Rev. Danny Fisher

Today’s quote comes to us from the great Pure Land scholar and teacher Rev. Taitetsu Unno.

An ordained Shin Buddhist minister and founder of the Northampton Shin Buddhist Sangha, Rev. Unno is also the Jill Ker Conway Professor Emeritus of Religion at Smith College, where he taught Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics from 1971 until his retirement in 1998.

Born in Japan, he came to the United States with his family at the age of six.  For almost four years of the Second World War, he was interned at a camp for the Japanese in Arkansas.  He was later educated as a scholar of Buddhism at UC-Berkeley and Tokyo University.

His books include River of Fire, River of Water and Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold.

Here’s the quote, part of an interviewee Rev. Unno and his son Mark (a professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Oregon) did with our friend and past interviewee Jeff Wilson for the Spring 2009 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.  In it, Rev. Unno explains the nembutsu (the chanting of “Namu Amida Butsu”):

Chanting “Namu Amida Butsu,” which translates as “I entrust myself to the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life,” is not a form of petitionary prayer or mantra. It is a means of communication between a relative being or consciousness and the Buddha deep within. When I chant, there is the expression of Namu Amida Butsu not only from this side, but also from the side of the Buddha.

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There is a popular poem in Shin regarding the nembutsu. A very famous teacher passed away and left this poem: “If you miss me, say ‘Namu Amida Butsu,’ for I too live in the nembutsu.” In other words, if you have any questions about death or dying or where I am, say “Namu Amida Butsu,” and that’s where I am. And you will also realize that’s where you are too.

Petitionary prayer is basically self-centered. Namu Amida Butsu is to release that kind of self-centeredness, and that’s where I like to think the idea of entrusting ourselves to the higher reality comes in. And the higher reality is not out there; it’s in Namu Amida Butsu.