MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Awakening to One's True Personality
In the Great Triad of Heaven, Earth, and Man as well as among the Five Great Elements, the square is the geometrical figure of Earth, the maternal and material basis of experience, in contrast to the circle of Heaven, which is spiritual and paternal. Their analogues in the corporeal microcosm are the abdomen and the head. Now just as the body must return to earth at death, so likewise must the psyche suffer a dark dissolution during its initiatic death-in-life. Before the aspirant can gain Liberation and rise into the unlimited and luminous space of Aether, the Quintessence of the other Four Elements that also occupies the space in the Heart, the self must 'in the destructive element immerse’ and undergo annihilation. As Titus Burckhardt remarks of this moment of solve in the alchemical process: 'On passing from differentiated to undifferentiated consciousness, there intervenes a darkness corresponding to chaos.' 'This' ", he continues, 'is the condition of 'raw material' no longer in possession of its original purity, but whose differentiated possibilities are still confused and disordered.' Thetamasic or downward and condensing tendencies of such psychic possibilities are compared by the alchemists to lead.
Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, on plunging down into that nadiral chaos of negation, in which the conscious ego fears that it will suffer dissolution and deprivation of its individuality in a black non-existence, instead an instantaneous miracle occurs. One's real identity is discovered at the very moment in which the ego is extinguished in nothingness. Out of that dark abyss of absence and annihilation rises one's true personality, one's being is infinitely expanded and enhanced, 'fused without confusion' in a supra-individual and oceanic brightness, both positive and plenary, as one soars into the Void of Infinite Light. These two inseparable phases in one's spiritual Awakening occur in a single timeless instant.
In Buddhist terminology this all-decisive moment is known as the Awakening of the Buddha-Mind, or Bodaishin, when the third, or frontal, eye of prajna, the intellectual intuition, first opens. There are three practically synonymous terms in the Mahayana for this: Bodaishin (Sanskrit: Bodhicitta); Busshin, literally 'Buddha-Heart' of Great Compassion (Sanskrit: Tathagatagarbha, or the latent possibility of Buddhahood inherent in all beings); and Bussho (Sanskrit: Buddhata), or the Buddha-nature. The Bodhi in Bodhicitta means Enlightenment, while the citta is the contents of cit, or consciousness; but this compound has come to mean 'aspiration to Enlightenment' as the moving power behind the Bodhisattva Career. This instantaneous Insight brings both Wisdom and Compassion, with the realization that all beings are interrelated and in consequence the taking of the Bodhisattva's Vow to attain Buddhahood in order to awaken the unenlightened in whom the Buddha-nature still lies dormant. Ashvaghosha, the great Buddhist sage and poet, called this the 'Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana'; and since Bussho is synonymous with Busshin, which is identified in Shinshu with the Great Compassionate Heart of Amida, this moment is equated with the free gift of Faith transferred by Amida as the essential prerequisite for Rebirth in the Pure Land and subsequent attainment of Buddhahood. But in Shin doctrine, the Bodaishin is divided into two aspects: the Bodaishin of the self-power, and the Bodaishin of the Other Power. The former refers to the aspiration of the individual to reach Bodhi by practising one of the difficult methods of the Way of the Sages; the latter is considered to be the Mind or Heart of Pure Faith conferred by Amida on his devotee as the Easy Path. In the following quatrain by Hui Neng, the great Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an, or Chinese Zen, taken from his Platform Sutra:
- Without effort on my part,
The Buddha-nature manifests itself.
This is due neither to the instruction of my teacher,
Nor to any attainment of my own.
It is clearly to the second aspect of the Bodaishin that he is referring. There is not the slightest difference between this satori of Hui Neng and what Shinran Shonin calls Faith. The first two lines of the stanza describe exactly what Shinran terms jinen honi: naturalness or spontaneity; the third and fourth lines affirm that this Awakening of the Bodaishin is due not to any self-effort on Hui Neng's part nor to any transmission from his teacher but is solely the impromptu working of the Other Power of the Buddha. With regard to our latent but as yet unrealized Buddha-nature, all men are equal; but as regards our human natures we are as diverse and unequal as individual and collective karma, our heredity and environment, both natural and social, can make us. Only when the obscuring layers of our all-too-human nature are shed, can our Buddha-nature at last shine forth.