NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN

BUDDHISM: BEFORE AND BEYOND

SELF- AND OTHER-POWER

Bret W. Davis

This article seeks to clarify the fundamental similarities and differences between the two
most prominent forms of Buddhism in Japan: Zen and Shin (or True Pure Land School)
Buddhism. While proponents of Zen typically criticize Shin for seeking the Buddha
outside the self, rather than as ones true self or original face, proponents of Shin
typically criticize Zen for relying of self-power, which they understand as inevitably a
form of ego-power, rather than entrusting oneself to the Other-power of Amida
Buddha. Yet Zen and Shin in fact share some deep commonalities: not only do they both
characterize the ultimate Dharma-body of the Buddha as emptiness or formlessness,
they also both speak of the enlightened state issuing from a realization of this Dharma-
body in terms of naturalness. While attending to the significant differences between the
Zen and Shin approaches to this enlightened state of naturalness, this article also
pursues the most radical indications of both schools which suggest that this naturalness
itself ultimately lies before and beyond both self- and Other-power.

If the entrusting heart [shinjin ] is established, birth [in the Pure Land] will be
brought about by Amidas design, so there must be no calculating on our part
. . . Our not calculating is called naturalness [ jinen ]. It is itself Other-power.
(Shinran 1997, 1:676, translation modified)

The supreme Buddha is formless, and because of being formless is called

naturalness ( jinen) . . . Amida Buddha is the medium through which we are
made to realize this naturalness. (Shinran 1997, 1:530, translation modified)

The voices of the river valley are the [Buddhas] wide and long tongue, / The
form of the mountains is nothing other than his pure body. (Dogen 2007, 1:110)

Contemporary Buddhism, 2014

Vol. 15, No. 2, 433447, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2014.935258
q 2014 Taylor & Francis
434 BRET W. DAVIS

Followers of the Way, as to the buddhadharma, no effort is necessary. You only

have to be ordinary, with nothing to dodefecating, urinating, wearing clothes,
eating food, and lying down when tired. Fools laugh at me, but the wise
understand . . . Followers of the Way, true buddha has no figure, true dharma
has no form. All youre doing is devising models and patterns out of phantoms
. . . I say to you there is no buddha, no dharma, nothing to practice, nothing to
enlighten to. You just dont believe this and keep on seeking outside . . . Just be
ordinary. (Linji 2009, 11 12, 20)

Everyday mind is the Way. (Wumenguan / Mumonkan, case 19)

In East Asian Buddhist thought, freedom is generally understood not as a

conquering of nature by means of an assertion of human will, but rather as a return
to natural spontaneity by means of an abandonment of such wilful self-assertion
(Davis 2011). One can see here the influence of Daoist thought, in which the ideal
of naturalness (ziran) is connected with the ideal of non-doing (wu-wei) or acting in
a non-artificial manner (wei-wu-wei) in a state of egolessness (wuji).1 Reflecting this
influence, what is called enlightenment or awakening in Zen can be said to mean
nothing other than the conjunction of egolessness and naturalness, that is, of the
true self and the great nature (Arifuku 1999, 47). The intimacy of freedom and
naturalness is in fact apparent in the Chinese and Japanese languages themselves:
while ziran/jinen (naturalness or spontaneity) literally means being-just-so-of-
itself or, as Shinran defines it, being made to become so of itself (onozukara-
shikarashimu), ziyou/jiyu (freedom) literally means what arises or derives (you/yu)
from the self (mizukara) or of itself (onozukara). The question is, should this
natural freedom be understood in terms of either self-power ( jiriki) or Other-
power (tariki)? Or is it perhaps, rather, the working of a nameless spontaneity that
ontologically precedes and experientially transcends the very opposition of self-
and Other-power? This question takes us to the heart of the relation between the
Zen and Shin (or True Pure Land) schools of Buddhism. The aim of this article is to
clarify the deep resonances as well as key differences between Shin and Zen on the
decisive issues of the path to and state of true naturalness.
According to Shinran, who founded the Shin school in the thirteenth century,
true freedom and true naturalness arise only by way of utter reliance on the Other-
power of Amida Buddha. Shinran distinguishes True Pure Land Buddhism from all
forms of Buddhism that rely on practices of self-power, such as Zen meditation, to
attain liberation. Shinran views the sage path of attempting to attain Buddhahood
by means of ones own heroic efforts as, at best, a provisional means that must
ultimately be supplanted by the path of easy practice on which, by the grace of
Other-power, one transcends crosswise (ocho) off the stairway of self-realization
by means of self-power altogether (Shinran 1997, 1:222 223; Ueda and Hirota
1989, 219220). On the Pure Land path one realizes that all along practice itself . . .
is opened forth in beings by the Buddha and not by oneself (Ueda and Hirota 1989,
143). According to Shinran, Nenbutsu [i.e., recitation of the Buddhas name] and
 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 435

shinjin [i.e., the entrusting heart-mind] on our part are themselves the
manifestation of the Vow (Shinran 1997, 1:538). In other words, one does not
attain birth in the Pure Land by means of ones own efforts, but rather is drawn
there by the spontaneous working ( jinen) of the Buddhas Vow to save all beings
(Shinran 1997, 1:496 497). Thus Shinran understands jinen as jinenhoni, where honi
means that one is made to become so (ni) by the virtue of this dharma (ho), being
the working of the Vow where there is no calculation on the part of the practicer.2
As Ueda Yoshifumi and Dennis Hirota write, By probing deeply into the
pervasive nature of self-attachment, [Shinran] finds that human existence is
inevitably dominated by delusional thinking and feeling, such that even the selfs
efforts at religious practice are found to be tainted by egocentric calculation
(hakarai). In abandoning even the noblest efforts of the self, Shinran thus brings
the rejection of self-generated acts to completion (Ueda and Hirota 1989, 141).
The point is to utterly abandon the efforts and aims initiated by the self, not to
realize or fulfil these efforts and aims. True effort comes from Other-power, and the
true aim is to be free of the aims of the self; for the self on its own is a foolish being
that produces and is produced by the karmically driven wheel of samsara. A foolish
being, writes Shinran, is by nature possessed of blind passions, so you must
recognize yourself to be a being of karmic evil (Ueda and Hirota 1989, 219220).
Zen masters, on the other hand, insist on making a crucial distinction
between, on the one hand, the deluded ego (ga or jiga) to be abandoned and, on
the other hand, the true self (shin no jiko) or original self (honrai no jiko) to be
realized. Muso Kokushi writes that those with their hearts set on [their] Original
Nature should not cling to the concept of themselves as deluded beings and seek
enlightenment outside (Kirchner 2010, 126).
Zen agrees with Shin that what often seems natural to the ego is in fact
artificial in the sense that its desires are produced and perpetuated by the
karmically self-fabricating ego itself. For both Zen and Shin, true naturalness
generally lies buried beneath the coverings (Sanskrit klesa, Japanese bonno) of
karmic desire; true naturalness lies ontologically before and practically or
soteriologically beyond the cravings of the ego. Zen and Shin agree furthermore
that true freedom ( jiyu) is what arises naturally ( jinen-ni) or of itself (onozukara)
from the Buddha-mind (busshin) or Buddha-nature (bussho). The disagreement is
over the question of whether this natural freedom of the Buddha can be
attributed to the self ( jiko), that is to say, whether, as Hakuin puts it in the
concluding line of his Zazenwasan, this embodied self is the Buddha (kono mi
sunawachi hotoke nari); or whether all senses of the self and self-power are
variations of the problematic ego and its karmic artifices that stand in the way of
a liberating return to a true naturalness.

Shinrans path through Other-power to naturalness

According to Zen, to quote the first line of Hakuins Zazenwasan, sentient
beings are originally Buddha (shujo honrai hotoke nari). By contrast, Shinran insists
436 BRET W. DAVIS

on the essential difference between ignorant sentient beings (bonbu) and

Buddha. For Shinran, to be sure, to realize shinjin is to return to ones fundamental
reality (Ueda and Hirota 1989, 176). Great shinjin, he even declares, is itself
Buddha-nature (Shinran 1997, 1:351, see also 99). However, as Alfred Bloom
(2007, 142, 171) writes, even though Amida Buddha is not a god standing outside,
apart from us, but is our inner aspiration and inspiration as the reality revealed
through the experience of entrusting, it must also be understood that in the
transformation of mind that comes about through true entrusting we do not
become Buddha itself, an ineffable state, but our nature as foolish being is
illuminated and awareness of love and compassion awakened. Our realization of
a relation of nonduality with the Buddha-mind of entrusting does not entail a
realization of the identity of self and Buddha, but rather an illumination from
within of their essential difference.
For Shinran, as we have seen, human beings are so mired in karmic evil that
they are utterly incapable of even entrusting themselves by means of their self-
power, and must therefore rely wholly on the Other-power of Amida Buddha. And
yet, who is Amida Buddha? For Shinran, Amida Buddhathe form of the Buddha
that manifests Infinite Light (Amitabha) and Infinite Life (Amitayus)is not simply
one Buddha among others, but is the primordial Buddha who embodies the
essence of all Buddhas (Ueda and Hirota 1989, 121).3 Shinran (1997, 1:349) writes,
for example, Amida attained Buddhahood in the infinite past . . . / Took the form
of Sakyamuni Buddha / And appeared in Gaya.
Even Amida, however, is in turn a manifestation of the ultimate Dharma-
body of the Buddha. Shinran makes a distinction between two kinds of Dharma-
body with regard to the Buddha.
The first is called dharma-body as suchness and the second, dharma-body as
compassionate means. Dharma body as suchness has neither color nor form;
thus, the mind cannot grasp it nor words describe it. From this oneness was
manifested form, called dharma body as compassionate means. (Shinran 1997,
1:461; see also 165, 486 487)

I understand Shinran to be saying that Amida occupies a pivotal position

between, on the one hand, the compassionate manifestation of the Buddha in the
form of innumerable personified and accommodated bodies and, on the other
hand, the formless essence of the Buddha. This mediating position between form
and formlessness is reflected in the idea that Amida is the Buddha in the form of
light called Tathagata of unhindered light filling the ten quarters. Light is the
form taken by wisdom which enables us to see the various forms of things as they
are; but light is able to illuminate these forms precisely because it is itself without
color and without form. As a formless form, we could say, light is the form of the
formless par excellence (Shinran 1997, 1:461 462). Although Shinran often
characterizes Amida with expressions such as the mother of loving care,4 and
although Amida is popularly depicted with personified form in statues and
 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 437

paintings, Amida is ultimately the formless form of infinite lighta metaphor for
wisdom and compassionwhich pervades the cosmos.
Nevertheless, in his letter on jinenhoni, written near the end of his life,
Shinran clearly professes that even Amida Buddha is not the Supreme Buddha
(mujobutsu) as such, but rather a form assumed by the latter as an expedient
means in the compassionate endeavour to liberate sentient beings, which means
to bring them to a realization of this Supreme Buddha as an essentially formless
source of naturalness. Shinran writes:
The Supreme Buddha is formless, and being formless, is called jinen
[naturalness]. When this Buddha is shown as having form, it is not called the
Supreme Nirvana [i.e., the Supreme Buddha]. In order to make us realize that
true Buddha is formless, it is expressly called Amida Buddha; so I have been
taught. Amida Buddha is the medium through which we are made to realize
jinen [naturalness].5

The paradox of an absolute Other-power

The editors of The Collected Works of Shinran point out that Shinran in fact
uses the notion of jinen or naturalness in two distinct though interconnected
senses. In the Tannisho (A Record in Lament of Divergences), for example, it is
written that Our not calculating is called jinen. It is itself Other Power (Shinran
1997, 1:676). In such passages, as in the first half of the letter on jinenhoni, jinen is
the working of Other Power, or Amida, rather than the supreme Buddha as such.
Jinen, then, is an ambiguous term in Shinrans writing in that it is the supreme
Buddha, and it is also the power of the Primal Vow . . . In other words, jinen is both
the highest reality and the process by which one attains realization (Shinran 1997,
2:164). It is by letting go of self-power and entrusting oneself to the natural
workings of the Other-power of Amida Buddha that one is ultimately brought to
the realization that the Supreme Buddha is none other than the formless source of
naturalness itself.
To what extent, and in what sense, does Shinran think we can attain this
realization of pure naturalness in this lifetime? Obviously relevant here is the
complex question of the sense and extent to which Shinran reformed the
otherworldly and afterlife orientation of the Pure Land Buddhist tradition.
Commenting on a line from the Larger Sutra of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life
which states, All sentient beings aspire to be born in that land; they then attain
birth [in the Pure Land] and dwell in the stage of nonretrogression, Shinran writes:
They attain birth means that when a person realizes shinjin [i.e., the heart-mind of
entrusting], he or she is born immediately, which is to dwell in the stage of
nonretrogression, which is also called the attainment of the equal of perfect
enlightenment (Shinran 1997, 1:455). The editors of The Collected Works of Shinran
point out that this teaching that one could attain birth and dwell in the stage of
438 BRET W. DAVIS

nonretrogression in this life had never before appeared in the history of Pure Land
Buddhism. They go on to say that Shinrans radical reinterpretations went beyond
traditional Pure Land teachings, which were futuristic and otherworldly. He thus
established the Pure Land teaching firmly in the fundamental position of
Mahayana Buddhism, a position of deep penetration into timelessness in the
present moment (Shinran 1997, 2:112 114). And yet, they also explain that birth
in the Pure Land has two fundamental dimensions for Shinran. First, it means to
attain the state of nonretrogression here and now in this life, and second, it is
synonymous with the attainment of supreme enlightenment or Buddhahood at
the very moment of death (Shinran 1997, 2:109). Thus, even while significantly
curbing the Pure Land traditions futuristic orientation, Shinran still maintains that
nirvana is not fully attainable in this life.6
It should be noted that, in contrast to the more conservative interpretation
favoured by scholars affiliated with the Nishi Honganji branch of Shin Buddhism,
scholars affiliated with the Higashi Honganji branch (such as Soga Ryojin,
discussed below) tend to stress the idea that a preliminary form of birth in the
Pure Land (ojo) can be experienced in the here and now.7 Leaving aside the
question of whether to call it an experience of attaining the state of
nonretrogression or a preliminary form of birth in the Pure Land, let us ask,
What would this experience be like? Specifically, what would it be like to pass
through the natural workings of Amidas Other-power to the ultimate realization
of the formless source of naturalness as such?
The myokonin Saichi gives us an indication of what would happen were one
to entrust oneself completely to the natural workings of Other-power in his famous
poem:
In Other-power, theres no self-power and no Other-power.

All is Other-power.

Namu-amida-butsu. (Quoted in Ueda and Hirota 1989, 226, translation

modified)8

Insofar as other is an essentially relative concept, when self drops out of

the picture the other is no longer other; it is all that remains. Before the birth and
after the (existential) death of the fabricated ego, there is thus no sense in
speaking of a Buddha that transcends the ego. In a poem written to someone
who practices nenbutsu, Zen master Shido Bunan thus writes: Unless you recite
the name, there is neither you nor Buddha (Shido 2011, 193).
But why, then, does the second line of Saichis poem read: All is Other-
power? Does the Other in this line betray a remaining trace of self, thus making
its claim that All is Other-power (ichimen tariki) self-refuting? Why does the
second line of Saichis poem not read All is naturalness (ichimen jinen), in the
sense of the naturalness of the formless Buddha-nature that ontologically
 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 439

precedes and experientially transcends the very distinction between ego-self and
Buddha-Other?
A similar question has been asked by the Zen philosopher Nishitani Keiji
with regard to St Pauls famous statement, It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me.9 The question is, Who is speaking here? It cannot be Paul, who
purportedly lives no more; nor can it be Christ, who is named in the third person
rather than speaking in the first person, and who is said to live in me.10
Analogously, when a myokonin professes that self-power has been utterly
abandoned, and that only the Other-power of Amida Buddha remains, who is
speaking? Is it perhaps the true self who is speaking, the true self who precedes
and transcends the duality of ego-self and Buddha-Other?

Beyond self- and Other-power in Zen and Shin

Zen masters often identify our true self with the formless Buddha-nature,
distinguishing it from the deluded ego which attaches itself to forms. Zen practice
is then understood as a detachment from or disidentification with the fabricated
forms of the ego, and an awakening to the originally formless true self.11 In Zen
practice, it might be said, one lets go of ego-power by means of actualizing true
self-power, rather than by calling on an Other-power.
The modern Shin thinker, Soga Ryojin, seems to move into a proximity to
Zen when he writes: The true savior has to be my actual self . . . Dharmakara
Bodhisattva is who I am, my real self (Soga 2011, 275). In other words, my real self
is a Bodhisattva destined for enlightenment, on the way to self-realization as
Amida Buddha, who in turn is understood as the true absolute and ultimate
subject that transcends the individual subjectivity of all sentient beings (Soga
2011, 274). Soga might be understood to be negotiating an agreement between
Shin and Zen by way of criticizing both of their excesses and potential pitfalls,
when he writes the following:
The people of the self-power schools pride themselves exclusively on the
subjective Tathagata and negate the objective Tathagata, and fall into despair.
This is because they are not in touch with true personal life. I am neither a
believer of the self-power school nor of the other-power school. I believe only that
my own self does not exist apart from the person of the great bodhisattva vow
who, throughout the infinite reaches of the cosmos, is my true self. The I that
has been clinging to my ego forever and ever is not the true I. My true self is
rather the one whom I have been rejecting forever and ever. Once I discovered
this, subject and object changed places completely. (Soga 2011, 279, emphasis
added)

Analogously, Suzuki Daisetsu breaks through the barrier apparently

separating Zen and Shin from the other side, when he writes: What Pure Land
calls hearing and what Zen calls seeing are one and the same thing . . . In such
440 BRET W. DAVIS

a state of mind there is neither self-power nor other-power (Suzuki 2011, 218,
emphasis added).
In a dialogue with Suzuki, however, Soga is more cautious and conservative
in his Shin stance toward Zen. There Soga expresses appreciation but also serious
reservations about what many regard as Suzukis Zen interpretation of Shin.
Suzuki states that his view is that Amidas enlightenment is completed only when
his vow becomes my vow, and that as long as I do not become a Buddha . . .
Amida does not become a Buddha. Soga responds that, were Shin scholars to say
this, Zen and Shin would collapse into one, but it is characteristic of the Shin
approach to not say this. Soga himself affirms the more conservative Shin view
that we are not Buddhas while we are alive. In the end, Soga and Suzuki agree
that, despite the shared fundamentals of Shin and Zen, from the Shin perspective,
Zen runs too far ahead and says too much, while from the Zen perspective, Shin
doesnt go far enough and doesnt say enough (Soga and Suzuki 1973, 18 20,
24 25, 29).

Zens true self and self-forgetting

Zen does indeed resolutely eschew the postponement of salvation to the
afterlife and affirms the possibility of attaining enlightenment and becoming a
Buddha in this lifetime. One can awaken to the true self and realize the naturalness
of the everyday mind here and now; in fact it is only ever here and now that this is
possible. And yet, Zen teachers are also often careful to warn of the pitfalls, at
various levels, of getting ahead of oneself such that one conflates the true self with
the ego. On a crude level, this entails conflating a genuine naturalness with
following the karmically driven whims of the unenlightened ego. Suzuki
accordingly draws a sharp distinction between freedom ( jiyu) and licentiousness
(hoitsu), and criticizes for example the Beat Generation for failing to maintain this
distinction (Suzuki 1997, 68).
Is the very idea of a true self a constant temptation to fall back into, or to
remain stuck at some level of a self-inflated egoism? A look at the Linji-lu (Rinzai-
roku) is illuminating in this regard. Linji (Rinzai) famously claims that If you meet
the Buddha, kill the Buddha (Iriya 1989, 96 97); in other words, one should not
seek the Buddha as anything outside oneself. As opposed to entrusting oneself to
an Other-power, Linji teaches that one must learn to trust oneself (zixin/jishin)
(Iriya 1989, 33). While the famous phrase, true person of no rank (wu wei zhen ren/
mu i no shinnin), occurs only once in the Linji-lu (Iriya 1989, 20), the phrase
independent person of the Way (wu yi dao ren/mu e no donin) occurs no less than
five times.12 Linjis insistence on individual self-reliance has of course a long
pedigree in Buddhism, from Sakyamunis teaching in section 160 of the
Dhammapada, The savior of your self is you yourself, to the final teaching of
Sakyamuni in the Nirvana Sutra: Be a light unto yourself; let the Dharma be your
light. The light of the Dharma, the light that leads to enlightenment, is to be
found within the self itself.
 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 441

And yet, curiously, Linji does not use the term self (ziji / jiko). Iriya Yoshitaka
points out that since the eighth century, presumably in response to the elevation
of the Buddha to the status of a transcendent absolute in other schools, self-
assertions using the term ziji had become common among Zen masters,
eventually giving rise to such adages as the original face of the self ( jiko honrai no
menmoku) and the original master of the self ( jiko honrai no shujinko). However,
Iriya suggests, Linji inherits not only an affirmation of the true self but also its self-
critique by Baizhang (Hyakujo), the teacher of his teacher, Huangbo (Obaku).
Baizhang had refused to acknowledge, or had acknowledged as only a provisional
teaching, what his own teacher, Mazu (Baso), had called the self Buddha (zijifo).13
Perhaps Baizhangs concern was that naming the true self, and equating it with
the Buddha, all too easily produces another artificial object of attachment and
hindrance on the way back to recovering the natural freedom this concept (Begriff)
tries in vain to grasp (greifen). The mind, after all, as the Diamond Sutra tells us,
cannot be obtained (shin fu ka toku); in grasping itself, the true self loses itself.
Mazu himself seems to have anticipated this movement through and
beyond identifying the true self with the Buddha-mind, or ones own mind with
the Buddha, as can be seen in two cases in the Wumenguan (Mumonkan). In case
30, in response to the question, What is Buddha? Mazu replies, Mind is Buddha.
Wumen (Mumon) adds the comment, If you can at once grasp [this], you are
wearing Buddha clothes, eating Buddha food, speaking Buddha words, and living
Buddha life; you are a Buddha yourself (Shibayama 2000, 214). However, in case
33, in response to the same question, What is Buddha? Mazu now answers,
No mind, no Buddha. Wumen tersely comments, If you can see into it here, your
Zen study has been completed (Shibayama 2000, 235).
In his commentary on the Ten Oxherding Pictures, which he subtitles the
way to the true self (shin no jiko e no michi), Ueda Shizuteru writes that, to the
extent that one has become the true self, such a true self must be discarded
(Ueda 2003, 172 173). This is depicted in the eighth picture, the empty circle,
where not only the ox but also the boy disappears into formlessness. What
appears next, in the ninth picture, is a stream flowing by a tree in bloom, with no
person in sight. Ueda (2003, 195) writes:
This is neither a depiction of nature nor a use of nature to symbolize a state of
mind. Rather, the waters natural flowing and the flowers natural redness, that
is, the concreteness of what is so of itself [ ji nen ], is, just as it is, none other
than the egoless true self [watashi naki shin no jiko ], the self that is not a self
[ jiko narazaru jiko ].

In the tenth picture, the form of the self reappears, but is now shown with
extended hands in naturally compassionate engagement with other selves. This
radical openness to the world (picture 9), and this compassionate engagement
with others (picture 10), are enabled by passing through not only an attainment of
the true self (picture 7), but also, crucially, its self-forgetting (picture 8).
442 BRET W. DAVIS

Dogen famously writes:

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self . . . [But] to study the self is to
forget the self [ jiko o narau to iu wa, jiko o wasururu nari ]. To forget the self is to
be verified by the myriad things [of the world]. To be verified by the myriad
things is to let drop off the body-mind of the self and the body-mind of others.
(Davis 2009, 256 257)

Enlightenment is not awakening to a supernatural soul that transcends the world,

but rather a forgetting ofi.e., liberation fromour false sense of being
enclosed in the body-mind of an ego-self dualistically separated from other ego-
selves and the myriad things of the world.14
In light of this movement beyond self-attainment to self-forgetting, it is
perhaps not surprising that Zen masters occasionally express an appreciation of
the Shin Buddhist path of reliance on Other-power, at least as a provisional or
expedient means. Shido Bunan writes that The nenbutsu is a sharp sword, good
for cutting off ones karma, and that you should never think of yourself as
becoming Buddha, for not becoming Buddha is Buddha. Yet, as a Zen master, he
also sees the nenbutsu as a provisional and potentially problematic expedient
means. Warning that people should not ultimately seek the Buddha outside of
themselves, for example by calling on the name of an Other-power, he concludes:
People should be as those who know not even their own name (Shido 2011,
190 191). In Zen, one must ultimately go beyond (kojo)by shining the light on
what lies directly beneath ones own feet (shokokyakka) (Kusumoto 1982, 96
98)both the name of the true self and the name of (Amida) Buddha, both self-
and Other-power, to realize the freely compassionate activity of a genuinely
spontaneous naturalness.

The persistence of a provisional Other-power in Shin

Shinran and Shin Buddhists, however, persist in referring to an Other-power
as the source of naturalness, refusing to equate the ji of jiko with the ji of jinen. For
them, the source of naturalness must be attributed provisionally to the form of
Amida Buddha, and ultimately to the formless Supreme Buddha, but never, at least
not in this lifetime, to the self.
Perhaps naturalness should indeed never be attributed to the self; perhaps it
is precisely in this reflective appropriation that the fall back into artificiality or
calculation (hakarai) occurs. I am Buddha. I am acting naturally. Such statements
give the lie to themselves. Perhaps the proper grammatical voice of naturalness is,
as Toyama Taiken suggests, not the first person I, nor the second person Thou (as
in Let Thy Will be done), nor the third person He (as in Christ lives in me or All is
Other-power), but rather the non-personal expressions (hininsho-teki hyogen) of
what grammarians call the middle voice (Toyama 1990, 72ff; see also Elberfeld
2011). Even the indeterminate and impersonal or transpersonal It (as in It rains or
Herrigels famous It shoots) says too much, positing an Other-power that would
 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 443

act through the self. In the end, the first person self, the second person Thou, and
the third person Other or It, all dualistically alienate us from, by imposing forms on,
the formless wellspring of naturalness.
Why, then, does Shinran persist in speaking of Other-power? At the end of
his letter on naturalness, he writes:
After we have realized that this is the way it is, we should not be forever talking
about jinen. If one always talks about jinen, then the truth that Other Power is no
selfworking will once again become a problem of selfworking. This is the
mystery of the wisdom of the Buddhas.15

Having indicated, near the end of his life, that the Other-power of Amida
Buddha is ultimately an expedient means for attaining to the Supreme Buddha,
which is none other than the formless source of naturalness, Shinran steps back,
and pulls us back, to an acknowledgment that we foolish beings are still on the
way back to this mysterious source, and thus still in need of the expedient means
of Other-power. If we get ahead of ourselves by thinking too much about jinen,
and especially about how the Other-power of Amida is a provisional form offered
as an expedient means for realizing the ultimately formless source of naturalness,
then we will fall prey to the temptation to conflate this formless origin with the
artificial forms of our unenlightened egos.
We can conclude that, while his Shin Buddhism may well be aiming at the
same nondual state of naturalness as Zen, Shinran insists that the source of this
naturalness remains a mystery for us because we are not yet enlightened. This is
presumably also why he refuses to call this source of naturalness the true self,
why he does not recognize what Zen would consider to be a crucial distinction
between true self-power and ego-power, and why he persists in ascribing the
source of naturalness to an Other-power, even while occasionally indicating the
ultimate provisionality of this expedient means.

NOTES
1. See the Daodejing, Chs10, 25, 37, 38, 43, 48, and 63; and the Zhuangzi, Chs 1, 4, 6,
7, 12, and 22. Unless otherwise noted, translations in this article are my own.
Terms from Zen (pronounced Chan in Chinese) will generally be given
according to Japanese pronunciation; when the Chinese pronunciation is also
given, it will appear first followed by a slash and then the Japanese
pronunciation. Japanese readings of Chinese persons and texts will be given in
parentheses.
2. From Shinrans letter on jinenhoni, as translated in Ueda and Hirota 1989, 272
(original on 343). See also Shinran 1997, 1:530.
3. Bloom (2007, 127) writes that Shinran put Amida in a class by himself as the
ultimate or supreme expression of the Dharma body as Suchness, which is
formless, inconceivable reality.
444 BRET W. DAVIS

4. Shinran writes that supreme shinjin is made to awaken in us through the

compassionate guidance of Sakyamuni, the kind father, and Amida, the mother
of loving care. Know that this is the benefit of the working of jinen [naturalness]
(Shinran 1997, 1:454).
5. From Shinrans letter on jinenhoni, translated in Ueda and Hirota 1989, 273
(original on 343), translation modified. See also Shinran 1997, 1:530.
6. Nevertheless, Shinran does eschew an otherworldly orientation insofar as he
embraces the non-abiding in nirvana teaching of Mahayana, as when he writes,
When persons attain this enlightenment, with great love and great compassion
immediately reaching their fullness in them, they return to the ocean of birth-
and-death to save all sentient beings (Shinran 1997, 1:454).
7. See Nakamura et al. 1989, 474. On the various interpretations of ojo by leading
Nishi and Higashi scholars, see Yasutomi 2012, 154 175. Although The Collected
Works of Shinran is published by Nishi Honganji, the editors follow Ueda
Yoshifumi in affirming a sense in which ojo can be attained in this life. I thank
Michael Conway of The Eastern Buddhist for a helpful discussion of this issue.
8. See also Unno 1998, 37.
9. Galatians 2:20. In fact, in the following line Paul steps back from what sounded
like an advance through the death of the ego toward a unio mystica with Christ,
and speaks in more dualistic terms of living by means of a dependent relation of
faith in Christ: The life I now lead in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God.
Masao Abe (1985, 148) writes that On this point, Zen, which . . . gains a new Life
of rebirth through the realization of the Great Death, does not differ from the
standpoint of Paul in essence. And yet, a significant difference remains insofar as
the Great Death in Zen does not lead to a life of faith in, and dependence on, a
higher power.
10. See Hans A. Fischer-Barnicols account of Nishitani posing this question to
German theologians, and of their inability to answer him, in Buber 1991, 663. See
also Graham Parkess recollection of Nishitani posing such questions, in the
translators introduction to Nishitani 1990, xxvi.
11. For recent examples of Zen masters who use of the notion of the true self or
original self in distinction from the deluded ego, see Yamada 1982, 169ff;
Akizuki 1990, 34, 48, 51, 70; and Shibayama 2000, 171 174 and passim.
12. See for example Iriya (1989, 59), where Linji refers to this independent person of
the Way as the mother of all Buddhas.
13. Kaisetsu (Analysis) in Iriya 1989, 225 226.
14. Elsewhere, in Shoji, Dogen writes of this experience in a manner that seems
strikingly close to the Shin Buddhist teaching of attaining to naturalness by
means of utter reliance on Other-power: When you let go of both your body and
mind, forget them both, and throw yourself into the house of Buddha, and when
functioning begins from the side of Buddha drawing you in to accord with it,
then, with no need for any expenditure of either physical or mental effort, you are
freed from birth-and-death and become Buddha (Dogen 2002, 107). Waddell
and Abe (in ibid., 107) add the following note to this passage: This sentence is
 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 445

sometimes cited as evidence of Dogens affinity with Pure Land thought, and
there is a Soto tradition that the Shoji is the record of religious instruction that
Dogen composed for followers of the Pure Land schools. A Pure Land affinity may
be admitted if Buddha, in the expressions throw yourself into the house of
Buddha and when functioning begins from the side of Buddha, is taken as a
reference to the tariki or other-power of Amida Buddha. In the overall context
of Dogens thought, however, it seems more natural to understand Buddha in
the sense of Buddha-nature or Original Face, as seen from the side of illusion.
In other words, both Pure Land thought and Dogen/Zen understand Buddha as
other than the illusory ego, yet the divisive question is whether one provisionally
approaches Buddha as an Other vis-a-vis the self or as the true self. While
Waddell and Abe are surely right to say that Dogen generally takes the latter
(Zen) approach, in the above passage at least Dogen seems to be acknowledging
the validity of the former (Pure Land) approach as well.
15. From Shinrans letter on jinenhoni, as translated in Ueda and Hirota 1989, 273
(original on 342 343). See also Shinran 1997, 1:530.

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 NATURALNESS IN ZEN AND SHIN BUDDHISM 447

Bret W. Davis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland.

He received his PhD in philosophy from Vanderbilt University and has spent
13 years studying and teaching in Japan, during which time he studied
Buddhist thought at Otani University and completed the coursework for a
second PhD in Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University. He has been a JSPS
Postdoctoral Research Fellow and later Visiting Scholar at Kyoto University,
and a DAAD Visiting Scholar at the University of Freiburg. He is the author of
Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit (Northwestern University
Press, 2007); translator of Martin Heideggers Country Path Conversations
(Indiana University Press, 2010); editor of Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts
(Acumen, 2010); co-editor with Brian Schroeder and Jason M. Wirth of
Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School
(Indiana University Press, 2011); and co-editor with Fujita Masakatsu of
Sekai no naka no Nihon no tetsugaku [Japanese Philosophy in the World]
(Showado, 2005). His many articles written in English and in Japanese on
continental, Japanese, East Asian Buddhist, and comparative philosophy
include Zen after Zarathustra in Journal of Nietzsche Studies, The Kyoto
School in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and two chapters on
Japanese philosophy in The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy. He is a
head editor of Indiana University Presss series in World Philosophies. Among
his current projects are two monographs on Zen and the Kyoto School
and The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy. For more information,
see http://www.loyola.edu/academics/philosophy/faculty/davis.html.
Address: Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Maryland, 4501
N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21210 USA. E-mail: bwdavis@loyola.edu
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