By Gordon Bermant

We’ve all driven our cars to places where we want to park, and there’s a sign that says, “No Parking.” Now we have to make a decision – to park or not to park.

On one hand, if we choose not to park, we can do that for a number of reasons. We might think that “No Parking” really means no parking, and it would just be wrong to park there. Or we might think, “I really don’t want to get a ticket, because if I get a ticket it is going to be expensive, and I don’t want to have to pay for that ticket”. Or we might think, “There are a lot of other parking places around here, so I can go somewhere else to park”.

On the other hand, if we choose to park, we can also do that for a number of reasons. We might think, “I’m not going to be very long, no harm will be done if I park to do my business.” Or we might think, “Police are not very strict about parking enforcement around here, so if I do park, I won’t get a ticket.”

So there are a number of reasons why we would choose to park and a number of reasons why we would choose not to park. But in none of these cases do we doubt the reality of that sign. That sign is an authentic sign, regardless of whether we obey it or not.

But now imagine, as we are deciding what to do, that somebody comes up and says, “You know, that sign is a prank. Some kids have put that sign up there, and it doesn’t mean anything. No one should pay attention to that sign.” Now I have to decide who is telling the truth. Is this a true No Parking sign? Or is it a falsehood that I can safely ignore? The choice I make when I am told that the sign is a phony is different from the choice I make if I accept the reality of the sign and obey it or not.

I think about this when I think about our relationships to our religion, Jodo Shinshu. Some of us in the sangha were born and raised in Jodo Shinshu. It is the family’s religious tradition, often gong back generations. Others of us, such as me, are converts who have come to Jodo Shinshu as adults. After almost twenty-three years in the sangha, I have come to a few conclusions about those of us who have come to Jodo Shinshu rather than having been born and raised in it.

If you are raised in Jodo Shinshu at your mother’s knee, you can develop faith that is unreserved and unshakable. This faith is beyond doctrine, in fact beyond intellect or conceptualization. In response to arguments between others about some point of Jodo Shinshu teaching, you can say “Be that as it may, in my heart, I feel Amida’s gift.”

That is a gift that comes from your mother’s knee. It is the gift that comes from being born and raised in a religious tradition with loving parents. Taitetsu Unno has explained that when parental love and concern are expanded and deepened within us, “we speak of the compassion of Amida Buddha, who never punishes but always protects and supports us in life.” The experienced security of parental love and guidance is generalized through implicit and explicit teaching into a deep acceptance of Amida’s embrace**. In Japanese, the term is Oya-sama: Amida Buddha experienced as a universal parental love within us.

Of course adult converts to Jodo Shinshu have no such certainty growing from childhood. Many of us feel that we were fooled once or more in our religious lives, and now we have empty feelings in the middle of our spiritual lives. We seek assurance that what we see and hear is authentic, not deceptive.

As converts, or would-be converts, we are cautious and self-protective. So it doesn’t help to learn from ministers that we should simply trust in Amida Buddha’s compassion or that there is nothing we can do, no practice we can employ, that will bring us closer to that compassion. Such a message can add to despair. It does nothing to help us fill the empty place.

Those of us who arrive at the door of the hondo with holes in the middle have not experienced familial love and guidance generalizing throughout childhood to become integrated as Amida’s compassion and wisdom. We need religious guidance to help us transform the experiences of our lives, working honestly with our emotional memories. We seek practice to open places deep within for the realization of Oya-sama long after our childhoods have passed.

In January of this year I witnessed the strength and success of this practice. The annual celebration in memory of Shinran Shonin, Ho-Onko, was held on January 15 at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley. Reverend Kodo Umezu invited 10 speakers to present dharma messages at the evening service (a “dharmathon”). Spontaneously, many of these messages referred to relationships between the speaker and the speaker’s parents. Some told of a fulfilled loving relationship, while others expressed longing for love even at the time speaker was attending to a parent at the time of the parent’s death. Several speakers described how ministers had guided the speaker to an act that opened the speaker’s heart to the intimate connections among familial love, personal forgiveness, and universal compassion.

I think that these connections are the core of faith. They are beyond language and independent of doctrine. They are beyond what we “believe” as Jodo Shinshu Buddhists. We can be conscientious or indifferent about learning and sharing the teachings. We can give much or a little of our time and money to the temple and other good causes. These efforts demonstrate our beliefs and our obedience to belief, but they are not by themselves confessions or expressions of faith. Faith is the awareness, beyond language and beyond doubt, of Oya-sama within us. Once apprehended, we are able to share it with others; it is universal compassion. It is what we discover when we accept an undeserved gift gratefully. And that is the great promise of this religion – that everyone is embraced unconditionally in Namo Amida Butsu. Everyone who comes through the door of Jodo Shinshu Temple seeks this embrace. Our task in the sangha is to create an environment where everyone can find and celebrate it.

* With gratitude to Wilfred Cantwell Smith and his book Faith and Belief: The Difference between Them.
** www.geocities.com/shin_sangha/jodo_act2006.html

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