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Years
of Teaching
Honen’s
teaching career closed with his death at the ripe age of eighty. Many
were the
people who were influenced by his teaching and personality: from the
days with
his monastic brothers in the Kurodani hermitage on Mt. Hiei beginning
in 1150;
through the period of his active teaching of the Pure Land Way at
Nishiyama,
Yoshimizu and Komatsudono in the environs of Kyoto after 1175; to his
exile in Shikoku
in 1207; and finally his death at Otani back in Kyoto in 1212. From
emperors to
warriors to high level monks to thieves and prostitutes, Honen
encountered and
encouraged people to search for spiritual liberation through Birth (ojo) in the Pure Land "just as you are".
I am just a
common man, hailing from an out-of-the-way place not worth mentioning.
Though I
be greatly deluded and foolish, I must not doubt the way of ojo, because anyone who does so has yet failed to understand
Amida
Buddha's Original Vow (hongan), seeing
that it
was made for no other purpose than the saving of those mired in bad
karma. So
then, as you call upon his sacred name, do not entertain the slightest
doubt of
its efficacy. In the words of Amida’s Vow, “all sentient beings of the
ten
quarters,” are included - all sorts of people, learned and ignorant,
defiled
and immaculate, good and bad, law-keepers and law-breakers, men and
women
alike. The only possible obstacle to the attainment of ojo is the lack of desire for the Pure Land and neglecting
to call upon
Amida’s sacred name. So apply all your energies to the continuous
practice of
the nembutsu.
And so Honen
proclaimed his universal message in this way:
Those who fail
to understand the meaning of this truth will
doubt their own powers and not obtain ojo. Those
who think that it is only the nembutsu
of the
pious and learned which can lead to ojo,
that
there is no ojo for the ignorant and
unlettered
or for those who go on creating bad karma every day, even if they say
the nembutsu, have not yet grasped
the fact that the Original Vow (hongan)
includes both the good and the bad. It is impossible in this life
to change one's nature which has been inherited through the karma of a
pre-existent state. So those who call upon the sacred name should do it
with
the nature they now have: the wise person as a wise
person, the fool as a fool, the pious as pious, the agnostic as
agnostic, and
thus all equally may attain ojo. Whether a person is rich and noble or poor and mean,
whether one is
kind or unkind, greedy or generous, indeed no matter
what one is, if one only repeats the nembutsu in
reliance upon the mysterious power of the Original Vow, one's ojo is certain. Amida's Original Vow was made to take in all
conceivable cases of people if they would but practice the nembutsu. Without inquiring at all into the level of their
abilities but
merely by saying the nembutsu in
simple earnestness
- this is all that is needed for anybody.
Tendai Zasu Kenshin
Sanron and Shingon scholar Myohen
Aristocrats & Royalty: Kujo Kanezane
Samurai
Outcastes - The Poor and Criminal
Women
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