Shin Buddhism is often considered by people with scepticism as another religion based on “blind faith” in a divine entity. Even within the Jodo Shinshu community, there are dissonant voices on the subject of the reality of Amida Buddha as a symbol pointing to an ultimate truth or as a real person who promises salvation in a very real place of enlightenment called the Pure Land. Our school presents things much more simply by answering the question:
How can we have faith in a promise if we don’t believe in the existence of the person who made that promise?
In his book Amida Dharma Rev Josho explains,
“ Without accepting the actual, literal existence of Amida Buddha there can be no true faith, no true salvation and no real birth in His Pure Land. If we have faith in someone, then it means we are sure beyond any doubt that he is reliable and that he will keep his promise. Also, to believe in someone’s promise means that we accept his existence, too. Promises can be made by living persons, in our case by a living, existing Amida Buddha, not by material objects or fictional characters. Thus, we must accept Amida as a living Buddha who can hear, see and save us by taking us to His Pure Land after death. "
It is my personal experience of shinjin, that is, the faith gifted to me by Amida Buddha, which brought me the certainty that Amida Buddha, His Primal Vow and His Pure Land are an absolute reality.
What makes me believe they are real?
To answer this I found an analogy taken from a life experience I had when I was young
As a teenager I was on a ski trip with friends in St.Anton, Austria. We were aged between 14 and 17 years. We were all skilled skiers, that day unaccompanied by adults. We were hurtling down the slopes, as teenagers do, totally recklessly and enjoying the exhilarating sensation of speed, oblivious of the risks we were taking. There was a steep narrow passage along a slope where there was no space to turn and curb our speed, we could only go straight, skis together. At the end was a rocky crag which needed to be skilfully avoided. Fearlessly, one by one my friends sped down before me, negotiating the crag effortlessly, but somehow, in my excitement, I left it too late and ended up flying into the air, my skis flipping up behind me, smashing into the back of the head. A searing pain spreading through my skull. The next thing I remember is waking up to a blurred face with spectacles and a throbbing pain in my head. It was a doctor, I was in hospital.
What a relief to find myself was safe, nothing broken, only a slight concussion and a few days of dull throbbing in back of my head. All I remember is waking up, a doctor peering into my eyes with a lamp and my grinning friends around me. I was flooded with relief and gratitude of having been saved. I had been saved by the expertise of an emergency crew who whisked me down the mountain and then by another who drove me in an ambulance to the health facility. Because I was unconscious, I never knew their names nor who they were but their existence and the fact that they rescued me is undeniable.
My experience of shinjin and the reality of Amida Buddha is as real as when I woke up in the hospital bed all those years ago. I knew then that I was saved by real people, experts in emergency assistance, just like I know today that I’m saved by Amida Buddha and His expertise which He manifests in His Primal Vow and furthermore, after my time is up in this life I will be reborn in His Pure Land. I also know that by being reborn in His Pure land I will be able to return to this world as a Buddha in order to help those with whom I have close karmic connections.
It’s as simple as that.
In my mind there can be no doubt of the real “literal” existence of Amida Buddha and his Pure Land, in the same way that I cannot doubt the existence of those who assisted me years ago, during that ski accident. Nor can I do doubt that the hospital was a real place, where I was given the care I required.
It is natural, when one is saved from an accident to feel a spontaneous flow of gratitude and relief. My gratitude and relief flows through the Nembutsu, NAMO AMIDA BU, which I express each day.
"There is no Nembutsu separate from shinjin (faith), nor is the one moment of shinjin separate from the one moment of Nembutsu"
-SHINRAN SHONIN
The gratitude is of course for being saved by Amida Buddha, but also the relief that my spiritual search for ultimate truth had come to an end.
Today I know that no matter what life may bring, in joy, grief or calamity, I have reached the threshold of that desirable destination, and I live in confidence that after the last breath I take in this samsaric world, the next breath will be in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha.
NAMO AMIDA BU
Things you may find interesting
Article by Rev. Josho Adrian Cirlea
Lamp for the Latter-Ages, letter 11, Shinran Shonin, The Collected Works of Shinran, Shin Buddhism Translation Series, Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha, Kyoto, 1997