Nembutsu

You may have heard that Buddhism is “not a religion”. Amida Buddhism, however, retains the true religious core of Buddha’s message - faith in the Unborn - and so provides a safe place where each person can penetrate below the veneer of rational secularist practice and explore the heart of faith in an intimate and vibrant way, free from judgementalism or narrowness. According to Buddhism, religions are made by humans to put us in relation to that which no human ever made - that which is beyond this relative world. Each religion is fallible, but what it points toward is eternal. Buddhism is no exception. Buddhism points out the Deathless.

Amida Buddhism, therefore, is a religious path. Its particular approach is to take refuge, as a deluded and vulnerable being, in the Unborn - in Amida Buddha - through a simple act of prayer called nembutsu. We can say, therefore, that there are three elements to Amida Buddhist belief and practice: the ordinary nature of the devotee, Amida Buddha as the object of devotion, and the nembutsu prayer as the primary form of practice. Amida Buddhism partakes of the Pureland tradition of Buddhism deriving from the Buddha in India via a transmission through China and Japan. It is not a self-improvement technique nor an exotic pastime - it is a deeply personal, yet wholly transcendent, inquiry into the meaning of one's life.

The characteristic flavour of Amida Buddhism is the bitter-sweet feeling of confronting one’s own far from perfect nature and also the many troubles of the world around while feeling totally loved and accepted just as one is. This religion thus provides a place where we can face ourselves as we truly are and arrive at a deep sense of fellow feeling with all sentient beings, all being likewise afflicted, likewise impermanent. It also provides the frame within which to turn one’s life to useful purpose. There is here no requirement that one must achieve any particular degree of spiritual accomplishment before one can make oneself useful. You do not have to struggle to love yourself - because you are loved already and received by the Buddha just as you are. You do not have to cultivate self-esteem, for the modest are always acceptable. You do not have to become enlightened - because it is precisely for deluded beings such as ourselves that Amida Buddha made his great vows.

This, then, is a religion - a good religion - a religion free from judgment, where love is central, where friendship prevails, and the spiritual search can be conducted amongst good company in real safety and where one's existence can become purposeful in the profoundest sense - the sense that assuage one's deepest religious instinct. It is a religion directly concerned with the nature of faith and its sustaining and revolutionary power. It is a path to which one can commit one’s life at any level and to any degree. It is a religion of open-handed grace. In the eyes of the gentle Buddha we are already acceptable. If we can allow this truth to penetrate deeply while remaining honest with ourselves about our nature, we will experience both joy and pain and we will swiftly enter into the bitter-sweet, yet completely pure, realm of Amida Buddha. Then we will find our life naturally guided into a new path - the path described by all Buddhas - in which one’s views, thoughts, speech, actions, lifestyle, effort, preoccupation and vision are all naturally yet wonderfully transformed.

Namo Amida Bu

Dharmavidya David Brazier, December 2005