4. The Psychology of the Shōmyō Exercise, and Where it Becomes Related to the Koan Exercise

With the vocalization of the Nembutsu on the one hand, Hōnen and his predecessors have not forgotten on the other hand to emphasize the importance and necessity of a believing heart. Meditating on the Buddha, as one in possession of all the virtuous qualities and also of the thirty-two marks of a great being, requires no doubt a great deal of concentration and may be beyond the psychic powers of an ordinary man. Compared to that, the recitation of the name is indeed much easier.

A name is something like an algebraic symbol; as a or b or c may stand for any kind of number, the name Amida may be regarded as representing everything that is contained in the conception of the Buddha, not only of one Amida, but of all the Buddhas, whose number is beyond calculation. When a man pronounces this name he digs down deeply into the content of his religious consciousness. Mere utterance, however, will be of no consequence, being devoid of sense; the uttering must be the outcome of deep thinking, earnest seeking, and great faith; if it is not the outcome of such intense yearnings, it must be strengthened continuously by them. Lips and heart must be in full accord in its practice.

In this kind of Nembutsu the mind focusses itself on the name and not on the outward form of the Buddha. His thirty-two physical marks of greatness are not pictured out in the mind of the devotee. The name possesses the entire field of consciousness. So we read in the Smaller Sukhāvatīvyūha:¹ amitāyusas tathāgatasya nāmadheyam śrosyati śrutvā ca manasikarisyati.... (Let him hear the name of the Tathā-gata Amitāyus and, having heard it, keep it in mind....)

The Chinese translator has chih-ch'ih for manasikri, meaning 'to hold an object of thought fixedly in mind'. The name itself is held at the centre of attention, not mere lip repetition but an utterance of the heart. There is no doubt that this kind of Nembutsu is a great help to concentration. The calling-up of the form of the Buddha is pregnant with many psychological dangers or evils, and the devotee may become an incurable victim of hallucinations. The vocalization is a great step forward to the attainment of a true religious Samādhi.

The object of the Nembutsu, we see clearly, has gone through modifications. In the beginning it was remembering the Buddha, longing to see him again as he had lived among his followers—a desire entirely human and natural. Later, it came to mean the coming into the presence of an idealized Buddha, eternally living in the Land of Purity and Happiness. And, finally, by holding the name firmly in mind the explicit object became a desire to turn the gracious attention of the Buddha towards the sinful devotee. This modification is thus interpreted by masters of the Pure Land school to be in full accord with the teaching of the Buddha as expounded in the various sūtras belonging to that school.

But the question that arises here is: Is there no psychological background which elicits this gradual modification? Has the vocal Nembutsu no implicit object? Has it no other object than to direct the devotee to the Pure Land of Amida? The masters might not have been conscious of the fact, but was there not a psychological experience on their part which made them teach the simple vocal Nembutsu instead of other religious deeds, such as sūtra-reading, meditating on the Buddha, making bows to him, or singing hymns of praise?

If moral or spiritual enhancement is to be achieved, the mere uttering of the name, even though it be the name of the Holiest One, does not seem to elevate the mind so much as meditating on him and reading his sermons. The Pure Land teachers honestly believed in the sūtras when the vocal Nembutsu was recommended. But as far as the sūtras are concerned they teach many other things also, and, if the teachers so desired, they could therein develop some other teachings than the Nembutsu. For a sūtra or in fact any religious literature generally lends itself, according to the reader's personal experience, to varities of interpretation.

The development of the vocal Nembutsu, therefore, must be said to have its psychological ground, as well as its philosophical and religious ones. It was, of course, the philosophical side that chiefly and therefore consciously governed the religious consciousness of the teachers.

It would be against reason to assert that the psychology of the vocal Nembutsu is all that constitutes the foundation of the Pure Land teachings. For such conceptions as sin, the reality of suffering, and the all-embracing love of Amida, are also essential factors, but my present study is solely to analyse the psychological aspect of it.

To give a name is to discriminate; to discriminate is to recognize the reality of an individual object, and to make it accessible to the human understanding as well as to the human heart. Therefore, when the name is pronounced, we feel that the object itself is with us, and it was a most natural process of development that thinking of the Buddha gradually turned into pronouncing his name. But what we wish to examine now is that the name of the Buddha continued to retain its original Sanskrit form, or rather its transliteration, throughout its long history in China and Japan.

Why was not the Buddha addressed by the Chinese or Japanese equivalent instead of by the original or modified Sanskrit? Namu amida butsu and Man wu o mi to fo are the Japanese and the Chinese way of reading namo 'mitābhāya buddhāya. Namo or namas means 'adoration' or 'salutation', and Amitābhaya buddhāya means 'to the Buddha of Infinite Light', which in Chinese is kuei i wu Hang kuangfo. Why did they not say 'Adoration to the Buddha of Infinite Light', instead of 'Namu Amida Butsu' or 'Nan-wu O-mi-to Fo'?

These transliterations give no sense ordinarily to the Japanese or Chinese mind, as they are modified Sanskrit sounds and apparently carry no meaning. It is to them a sort of Dharani or Mantram which is to be pronounced as it stands with no translation; for when translated a Dhāranī conveys no intelligent thought, being no more than a stream of jargon. What was the reason of this—intelligence giving way to non-intelligence, sense to nonsense, clearness to obscurity, discrimination to non-discrimination? Why, all the time, Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu?

In my view, the reason is to be sought not in the magical effect of the name itself, but in the psychological effect of its repetition. Wherever there is an intelligent meaning, it suggests an endless train of ideas and feelings attached thereto; the mind then either becomes engaged in working a logical loom, or becomes inextricably involved in the meshes of imagination and association. When meaningless sounds are repeated, the mind stops there, not having chances to wander about. Images and hallucinations are less apt to invade it. To use Buddhist terminology, the external dust of discrimination covers the original bright surface of the inner mirror of enlightenment.

To avoid this tragedy, it is necessary that sounds intended for the vocal Nembutsu should be devoid of intelligible meaning. When the reflective and the meditative Nembutsu developed into the vocal Nembutsu, there must have been some such psychological experience on the part of the masters who wanted to concentrate their minds on Buddhahood itself and not on the personality of the Buddha. The thought of the personality of the Buddha, as they saw it, demands a higher process of mentality and yet does not always yield genuine results.

The Jōdo masters are always quite emphatic on the triple attitude of mind which should always accompany the vocal Nembutsu: i. Sincerity of heart; 2. Inwardness of faith; and 3. The desire for the Land of Amida. Without these subjective factors, indeed, no amount of Nembutsu will be of use to the devotee in gaining the object of his desire. But the masters in their apparently too earnest desire to propagate the so-called easy method of salvation, and to bring out in the strongest possible light the necessity of the vocal Nembutsu, seem sometimes to set aside the importance of these subjective conditions. As a result the students of the Pure Land schools are often attracted too irresistibly to the vocal Nembutsu at the expense of the right subjective conditions.

This is not right, but one may wonder whether there is not something in the attitude of the masters which will justify this erroneous assumption. Are they not emphasizing the importance of the subjective factors in order to make the vocal Nembutsu effective to its utmost extent? If a man had all these inner requirements fulfilled, it does not seem, as far as ordinary logic goes, to matter very much whether he was a devotee of sūtra-reading, or of bowings, or of the vocal Nembutsu. But the masters, especially of the Jōdo school of Genku and Hōnen, are unmistakably insistent on uttering the name of the Buddha in the form of 'Namu Amida Butsu' as the most essential practice, relegating all other devotional exercises to a secondary category. According to them, therefore, the 'Namu Amida Butsu' is what finally guarantees one's rebirth in the Land of Bliss.

How can this be so unless the vocal Nembutsu works in some mysterious manner in the consciousness of the devotee? When a certain state of consciousness is induced by repeatedly pronouncing the Buddha-name it is likely that the Buddha himself comes to take possession of the mind, whereby the devotee is assured of his future destiny. Was this psychology what was aimed at by Shan-tao, Hōnen, and other teachers of the Jōdo school?

When such great Jōdo teachers as Shan-tao, Tao-ch'o, and Huai-kan give two ways of rebirth in the Pure Land, (1) saying the Nembutsu and (2) practising other meritorious deeds, and prefer the first to the second as being more in accord with the teachings of the sūtras, and further when they identify 'thinking of' or 'meditating on' (nien in Chinese, anusmriti in Sanskrit) with 'voicing' or 'uttering' (shêng), saying that to think of Buddha is to utter his name, do they find this reason for identification in logic or in psychology? Logically, to think intensely of an object does not necessarily mean uttering its name; the thinking is independent of the uttering of its name; the thinking is independent of the uttering especially when the mind meditatively dwells on an object of devotion and reverence. But as a matter of psychological fact, the thinking of abstract ideas is greatly helped by looking at some graphical representations, letters, or diagrams, and also by pronouncing names mentally or audibly. Grounded on this psychological fact, they must have come to the conclusion that thinking of the Buddha is uttering his name, that the thinking and the uttering are identical.

And again, according to Huai-kan's commentary¹ on the noted passage in the Tai-chiy üeh-tsang Ching:² By great thinking (nien) one sees great Buddha, and by small thinking, small Buddha. Great thinking means calling out the Buddha [-name] at a high pitch; small thinking at a low pitch.' While I am not quite sure as to what is exactly meant by 'seeing great Buddha and small Buddha', it is readily seen that the teachers are here making much of saying the Nembutsu loudly. The more muscular effort we make in uttering the name of the Buddha the higher degree of concentration will be attained, and thus the holding in mind of 'Namu Amida Butsu' will be the more effective.

Whatever doctrinal interpretations were given to the fact, the teachers must have had some psychological experience before they confirmed the identification of thinking (nien) and uttering (shêng). Do we not see here something of Zen psychology in which '"Wu", "Wu", all day today, and "Wu", "Wu, over again all day tomorrow',³ is practised? Hence their exhortation to say the Nembutsu all day, or every day regularly, or so many times a day—ten thousand times, fifty thousand, and even up to a hundred thousand times a day. There is a Jōdo temple in Kyoto, the name of which is 'One Million Times', referring to the number of the vocal Nembutsu to be repeated. The mental fact that vocalization helps concentration is the basis of the doctrine of the vocal Nembutsu (shōmyō, or shêng-ming).

When the Buddha-name is so frequently repeated as ten or twenty thousand times at a stretch, the practice grows mechanical with no conscious effort, therefore with no conscious realization of the three factors of devotion. Is this mechanization to be considered the effective means of the rebirth? Is there no need of the devotee's making a determined effort to grow up in his belief and devotion? Does this constant muttering or uttering of meaningless sounds produce in the consciousness of the devotee a definite sense of assurance whereby he cherishes no doubt as to his rebirth in the Pure Land, or as to his salvation through the grace of Amida?

When the Nembutsu is turned into pronouncing a Dhāranī without any conscious reference to its meaning, literary and devotional, its psychological effect will be to create a state of unconsciousness in which ideas and feelings superficially floating are wiped off. Morally speaking, this is a condition of innocence as there is no discrimination of good and bad, and in this way the Jōdo teachers state that the Nembutsu wipes off all the sins accumulated during one's lives in countless past ages.

The perpetual reiteration of 'Namu Amida Butsu'¹ has its parallel in Sufism whose followers repeat the name 'Allah', as has been observed by R. A. Nicholson in his Studies in Islam Mysticism, 'as a method practised by Moslem mystics for bringing about fana, i.e. the passing away from self, or in Pascals' phrase, "oubli du monde et de tout hormis Dieu".'²

We cannot think that the mere repetition of 'Namu Amida Butsu' assures the devotee of his rebirth in the Pure Land in spite of all the guarantee that is given in the sūtras and by the teachers of that school, unless the reiteration produces a certain mental effect wherein he attains the realization by himself. And is not this realization what is known as the Samādhi of Nembutsu or the Samādhi of Oneness (ekavyūha)?

In the Anrakushu (An-lê-chi, Part II) by Tao-ch'o, the passages bearing on this Samādhi are quoted from various sūtras. The author's intention here is to prove the Samādhi to be the efficient means of bringing the devotee into the presence of all the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. But, from the point of view of salvation (or enlightenment), what is the use of seeing the Buddhas unless their assurance of salvation evokes the sense of its truth in the consciousness of the devotee? The seeing of the Buddha objectively must be in correspondence with the inner realization and, as far as psychology is concerned, inner realization is the more important topic of consideration.

There is a sūtra entitled Bosatsu Nembutsu Sammai (Samādhi) Kyo, first translated by Dharmagupta of Sui, in which all the necessary instructions concerning the practice of the Nembutsu Samādhi are given in detail. According to this work, the chief merit accruing from the Samādhi seems to be the realization of supreme enlightenment. Evidently the coming into the presence of all the Buddhas is not to see them in their company as spiritually enlightened beings, to be in communion with them in a world transcending all forms of corporeality. The devotee is persuaded to practise the Nembutsu in order to see the Buddhas, but when he actually enters into a Samādhi he sees them in a way quite different from what he might have expected in the beginning.¹

Hōnen quotes in his Senjakushu, Part II, a passage from Lives of the Pious Followers of the Pure Land School, in which reference is made to Shan-tao's attainment of the Samādhi. According to this account, the Samādhi among other things seems to give one a prophetic insight into the spiritual condition of others; for the account reveals that Shan-tao could tell about the past lives of his own teacher, Tao-ch'o, and also about the rebirth of the latter in the Land of Amida.

By the fact that the Samādhi could not go any farther than the attainment of these miraculous powers, we may say that it has not much to do with one's spiritual enhancement and assurance of emancipation. There must be something more in the Samādhi acquired by means of the Nembutsu. The teachers of the Pure Land school have been too eager to advance their religious views regarding rebirth after death, ignoring the psychological effect which is sure to follow the constant reiteration of 'Namu Amida Butsu'. They have been too busy reminding us of this degenerate age in which the pure form of Buddhism is too difficult to maintain itself, and, therefore, that the uttering of the Buddha-name is the best, easiest, and surest for beings of this degenerate age to come into the presence of the Buddhas and to be embraced in the arms of their infinite love.

In this respect, Shinran pushed this idea to its utmost logical end; for he states in connection with one's rebirth in the Pure Land by uttering the name of the Buddha only ten times that 'this does not mean to specifically and quietly meditate on the Buddha, or to think of him intensely, but merely to pronounce the name'. With all their expostulations about the Nembutsu, about saying it once or up to ten times, which will surely be heard by the Buddha, I cannot imagine that the teachers were utterly unconscious of the psychology of the Nembutsu, as has already been referred to.

Footnotes

1 Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan series, Vol. I, Part II, p. 96.

1 Quoted by Hōnen in his Senjaku-shu, Fas. I.

2 Candra-garbha, translated into Chinese by Narendrayaśas, A.D. 550-577

1 In one of Kung-ku Lung's letters.

1 In the practical recitation, this is pronounced something like nam man da bu₉ nam man da bu,...

2 PP-7-9-

1 Gf. Hakuin's story of the two Jddo devotees told below, p. 184.