Mahayana Essenceas Seen in the Concept of‘Return to This World’

(genso-eko)*

Michio Tokunaga

I‘How now are we to understand this Pure Land?Is there really some special place other than thisworld to which we way go a er death, a Pure Land

*With thanks to Muryoko 無量光, Journal of Shin Buddhism,where this article was originally published.

of joy and peace? Do common folk, for the mostpart, believe that their faithful repetition of theNem-butsu will assure their entry into some sort of PureLand—wherever that may be—a er they die? Per-haps sophisticated Buddhists, following the lead ofShinran, understand that the Pure Land is not a realplace at all, but basically a symbol for a different stateof mind; but would such a notion be attractive andacceptable to ordinary practicers of Shin Buddhism?’¹This is a question brought forth by Gordon D.

Kaufman, a leading Christian theologian at HarvardDivinity School, to us insiders of Shin Buddhismconcerning the crucial Shin concept of the ‘birth intothe Pure Land.’ We should not ignore this questionbecause it was raised by an outsider of the Shin com-munity and also because it is a problem of ‘faith’ tobe solved only subjectively and individually throughan indescribable religious experience. If we assumesuch an attitude, Shinran’s Pure Land doctrine will

¹Gordon D. Kaufman, ‘Religious Diversity and ReligiousTruth’, paper presented for the Colloquium Celebrating the thAnniversary of the Founding of Ryukoku University.

lose its universal significance of making human lifemeaningful for the contemporary world.Kaufman himself addresses a similar question to

Christians concerning the crucial Christian conceptof ‘God’. His theological work started with, and mayend by, finding a reasonable answer legitimate tomodern ways of thinking. In such a reconstructionof the concept of ‘God’, he criticizes a view that ‘God’can be conceived only through a special religious ex-perience, because it confines ‘God’ within the ‘circleof faith’, not giving a fundamental meaning for thelife of all contemporary people.When we treat the problem of the ‘birth into the

Pure Land’ om Kaufman’s standpoint, there occurseveral questions about it. These questions shouldmostly be attributed to a typical traditional way ofplacing it in linear time; namely, it is placed on,so to speak, a simple and straight line of ‘hearingthe teaching’ → ‘realizing shinjin (‘faith’)) by sayingAmida’s Name’ → ‘attaining birth in the Pure Land’.In such a way of ordering these key notions of Shin-ran’s thought according to linear time, shinjin, which

is the most primordial in his soteriological system,would lose its true meaning and fall into a mere‘ticket’ to get to the Pure Land a er death only forhaving sensual pleasures therein as has been taughtand appreciated traditionally within the Shin com-munity.Regarding shinjin as a ‘ticket’ for attaining birth in

the Pure Land has blurred its actual function in thereligious life for hundreds of years since the introduc-tion of the Pure Land Buddhism to Japan in spite ofthe efforts to amend such a view by several Pure Landmasters including Shinran. This view also helped toregard the Pure Land as a place where people escapeinto om actual human life full of sorrows and painswhich are difficult to deal with. In this sense, forthose who consider the Pure Land in such a way, itbecomes a ‘future paradise’ without giving a concretemeaning for the present life.There is another way of thinking of shinjin as a

product of religious intuition, through which ‘birthin the Pure Land’ is to be only mystically experiencedbeyond the realm of this empirical world. It is a Pure

Land Buddhist version of the ‘revelation of God’ inChristian sense. However, equating our present ex-istence with Amida and seeing this actual world asnothing other than the Pure Land through intuitionwas strictly criticized by Shinran,² for in that casethe standpoint of ‘ordinary beings’ (bombu) in thePure Land tradition will be lost and it will be trans-formed into an esoteric Buddhist tradition for sages.But Kaufman would strictly criticize such a view be-cause it lacks a universal religious significance for thelife of people living in the present world.All we can do, therefore, to make the concept of

‘birth in the Pure Land’ intelligible for our contem-poraries is to reconstruct it on the basis of the truesignificance of the ‘ultimate reality’, which is to betraced back to the fundamental truth of Mahayana.To speak of the concept of ‘birth in the Pure Land’om the standpoint of the Mahayana, the concept of

‘return to this world’ 還相回向 (genso-eko) is indis-pensable to make the concept more meaningful than

²Yoshifumi Ueda, ed., The True Teaching, Practice and Realiz-ation of the Pure Land Way, Vol. II (Kyoto, ), p. .

it literally expresses. The concept of ‘return to thisworld’ however, has also been understood on a linearbasis as mentioned above, which will hardly be accept-able by modern people. In this sense, we also have torethink this concept in the light of the fundamentalMahayana doctrine.The central purpose of my presentation is to claim

that shinjin or nembutsu as revealed by Shinran isnothing but the Mahayana Bodhisattva path, andthat it is the concept of ‘return to this world’ whichfulfills the actual significance of the Mahayana Bod-hisattva path to its utmost.

IIPlacing the concept of ‘birth in the Pure Land’ onlinear time and regarding it as a posthumous matterhas long occupied the minds of Pure Land followersand has readily been accepted by them. ‘Despisingthis defiled world and hoping to be born in the PureLand’ used to be a slogan of the Pure Land tradi-tion in this country. It was only a er Western waysof thinking were introduced to Japan following the

Meiji Imperial Restoration that such a view began tobe grasped om another perspective with a strict cri-ticism of the ‘orthodox’ way of viewing it. And yet,such a view still remains deep at the bottom of manypeople’s minds in this country even to this day.It was Nonomura Naotaro who first had doubts

about the traditional interpretation of ‘birth’ limitedonly to a posthumous state. His criticism of the tra-ditional view had two aspects; one is that the finalpurpose of the Pure Land teaching is not to be bornin the Pure Land a er death, and the other is thatall the myths or mythological expressions of the PureLand scriptures are no more than the means to leadus to ‘shinjin’ (or in Nonomura’s terminology, jinshinor ‘deep mind’) which Shinran advocated in orderto let us know the true religious significance of ourlives.³ His claim, however, was too radical a one tobe accepted by the ‘orthodox’ scholars of the Nishi-Hongwanji at that time, and it resulted in him beingpurged om his post at Ryukoku University. This

³Nonomura Naotaro, Jodokyo Hihan (‘A Criticism of PureLand Buddhism’), (Chugai Shuppansha, Kyoto, ).

was almost eighty years ago.Similar pressures were brought upon Soga Ry-

ojin and Kaneko Daiei at Otani University for their‘heretical’ interpretations of ‘birth’ and ‘the PureLand’. As successors of KiyozawaManshi, who aimedat the reconstruction of the teaching of the Higashi-Hongwanji in order to make it understandable topeople who were being brain-washed by Westernways of thinking, Soga’s claim was to find Amida atthe deepest level of one’s existence, in a way whichcannot be objectified as something existing over andagainst us. Kaneko also tried to place the Pure Landwithin the sphere of the spiritual realm which isnot objectifiable unlike the ‘orthodox’ way of tak-ing it as a concrete world existing somewhere apartom this world. Both Soga and Kaneko developed

their understanding by taking over Kiyosawa’s firmbelief that religious truth is to be subjective andpersonal, which can be summarized in his wordsthat ‘We do not believe in Buddha or God becausethey actually exist; they exist because we believe in

them’.⁴ It goes without saying that such a claim was achallenge against the traditional and ‘orthodox’ viewthat everything concerning the religious life of ShinBuddhists starts om believing in the factual exist-ence of Amida and Pure Land somewhere in theuniverse and sometime a er death.We have, here, come back to a point that the

Pure Land ‘is not a real place at all, but basically asymbol for a different state of mind’ as Gordon Kauf-man criticizes it for not being acceptable to commonpeople. Though Kaufman is suspicious about this,the ‘practicer of shinjin’ in the true sense of Shinran’sterminology, neither grasps their ‘birth in the PureLand’ as a symbolic psychological matter, nor do theybelieve in it as a real substantial place which we reacha er death. A ‘practicer of shinjin’ overcomes both ex-tremes.In the above sense, the following description by

D. T. Suzuki may sound similar to what Kaufman re-jects as the ‘symbolic’ understanding of Amida and

⁴Kiyosawa Manshi,Waga Shinnen (’My Faith’) (Chuo Kouron-sha, Tokyo, , p. ).

the Pure Land as only appreciated by ‘sophisticated’Buddhists:

We don’t go out of this world in orderto be born in the Pure Land but wecarry the Pure Land all the time. Beingborn in the Pure Land means discover-ing the Pure Land in ourselves… Myconclusion is that Amida is our inmostself, and when that inmost self is foundwe are born in the Pure Land. The kindof Pure Land located elsewhere, wherewe stay, is most undesirable.⁵

This view by Suzuki may be acceptable omthe standpoint of a Zen way of thinking which isquite similar to the following claim by Shin’ichi His-amatsu:

Searching neither for Buddhas or Godsoutside of man, nor for paradise or

⁵D. T. Suzuki, Shin Buddhism (Harper & Row, New York,), pp. – .

Pure Lands in other dimensions, Zenadvances man as Buddha and actual ex-istence as the Pure Land.⁶

Even if we admitted such an interpretation by Zenthinkers, it would stand opposed to Shinran’s lament-ation as seen in the Kyogyoshinsho:

The monks and laity of this latterage and the religious teachers of thesetimes are floundering in concepts of‘self-nature’ and ‘mind-only’, and theydisparage the true realization of enlight-enment in the Pure Land way.⁷

It would be sufficient only to say that Shinran’sstandpoint is based on the actuality of bombu (‘ordin-ary unenlightened being’) in whom the dichotomy of

⁶Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, ‘Zen as the Negation of Holiness’ inFranck, ed., The Buddha Eye (New York, ), p. .

⁷Yoshifumi Ueda, ed., The True Teaching, Practice and Real-ization of the Pure Land Way, Vol. II (Hongwanji InternationalCenter, Kyoto, ), p. .

man and Amida and that of this world and the PureLand is impossible to overcome. Moreover, if such adichotomy can be overcome as Suzuki and Hisamatsuargue, there would be no room for the salvation ofbombu through Amida’s working.

IIIWe have, so far, noted that there are roughly twotypes of thinking regarding ‘birth in the Pure Land’,one of which is to place it in linear time a er death asbeing ‘born’ into a place called the ‘Pure Land’ whichis generally conceived as being a substantial entity;the other is to equate Amida and Pure Land withour inmost self and this actual world we are livingin, which we can realize through a special religiousintuition. Which of the two is correct?We have to say that both may be accepted and

also rejected by Shinran because, for Shinran, ‘birthinto the Pure Land’ never fulfills its true significancewithout the realization of ‘shinjin’, an awakening tothe universal compassion working on everyone of us.In this sense, the concept of ‘birth in the Pure

Land’ is explicated as something which reveals theresultant state of shinjin in order for us, who are liv-ing in the world of cause-and-effect, to be led to suchan awakening. Therefore, some might well anticip-ate, through shinjin, that they will be born in thePure Land beautifully adorned as the various sutrasdescribe and, others, that they will go to a world ofnothingness. Either may be right if it is spoken ofwith shinjin.This sort of discussion has been repeated for a

long time since the introduction of Western waysof thinking, or even before then, and seems likelyto continue as long as the Shin doctrine is compre-hended only theoretically. But om the perspectiveof viewing Shin Buddhism as a Mahayana Bodhisat-tva path, i.e. on the basis of religious practice, theproblem of ‘birth in the Pure Land’, with the above-mentioned two ways of answering, it would merelyhave a secondary significance. In other words, the as-sumption that ‘birth in the Pure Land’ has its utmostimportance as the final goal of Shin practice wouldonly perplex people within and without the tradition.

When we read Shinran carefully, we necessarilyfind the liberation om the present state in whichwe find ourselves to be his central concern and thusour future destiny is a secondary one. It is clear thatshinjin is his central concern and it is this shinjin thatlocates Shin Buddhism right on the Mahayana Bod-hisattva path. The issue of ‘birth into the Pure Land’and when it is realized, whether at the present mo-ment or a er death, should be explored within thisdimension.The concept of ‘return to this world’ which is

usually conceived of as something we perform a er‘birth in the Pure Land’ upon death, should bereconstructed om the perspective of the Mahay-ana Bodhisattva path. Needless to say, this conceptrepresents the Pure Land Buddhist version of theMahayana idea of ‘benefiting others’ along with ‘bene-fiting oneself ’, both of which are necessarily requiredof aMahayana Bodhisattva for the fulfillment of theirideal. Shin Buddhism, however, has long been con-ceived as a Buddhist school associated only with avery personal and individual salvation. Consequently,

shinjin is regarded as a special sort of self-satisfaction;as a matter of course, it tends to confine one to one’sinner self and is not opened up to the outside world.This seems to be a natural effect of the aspect ofshinjin which explores one’s true nature om a neg-ative perspective. The negative aspect that one is fullof blind passions and bound with evil karma, nothaving the remotest possibility of reaching enlighten-ment or being saved, is truly an awakening developedthrough shinjin but it does not necessarily mean theimpossibility of the salvation of other people. Theconcept of ‘return to this world’ as a Pure LandBuddhist expression of ‘benefiting others’—the idealof the Mahayana Bodhisattva path—should not beconsidered apart om ‘benefiting oneself ’ expressedas attaining ‘birth in the Pure Land’.In addition to the fulfillment of ‘benefiting oth-

ers’, the concept of ‘return to this world’ can alsobe regarded as a Pure Land Buddhist version ofthe Mahayana concept of ‘nirvana of no abode’ (J.mujusho-nehan; Skt. apratisthita-nirvana). The no-tion of Shinran’s concept of ‘return to this world’

is based on the Twenty-second Vow of Amida de-scribed in the Larger Sutra of Immeasurable Life,which states:

When I attain Buddhahood, the bod-hisattvas of other Buddha-lands whocome and are born in my land willultimately and unfailingly attain [therank of ] ‘succession to the position[of Buddhahood] a er one lifetime’—except for those who, in accordancewith their own original vows to guideothers eely to enlightenment, don thearmour of universal vows for the sakeof sentient beings, accumulate rootsof virtue, emancipate all beings, travelto Buddha-lands to perform bodhisat-tva practices, make offerings to all theBuddhas and Tathagatas throughoutthe ten quarters, awaken sentient beingscountless as the sands of the Ganges,and bring them to abide firmly in the

unexcelled, right, true way. Such bod-hisattvas surpass ordinary ones, mani-fest the practices of all the bodhisattvastages, and discipline themselves in thevirtue of Samantabhadra. Should it notbe so, may I not attain the perfect en-lightenment.⁸

The intent of this Vow is that Bodhisattvas (PureLand practicers) who are born into the Pure Landimmediately dwell in the assured state for becomingBuddhas except those who wish to return to thisworld in order to save others. However, among thenames of this Vow called by Shinran ‘the Vow of ne-cessary attainment of the rank next to Buddhahood’,‘the Vow of attainment of Buddhahood a er one life-time’, and ‘the Vow of directing virtue for our returnto this world’—more emphasis was put on ‘the Vowof directing virtue for our return to this world’ than

⁸Yoshifumi Ueda, ed., The True Teaching, Practice and Real-ization of the Pure Land Way, Vol. III (Hongwanji InternationalCenter, Kyoto, ), p.

the other two. Such an interpretation is based onVasubandhu’s ‘fi h gate of emergence’:

With great compassion, one observes allsentient beings in pain and affliction,and assuming various transformed bod-ies to guide them, enters the gardens ofbirth-and-death and the forests of blindpassions; eely sporting there with tran-scendent powers, one attains the state ofteaching and guiding. This is broughtabout by the directing of virtue throughthe power of the Primal Vow.⁹

With a detailed comment by T’an-luan on thispassage, Shinran developed further the concept of‘return to this world’ as Amida’s virtue directed in or-der for us to realize the true significance of shinjinin terms of the Mahayana Bodhisattva path. The‘orthodox’ interpretation of this, however, is that im-mediately a er attaining ‘birth in the Pure Land’

⁹Ibid., p. .

upon death, one returns to this world in order tosave others who are suffering in this defiled world.The problem is that it, too, is located only in lineartime as stated in the above, and is not directly associ-ated with the present moment of realizing shinjin.We cannot but say that in Shinran’s thought there

is an element which equates shinjin (realized at thevery present moment) and enlightenment in the PureLand (generally understood to be attained at the mo-ment of death). In other words, an equation of thepresent and future time, namely, the one-moment ofrealizing shinjin at the present moment, includes thefuture. As for this, Nishitani Keiji states as follows:

Simultaneity is defined as a ‘unity oftime and eternity’. It is an ‘atom ofeternity’ (Kierkegaard) in time, or a mo-ment in which we touch somethingeternal. ‘Present’ and ‘moment’ are thaton which such simultaneity is estab-lished. A ‘moment’ is in linear time and

yet beyond it.¹⁰

If we understand shinjin, a crucial concept in Shin-ran’s thought, on this basis, the following descriptionwill no longer be conceived in terms of linear timeonly as has been the case in the ‘orthodox’ view:

As I humbly contemplate the true es-sence of the Pure Land path, I under-stand that Amida’s directing of virtue(to sentient beings) has two aspects: theaspect for our going forth to the PureLand and the aspect for our return tothis world (to save all other sentient be-ings).¹¹

Further he praises:The countless great bodhisattvas of the land of

happiness¹⁰Nishitani Keiji, Shinran ni okeru To no Mondai (The Prob-

lem of ‘time’ in Shinran’s Thought) Gendaigo-yaku Shinran Zenshu,Vol. , Kodansha, Tokyo, , p. .

¹¹Kyogyoshinsho (Chapter on True Teaching) SSZ, Vol. , p. .

Have reached ‘succession to Buddhahood a erone lifetime’;

Entering the compassionate activity ofSamantabhadra,

They unfailingly work to save beings in defiledworlds.¹²

Those who reach the Pure Land of happinessReturn to this evil world of five defilements,Where, like the Buddha ShakyamuniThey benefit sentient beings without limit.¹³

And further:The directing of virtue for our return to this

world is suchThat we attain the resultant state of benefiting

and guiding others;Immediately re-entering the world of beings,

¹²Hymns of the Pure Land(Hongwanji International Center, Kyoto, ), p. .¹³Ibid., p. .

We perform the compassionate activity that isthe virtue of Samantabhadra.¹⁴

In these statements and praises by Shinran of thenotion of ‘return to this world’, we can find two per-spectives; one is a perspective based on linear time,and the other, beyond time. As stated above, the twoaspects of ‘birth in the Pure Land’ and ‘return to thisworld’ have traditionally been taught to be matterspertaining to linear time only. But, if we understandon the basis of Nishitani’s view that shinjin includesboth the present and future (and consequently thepast as well), Amida’s directing of virtue to beingsshould transcend linear time, and yet embrace it. A‘practicer of shinjin’ lives in linear time when viewedom the perspective of living in this world with

a limited physical existence, and, at the same time,transcends it when viewed om the perspective ofAmida’s working beyond time.We have noted already above that in Shinran’s¹⁴Hymns of the Pure Land Masters(Hongwanji International Center, Kyoto, ), p. .

thought, there is something inseparable betweenshinjin and enlightenment. Concerning also theconcept of ‘return to this world’, we have to take thiselement into account; namely, a person of shinjin isone who is seeking a er birth in the Pure Land, butfor other people who are acquainted with that per-son of shinjin, he or she may seem as though they areguiding them to the final realization.For instance, Honen was someone who was aim-

ing at attaining ‘birth in the Pure Land’ for himselfthrough nembutsu but, for Shinran, Honen was anincarnation of Amida or a Bodhisattva working forhis salvation. Shinran, too, pursued the Pure Landpath under Honen’s guidance but, for other people,he may be a Buddha or a Bodhisattva who has re-turned om the Pure Land in order to enable us torealize true compassion.This can be said of all themyokonins who appeared

in the history of Shin Buddhism. Regarding all thepredecessors of shinjin as Buddhas or Bodhisattvaswho have returned om the Pure Land to guidethem to enlightenment, a myokonin penetrates deep

into their inmost self as one who has no prospectof salvation. And such a myokonin, again, is lookedup by others as one who has returned om the PureLand to lead them there.Suppose a person is going on a way, along which

many people must have walked to get to that samedestination. In the same way, a person of shinjin fol-lows the way guided by many predecessors, whichmeans that right on the way to the final realizationthere is an encounter of one who is going on to the fi-nal realization with one who has returned om there.Shinjin is that which enables one to be awakened tosuch an encounter. The concept of ‘return to thisworld’, therefore, is to be realized by a person ofshinjin who, again, is looked on by others as onewho has returned om the final destination to guidethem. In this sense, we will be able to say that ‘going(to the Pure Land)’ is one with ‘returning ( om thePure Land)’ or, more briefly, ‘going is returning’.

The Matheson TrustFor the Study of Comparative Religion