7. Experience and Theorization

All religion is built upon the foundation of mystical experience, without which all its metaphysical or theological superstructure collapses. This is where religion differs from philosophy. All the philosophical systems may some day be found in ruins, but the religious life will for ever go on experiencing its deep mysteries. The Jōdo and the Zen cannot separate themselves from these mysteries. The Jōdo bases its theory on the Nembutsu and the Zen bases theirs on the koan exercise. As far as their theoretical edifices are concerned they seem very dissimilar to each other.

The Jōdo wants to see its followers reborn in the Land of Bliss and there attain their enlightenment. To do this they are taught about their sinfulness, about their intellectual inabilities to grasp the higher truths of Buddhism, and also about their being too heavily laden by their past karma to shake themselves free of their shackles by their own limited efforts. Amida is now held up before them, whose original vow is to give them a helping hand for crossing the stream of birth and death. But this helping hand cannot be reached unless they utter the name of their saviour with singleness of thought (ekacitta).

To awaken this state of singlemindedness, that is, 'one thought of faith', as it is technically termed, is the great problem of the Jōdo teaching. The vow, the name, the 'one thought of faith', the uttering of the name, the rebirth—these are the links making up the chain of the Pure Land doctrine. When any one of these links is held fast the entire chain will be in your hand, and the masters of the Jōdo have set up the uttering of the name in the most prominent position. In this the Jōdo experience is the counterpart of the Zen experience. The vocal Nembutsu and the koan exercise are here standing on a common ground.

Psychologically considered, the aim of the vocal Nembutsu is to do away with the fundamental dualism which is a condition of our empirical consciousness. By achieving this the devotee rides over the theoretical difficulties and contradictions that have troubled him before. With all intensity of thought and will (adhyāśana) he has thrown himself into the deeps of his own being. He is not, however, a mere wanderer without anything to guide him, for he has the name with him. He walks along with it, he goes down to the abyss with it; though he finds himself frequently divorced from it, he always remembers it and keeps in its company.

One day, without knowing how, he is no more himself, nor is he with the name. The name alone there is, and he is the name, the name is he. Suddenly even this disappears, which is not a state of mental blankness or of total unconsciousness. All these psychological designations fail to describe the state of mind in which he now is. But he stays not even here, for he awakes from it as suddenly as before. As he awakes, he awakes with a thought, which is the name and the faith in the original vow of Amida and the rebirth. This emerging from a state of absolute identity is marked with the utterance of 'Namu Amida Butsu', because he comes to this awakening through the teaching of his school.

Religion is fundamentally a personal experience, but the intellect enters into every fibre of the faith thus realized. For when the experience receives its name, that is, when it comes to be designated as faith, it has already gone through the baptism of intellection. Though the latter in itself is powerless, it gains authority as soon as it is combined with the experience. Thus we find almost all religious controversies centering about the philosophy of the experience; in other words, about theological subtleties and not about the experience itself. How to interpret the experience thus becomes frequently the cause of a most irreligious persecution or the bloodiest warfare.

However this may be, the religious experience always remains the sustaining and driving energy of its metaphysical system. This explains the diversity of intellectual interpretations even within one body of Buddhism, the one as Zen and the other as Jōdo, while their experience remains as far as psychology is concerned fundamentally the same.

This also explains the historical connection that came to exist between Zen and Jōdo. Superficially or intellectually observed, take for instance one of the numerous Zen koans and compare it with the 'Namu Amida Butsu'. How utterly unrelated they appear! 'What is it that stands for ever companionless?' Til tell you when you have swallowed up in one draught all the waves of the Hsi!' 'What was Bodhid-harma's idea in coming from the West?' 'The eastern mountains move over the waves.'

Between these koans and 'Namu Amida Butsu' there is no possible relationship as far as their appeal to the intellect is concerned. 'Namu Amida Butsu', as literally meaning 'Adoration to Amitābha Buddha', is intelligible enough; but as to the mountains moving over the waves, or one swallowing a whole river in one draught, there is no intelligible sense; all we can say about them is 'nonsense!' How can these nonsensical utterances be related to the Nembutsu?

As was explained above, however, the Nembutsu ceased to mean 'meditating on the Buddha' and came to be identified with the name (ming-hao), or rather with 'uttering the name' (ch'êng-ming). Meditation, or 'coming into the presence of the Buddha', thus gave way to the constant reiteration of the phrase as not always or necessarily referring to any definite objective reality, but merely as a name somehow beyond comprehension, or rather as a symbol standing for something indescribable, unpredictable, altogether transcending the intellect, and therefore suggesting a meaning beyond meaning.

When the Nembutsu comes to this, the name closely approaches the koan. Hitherto the Nembutsu and the koan exercise have been walking down their different routes of historical development, but now they find themselves near each other, and, as they look at each other, each most unexpectedly recognizes himself in the other.

Zen wants to clear one's consciousness of all its intellectual sediments so that it can receive the first awakening of thought in its purity, in its unaffected simplicity; for this purpose the koan, which is devoid of sense as ordinarily understood, is given to its followers. The idea is to go back to the original blankness in which there was as yet no functioning consciousness. This is a state of no-birth. Zen starts from it and so does the Jōdo.