Just this month a new book has been published by Dr. D.T. Suzuki called Mysticism, Christian
 and Buddhist. I'm not intending to devote this program to a review of this book as such,
 but I call attention to it. Incidentally it's published by Harper's in New York for three
 dollars and fifty cents. But I rather want to call attention to a particular theme which
 the book deals with. The theme of a peculiar type of Japanese mysticism I suppose you'd
 call it, associated primarily with the type of Buddhism which is called Shinshu. Shinshu
 or to know it by another name Jodo or pure land Buddhism is one of the most popular forms
 of Buddhism in the far east. Spreading over China and Japan, it's found in Tibet, originally
 had some following in India, but has undergone a very marked and special type of development
 in Japan. And what makes it so popular is that in contrast, or apparent contrast I should
 say with other forms of Buddhism, it stands as a kind of easy way as distinct from a difficult
 way. In Japanese technical terms the two types of Buddhism are respectively called Jiriki
 and Tariki. Now Ji means one's own or self, and Ta means other, and Riki means power.
 And so the schools of Buddhism which call themselves Jiriki are ways of deliverance
 which one follows by one's own will, one's own power, one's own strength. Whereas on
 the other hand the type of Buddhism called Tariki is where you rely on the power of another.
 And this other is usually speaking, if I may put it in somewhat mythological terms, a great
 supra-mundane Buddha known as Amitabha, or in Japanese as Amida. And the story goes that
 in incalculable ages in the most distant past, this great Buddha made a vow that he would
 not enter into the state of complete Buddhahood until any human being upon the face of the
 earth who pronounced his name in faith would after his death be reborn in the western paradise
 over which Amitabha presides and find therein far greater ease of spiritual development,
 of awakening, of becoming a Buddha than is to be found on the face of this difficult
 earth. And all this of course derives from the ancient Indian idea that the present epoch
 of the world's unfoldment is the darkest of dark ages called the Kali Yuga. And in the
 Kali Yuga, or the Mappo as Buddhists call it, it is peculiarly difficult to advance
 towards any kind of spiritual development because it's an age of decadence, the end
 of which will witness the total destruction of the world prior to its re-manifestation
 at some future time. And therefore, the story goes on to say that this great Buddha, Amitabha,
 did in course of time attain to complete Buddhahood, signifying the fact that his vow is fulfilled
 and that anyone who simply repeats the formula, Namo Amitabhaya in Sanskrit or in Japanese,
 Namo Amida Butsu, which is roughly translatable in English as the name of Amitabha Buddha,
 or Namo is used in, the formula is used in Sanskrit or Japanese, somewhat as the French
 say, Nom Dan Nom Dan Nom, where they just say name, meaning hail, I suppose, in English,
 we have no real equivalent of it. But the idea is that anybody who repeats the name
 of the Buddha, Amitabha, in perfect faith, will without any other effort, any other kind
 of spiritual endeavor on his own part, however evil, however depraved he may be, he will
 be reborn after death in this spiritual state in which the task of becoming a Buddha is
 rendered so easy as to be, as we should say, a perfect cinch. And of course all commentators
 on Buddhism say, well this of course is how religions degenerate. They become popular,
 high in the sky selling organizations where absolutely nothing is required of the faithful
 except an occasional contribution. And the easier you make it in contrast to the other
 sects which make it more difficult, more people will flock to your following, the fatter the
 contributions will be and it all ends up with a prayer wheel where all you have to do is
 make the thing revolve, you don't even have to think about it, and incalculable supernatural
 merits are stored up on your behalf. But it's very dangerous to jump to conclusions of this
 kind about this type of religious or spiritual manifestation. Because in practice the Shin
 school of Buddhism has had some of the most remarkable adherents and produces a type of
 personality which is known in Japan as a Myokonin, literally translated Myokonin means a wonderful
 and fine man. That's just a literal translation which doesn't at all convey the sense of this
 kind of personality, the Myokonin. But the Myokonin, a man like Shinran himself who founded
 the Shin school of Buddhism in Japan, is a man who has in a way understood the profounder
 meaning of the doctrine of this school. And perhaps before I talk about the personal characteristics
 of the Myokonin, I should try and indicate what may underlie, what may be the deeper
 meaning of this seemingly decadent, highly popular and easy form of Buddhism. Perhaps
 the best way to do this is by means of the critique which this particular school uses
 against those who follow the other way, who follow the way of Jiriki or self-power.
 The followers of the Shin school would say that a person who attempts to make spiritual
 progress by his own efforts is battling against the worst possible obstacle to any progress
 at all. And that is that in thinking that he can do it himself, he's like a person trying
 to lift himself up by his own bootstraps. Or to put it in another way, he suffers from
 the pride of imagining that his own will, his own energy, is sufficient to change himself.
 After all, if he needs changing at all, it is precisely the character and the motivation
 of his own will and his own energy that needs changing. And how is this change going to
 be achieved by that very will which so stands in need of change?
 To put it in the more usual language of this school of thought, they say that the average
 human being is so weighted down by karma, that is, if we put it into more modern terminology
 we would say he is so fundamentally conditioned by his upbringing, by his social environment,
 by the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, that there's really nothing
 he can do to make himself any better. And everything that he does do is simply a manifestation
 of the same conditioning masquerading like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
 Therefore if the human being cannot transform himself, if he is to be transformed at all,
 he must rely on some power greater than his own. Now of course, this other power may be
 represented figuratively speaking, like we represent God in the Christian tradition as
 a spiritual entity or force or intelligence quite other than and apart from man, or it
 may be represented on the other hand as other than us, in just the same way that the functioning
 of our own bodies, the beating of the heart and the operation of the lungs goes on quite
 independently of the conscious will and is other in that sense, although in another sense
 those unconscious and automatic or spontaneous functionings of our organism could be understood
 as more fundamentally and truly ourselves than the things that go on in our rather superficial
 consciousness. And if you interpret it in that latter way, the idea of kariki or reliance
 on the power of another is really reliance on something deeper in yourself than your
 surface consciousness. And that I think is the sense in which the profound followers
 of the school of Buddhistic thought understand the doctrine. So the Myokonin, or as I said
 literally the wonderful fine fellow, is the kind of personality which this doctrine engenders.
 Now what is he? He is the kind of person who has realized through and through the fallibility
 of his own humanity. He is the kind of person who knows himself thoroughly, who has a rather
 wry and humorous view of his own, oh shall we say, his own high motivations and ideals.
 He knows himself thoroughly for the rascal that he is and doesn't pretend to be anything
 else. And this, if that were all the work to it, is a very likable form of fellow from
 my point of view. I always feel uncomfortable with people who don't have this realization
 of their own inherent rascality. The people who have pretensions to holiness and righteousness,
 who are so deceived as not to know that in their heart of hearts they are after all rapacious
 and selfish human beings. But the Myokonin makes no bones about this. He knows that's
 what he is and he knows that by the exercise of his own will, and of his own intention
 and his own conscious effort, he can't be anything else. And so there is in him a kind
 of fundamental honesty and sincerity from the start. What he goes on to be beyond this
 is something a little different. Because a Myokonin is called a marvelous fine fellow.
 Because somehow or other he does seem to transcend the ordinary kind of human rascality. To become
 a truly unselfish, a truly human being, loving others, understanding others, sympathizing
 with others, a wonderful compassionate man. Because he has been enabled to love himself,
 to accept himself in the profoundest possible way. For if you translate into more modern
 and less symbolic language this idea, that by the mere repetition of a formula, by the
 mere act of faith in the power of a transcendent divine being, one is able to be saved or made
 a Buddha or perfected just as you are by an act of magic which lifts you up and transfers
 you to another realm. If you translate that as I said into a more contemporary way of
 talking, it would be to say something like this. That the intent of this symbology is
 to say that the condition of growing psychologically and spiritually is to let yourself alone and
 not to fight against what you are. The more you try to make yourself great, to make yourself
 unselfish, to make yourself loving, you are simply tying yourself psychically into a knot,
 a kind of paralyzed state which makes it impossible for you to be anything except as we might
 say all balled up. But if on the other hand, you let go of yourself and do not try to change
 yourself, you relieve yourself from this inattention, you as it were unblock the conduits of psychic
 energy within yourself by not straining on them and are therefore enabled to grow naturally
 like a tree or a plant. And this is exactly the attitude of the Myokanin.
 I think that one of the most fascinating of these characters is one who, as a matter of
 fact, did not actually belong to the Shin school of Buddhism, although he has in many
 ways entirely the same spirit, because at root there is not so much difference between
 this profounder understanding of the Shin school and other types of Buddhism such as
 Zen. Zen is ordinarily understood to represent the extreme of the Jiriki way of fighting
 along by one's own strength, but the intent of the Jiriki emphasis of Zen, the self-powered,
 the willful, striving sense, is something like this, to exert one's will to the utmost
 in order to realize its futility, to make the most desperate attempts to change one's
 motivation and one's conditioning in order to discover that in the last analysis it can't
 be done and that it is merely a futile struggle to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.
 And so as a result of this, the Jiriki form of Buddhism produces very often the same type
 of personality as the Tariki. And one of the most marvellous examples of this spirit is
 a monk, or I'd rather call him a hermit and poet, by the name of Ryokan, who lived between
 1758 and 1831, a man who is extraordinary in all the annals of sagehood and sanctity.
 For the reason that everybody loved him, I don't think he had any enemies at all, and
 this is really a very remarkable achievement. After all, it's so easy to be so holy that
 you're a challenge to the world, and that everybody feels uncomfortable in your presence,
 feels accused by your sanctity and given a bad conscience, and as a result of that you
 get loathed, you make all sorts of enemies, and finally you get crucified. But it's really
 a very remarkable achievement indeed, to be all that, and lovable too. To be without enemies,
 the friend of everybody, and yet involving absolutely no compromise with one's integrity
 and honesty. Such a man was Ryokan. Really marvellous. And many, many stories are told
 about him, and I think these anecdotes about him describe his personality more delightfully
 than anything I could say by way of a character analysis or comment in that fashion. First
 of all it must be understood that the Myokonin or a type of person like Ryokan is one who
 has truly become again as a child. He's not senile, he's not in second childhood in that
 sense, but a person who is really full of a genuine wonder for life, who has so accepted
 himself, so let go of himself, is so not pretentious, and gives himself no airs and graces, that
 he can relax and be perfectly natural. And so the story is told, that one day Ryokan
 was going along baking his food, and he met a friend who invited him to spend the night
 at his home. Well, in the room where he stayed, there was a picture of a tiger hanging on
 the wall. And Ryokan looked for a long time at the picture, and was so intrigued by it
 that after a while he came to feel that he himself was a tiger. He fell to the floor,
 and running around on all fours, he growled at the tiger in the picture. "Rrrr!" he said.
 The tiger seemed to look at him and answer him. Ryokan again shouted, "Rrrr! Rrrr! Rrrr!"
 The tiger seemed to answer, and appeared to be going to approach him. And Ryokan, getting
 a great deal of fun out of this game, repeated it many times. But just then, a maid of the
 house appeared, and was quite astonished when she saw the priest on the floor. For a moment
 she didn't understand what had happened, and was very frightened. And then she recognized
 him. "Oh, Ryokan-sama, so it is you who frightened me so much. What are you doing there?" Startled
 by her voice, Ryokan stopped his game of imitation, and shamefacedly spoke to her on his knees.
 "Did you see what I was doing?" he asked. "You did? Oh, that annoys me very much. About
 good maid, please keep it a secret. Otherwise I won't know what to do, for people will think
 I'm crazy." And then there's another story, which tells of a servant boy who came to the
 little hermitage where he lived in the mountain, bringing a letter from one of his friends.
 Just at that moment, Ryokan was absorbed in trying to juggle his begging bowl on the top
 of a pole. When the messenger called out and delivered his letter, Ryokan stopped his juggling
 for a brief interval, glanced over the letter, and wrote his answer. The bearer made his
 departure, and Ryokan resumed his play. His bowl, time after time, slipped down to the
 floor, but again and again, he'd set it up on top of the pole. Many hundred times did
 he struggle to accomplish this feat. And after some time, the messenger returned. Ryokan
 was so engrossed in his play that he felt annoyed at this interruption, and did not
 pay any attention to his visitor. While the boy waited for some time, and finally called
 out in a loud voice, "Ryokan-sama, look here, what does this answer mean? My master is angry
 with me, and has ordered me to ask you to take back the letter you wrote before and
 give me your real answer. Please, do so." Ryokan then had picked on the intruder, and
 opened the letter he had written only a short time before, and what was his surprise? When
 he read, "The bowl turns round and round," he broke into laughter. "Oh dear me, excuse
 me, I've made a mistake," he exclaimed. He then wrote another letter, but as his mind
 was filled with thoughts of the bowl and its play, the answer didn't come easily.
 The great delight of Ryokan was playing with children in the village, where he went down
 to beg his food. And one fine autumn day, when he was going quietly through the village,
 he was suddenly disturbed by the sound of a voice, apparently coming from a persimmon
 tree. And turning his eyes to the place where the sound came from, he discovered a boy,
 singing in great fright to the topmost branches and crying for help. "Oh, wait a moment, my
 boy," he said, "I'll help you down, and then I'll pick some of the fruit for you."
 Ryokan brought the boy safely to the ground, and then began to pick the coveted fruit.
 He plucked one persimmon and was about to hand it to the child, when he decided that
 it would be well to taste it first, in order to give away the very best. The first persimmon
 was therefore thrust into his own mouth. "Mmm, how sweet," he exclaimed. He picked another
 and again stuffed it into his mouth. "Mmm, good!" Again and again persimmons found their
 way into his mouth, accompanied by the exclamation, "Mmm, sweet, how sweet!" to himself. "Oh,
 dear me," he said, "pardon me, do forgive me. I shall pick the best for you now, the
 very best of all and as many as you like." Saying this, Ryokan dropped the persimmons
 to the boy, one by one, all red and very sweet. And then there was once someone who told him
 that if you picked up money on the road it made you feel very happy. So one day as he
 was travelling back to his hermitage, he thought he would try it and see what it was like.
 Accordingly, he took some of the coins which he had begged from the villagers and let them
 drop to the ground. He then picked them up, one by one. But though he did this many times,
 he didn't experience any particular feeling of joy. "I can't understand it," he said,
 "they tell me that it is pleasant, surely they wouldn't deceive me." He tried it again
 and again, but always without any result. In the process of dropping and picking up
 his money, he gradually lost all he had in the grass. For a long time he had to search
 for the money, but he found it at last. And then with a cry of joy he exclaimed, "Ah,
 I understand now!" To find money is certainly a delight. And once when he was invited to
 stay in the home of some friends, they had to go out. And they asked him to watch the
 house and he got kind of sleepy. A cat was going to sleep on his lap and suddenly he
 heard a funny noise. He thought it was the cat, but there was the cat asleep on his lap.
 What was that sound? He stole quietly to the paper screen which separated the veranda from
 his room and peeped through it with childish curiosity. And there in his room he saw a
 shabbily dressed man searching in a chest of drawers and taking clothes out of it. "Uh-oh,
 he's a sneak thief," thought Ryokan. Of course Ryokan didn't want a thief to take clothes
 from his friend's house, so he made up his mind to frighten the robber and drive him
 away. He therefore crept into the room and stood behind the thief. And the robber, utterly
 ignorant of this, went out of the room with a package of clothes and hastened into another
 room to look for more. And Ryokan followed stealthily, stepping always about ten feet
 behind him. And when the robber turned to the left, he also quickly went to the left.
 And if the thief turned to the right, Ryokan did the same, always just behind him. Another
 slight turn brought the robber almost in Ryokan's direction, but the priest was so quick that
 the thief didn't see him. It seemed to Ryokan as if he were playing a game of blind man's
 buff. So absorbed did he become in the game that before he knew it, the thief had slipped
 away with the stolen package. The priest suddenly came to himself and realized what a serious
 mistake he had made. But his concern was not so much over the lost things. His heart was
 full of pity for the thief as he thought of his shabby clothes and his sad face. Late
 in the evening when the family returned and were full of dismay when they saw what had
 happened, Ryokan just sat in silence and smiled as usual. And then, among his written effects,
 was found this curious little document. It just said, "Favorite things. Cotton cap, towel,
 paper, fan, money, ball, and marbles. Necessities. Bamboo hat, gloves, stick, bell. Things for
 travel. Some clothes. An oil paper cape, a bowl, and a bag. Don't forget to read this
 before starting, otherwise you will suffer from want." He liked to smoke too. He was
 very fond of tobacco. And he always had a shabby old skim tobacco pouch which he kept
 his tobacco in. Very often it was empty. Then he would go out on the streets with his tobacco
 pouch tied at the end of a long stream down his back. People knew at once what he meant
 when they saw the pouch dangling behind him and would hasten to shill it with tobacco.
 Among other things, Ryokan was very famous as a calligrapher. His handwriting was greatly
 prized. And there was a barber to whom he used to go to be shaved, who very much wanted
 a specimen of his writing to hang on a kakemono, a hanging scroll on his wall. But Ryokan just
 wouldn't give it to him. Well, one day, in the middle of shaving his head, the barber
 stopped and left him half shaved and said, "Now, I won't go on and finish shaving unless
 you give me the piece of writing I want." So immediately, Ryokan wrote it for him. And
 then the barber finished shaving him. The barber couldn't read. And some days later,
 when somebody who could read came into his shop, said, "Why, this inscription is incomplete.
 There's a word missing." So next time Ryokan came by, the barber said, "But you didn't
 write the full inscription." "Oh, no, I know," he said. "I didn't write the full inscription
 because you didn't shave all of my head. The missing word, you will find I've written the
 same inscription but put the missing word in twice at the home of an old widow who always
 gives me extra bean curd when I need it." Such, by anecdotes, is the temper of a man
 who is profoundly at home in the world and difficult to think about, difficult to talk
 about. Because to praise such a character is to tempt one to imitate him. And one can
 only imitate him by not doing so at all, but by being just completely oneself.
 And that was Alan Watts with a discussion of Buddhist mysticism from the Philosophy
 East and West series, a discussion of Buddhist mysticism. For information on the Alan Watts
 radio series and also some...


{END}
Wait Time : 0.00 sec
Model Load: 0.63 sec
Decoding  : 2.27 sec
Transcribe: 2573.74 sec
Total Time: 2576.64 sec