Jodo Shinshu
Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land School) is the teaching of Sakyamuni Buddha’s Larger Sutra as elucidated by Shinran Shonin.
There are numerous sutras attributed to the Buddha during his lifetime, each of them are ways be which the realm of Enlightenment can be reached. Enlightenment is the emancipation from the illusory world of life and death. For us, the only way we can truly be freed from illusion to attain Enlightenment, is the Jodo Shinshu – the True teaching of the Pure Land. As the name indicates, it means the true doctrine for birth in the world of Enlightenment of all, without exception.
We who are lost in the lust-ridden world of impermanency cannot escape by our own power from the limitless sufferings and anxieties that surround us. It was in order to give us deliverance that Amida Buddha appeared out of his enlightenment realm of Thusness and became the Buddha of accomplished Wisdom and Compassion through his Vow and Practice, and it is through this Vow Power that deliverance into the Pure Land is assured for us.
The Dharma (teachings of the Buddha) expostulates that the Vow-power motivates us into hearing Amida Buddha’s noble doctrine, into having faith in this teaching and into saying his Name, and gives us birth in the Pure Land where Buddhahood is attained. Therefore, we but hear and have faith and rejoice in the continued Nembutsu (saying of the Name of Amida Buddha) and when our life on earth shall have ended, we shall be born in the Pure Land to attin immediate Buddhahood, and thereupon be endowed with the virtue of freely giving deliverance to others in the world of illusion.
Although we may rejoice in the compassion of the Buddha by hearing the Dharma, this does not mean that we are changed into enlightened beings while living in this illusory world. As long as we have this mortal body, our sufferings and anxieties are still not eradicated, but it does mean that now, in this lifetime, our birth in the Pure Land and the attainment of Buddhahood has been assured. This is the meaning of the words shared with us by Shinran.
“In the faith that the inconceivable Vow of Amida delivers and causes birth into the Pure Land there arises the willingness to say the Nembutsu, and thereon is one given the beneficence of being embraced and not forsaken.”
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