Amida as Buddha Nature

During this last period of the Dharma, "no one" by his own efforts can attain Liberation.
That is how the Buddha attained it: by becoming "no one". But how does one become
no one? By dying to oneself even while still alive. For so long as you remain anyone at
all, that obstructs the realization that you already are the Buddha. So not only after death
but during this lifetime everyone's epitaph should read: 'Hic jacet nemo'. That is the true
significance of anatma, or non-self. Amida Buddha is a supreme master of upaya
(Japanese: hoben), or skill in sacred stratagems and expedient means for enlightening
and liberating all sentient beings. To fulfil this purpose, he has distilled all the merit that
he accumulated during his five kalpas of ascesis into his Name. So by using the
Nembutsu as a channel for his supernal influence, he can transfer to me, as to all other
beings, his boundless Wisdom and Compassion, which shine forth from our innate
Buddha-nature. For this free gift of Amida's grace depends upon his most intimate
personal relationship with the Heart, or centre of being, in each of his devotees. He
vowed therefore that he would save all beings one by one and each alone, as their past
karma, varying with every being, would allow. Although he promised to save all, he did
not vow to do so en masse, in social groups or institutions, either familial, racial, or
national. For those are in truth but collective egos and so even more tenaciously selfish
than their individual members.

Thus Amida is not only the

'internal' power of one's
own indwelling Buddha-
nature, but also the
'external' power of the
Buddha-nature inherent in
all other beings; so that
Amida's Will, expressed in
his Vow and voiced
through his Name, can
awaken in the depths of
every being its latent Heart
of Pure Faith. Amida's
Body of Light and Life
shines in all beings to
destroy their ignorance and
dispel its darkness
throughout the universe.
His single unique
Consciousness, of which
there can be no plural,
looks out through all the
eyes, listens through all the
ears, and perceives through
all the minds. Hence the
Jodo doctrine of the
Oneness of the One who saves and the one to be saved. Amida cannot help but rescue
all beings, no matter how defiled, because he is all beings, ever-present in them as their
innate but obscured Buddha-Heart, or inmost essence, if not as their outward acts and
accidents. In no wise should Amida be equated with the monotheistic Creator, separated
by a well-nigh unbridgeable gulf from his creatures; for in Buddhism the cosmos is not
the creation of the Buddha, but the result of the endless actions and reactions of karma.
There can be no real division between Amida and all other beings, for they are so many
aspects of his own Omni-consciousness; nor any finally irreducible duality of the 'I-
Thou' type, for the relation of Amida to devotee is one of nonduality. Nor is Amida in
any way the Omnipotent Judge of beings, for he cannot condemn some facets of his
own Being to everlasting torment and other facets to eternal bliss. Not to save all beings
as he has vowed would amount to leaving some aspect of his own Perfect
Enlightenment in perpetual darkness. What could be more unlovable than a God of
Love who must command his creatures to love him and who threatens them with
endless punishment if they disobey? As if anyone ever loved on command or by
intimidation ! But Amida's devotees find his call so irresistible that they no more need
to be ordered to adore him than to love their parents. This explains why in Japanese
Amida is often addressed by the epithet Oya, as a tenderly solicitous parent of either
sex. Because of his nondual relationship with all beings, Amida can effectively cut off
their illusory asrava, or outflows of energy, (karma), and can sever the latent bonds of
habit-addiction (samskara), loosening psycho-physical knots and tensions tied by
countless past thoughts, words, and deeds, inaccessible to the knife of rational
discrimination. Amida can redirect our demonic desires and aversions to spiritual or
creative ends, thereby turning passion into compassion. So everything is left to Amida
and nothing to the individual will in the Shin attitude, which stands aside and allows the
Other Power to work without interference from the ego. The Other Power of Amida's
Vows, above all the Eighteenth, can accomplish all this unprompted and without
repression, but with what Shinran termed jinen honi: natural ease and spontaneity.
Clearly this idea owes something to Dogen and his Soto Zen and through them
ultimately to Taoist metaphysics. But when we read of Dogen saying: 'Forgetting body
and mind by placing them together in the Buddha's hands and letting him lead you on,
you will without design or effort gain freedom and attain Buddhahood', then he just as
clearly shows the influence of Shinran's conception of the Other Power. Again when
Dogen tells busy farmers who have no time to enter a monastery and practise zazen that
repetition of the Name is enough to bring them to Enlightenment, he has obviously been
influenced by the Pure Land teachings of Honen and Shinran. There is an old tradition
that Dogen and Shinran once met for a discussion and understood each other so well
that at the end of their interview Shinran gave Dogen his nenju, or invocatory beads,
while Dogen in exchange presented Shinran with his hossu, the horsetail fly-whisk of a
Zen master.

Instantly upon my submission to his Divine Will, from Amida's halo golden shafts of
Light and Life radiate in the ten directions, darting a single ray directly into the Heart of
every being in the universe to illuminate it with Faith and bestow fearlessness and
forbearance. At once, through the Power of his Grand Vow, the ignorant iron Wheel of
Karma is transformed into the enlightened golden Wheel of Dharma. All of its spokes
lead back to the Solar Centre, delivering sentient beings from their endless rebirths in
the Six Destinies of the Round of Samsara. We all live standing in our own light, gazing
at our shadows with our backs to the Supernal Sun of Amida. All we need do is to turn
around in response to his summons, when at once we shall be embraced by his
Boundless Light. As mentioned before, this change of Heart, or conversion in the
deepest seat of our conscious being, is what enables us to behold Amida and is the only
miracle recognized by the Buddha. So as a free gift from Amida I now receive a brief
Vision of his Light, which transforms the existential Fire, the antagonistic heat of the
summer sun and my bodily lusts and passions, into the enlightening Wisdom and
salvatory Compassion of his solar halo. I am brought to realize that originally and
ultimately they are one and the same Power.