over.

In nembutsu practice, one of the important things to understand is that this problem—the desire for a result—is unavoidable. I had a great Buddhist teacher who once said that the more pure and white the emptiness at the center of the circle becomes, the blacker the line of the circle itself becomes. The purer you become, the more you become attached to that purity. It’s unavoidable. The deeper I go into the path, the more I become attached to the results of my practice. So practice is an unending task.

That’s why in Shin Buddhism we emphasize that chanting nembutsu is not one’s own practice. It’s a practice that comes from Buddha-nature. Even though my deepest, truest reality is Buddha-nature, my immediate experience of myself is still of my deluded passions. The mind set that obsesses over “What am I going to get out of the nembutsu?” or “When am I going to get enlightenment?” is precisely what is causing me problems. Being reminded that practice comes from Buddha-nature helps release me from the calculations of the karmic self.

In Shin Buddhism we distinguish between “self power” (jiriki) and “other power” (tariki). Other power is more intimate to ourselves than self power, because self power is based on a self of our projection, of who we think we are or who we think we should be. When we speak of other power, we mean that it is other than the false ego. For that reason, other power is the most intimate reality. The Shin poet Saichi wrote, “In other power, there is neither self power nor other power. Only other power.”

Could you describe Shinran’s understanding of the relationship between true entrusting (shinjin) and nembutsu?

MU: “Namu Amida Butsu” as an expression of true entrusting is something that resonates deeply with human experience. The things we say that have the greatest significance for us are words that we use to speak about things for which there are no words.

Very often this occurs in relationships in which we feel a deep bond and trust. We are somehow able to be free of ourselves because we entrust ourselves to our relationship with that person, and that trust is reciprocated. This mutuality is very important. In a mature relationship of love, the trust does not go just one way. Whether the relationship is romantic, familial, or between a teacher and a student, deep trust nurtures deep love. When we feel that, we want to give voice to it. It’s something that’s beyond words, but we want to express it, because human beings are creatures of language. It’s a very natural thing, and this is actually one of the most important things to understand about the nembutsu. In one of his most famous letters, Shinran writes, “There is nothing special about the nembutsu. If you try to talk about it too much or explain it as doctrine, it starts to appear as something special. But at its heart, it is something very natural.”

TU: I think ultimately both shinjin and nembutsu are terms that describe human experience, but they also describe experience that transcends the human. Shinjin is something that I may experience, and yet the gift of shinjin comes from the other. When the other is lost, then my shinjin becomes a matter of pride: I’ve got it, and you don’t. I think the nembutsu too has a similar structure. I say “Namu Amida Butsu,” yes, but ultimately the saying of nembutsu comes because of a prompting of something deeper than my personal intention to say it. I think when we use the term “other power,” we tend to say, “This is other power, and that is self power,” but really, other power is below self power and in self power. Even what we take to be self power turns out, at its root, to be other power.