What is the Relationship between the Nembutsu and Primal Vow?
Hard Questions on the Easy Path (4/20)
In explanations of Jōdo Shinshū, we often hear of these two key terms: the “Nembutsu” and the “Primal Vow.” The Nembutsu refers to the name of the Buddha, usually spoken in the form “Namo Amida Butsu,” which is understood to be the statement, “I take refuge in Amida Buddha.” The Primal Vow refers to the Vow that Amida Buddha made before he attained Buddhahood, as Dharmakāra Bodhisattva, when he aspired to become a Buddha and establish a Pure Land that would allow all sentient beings to attain liberation easily. That Primal Vow contains the Forty-eight Vows, the centre point of which is the Eighteenth Vow. These two features of Jōdo Shinshū are often, in shorthand, called the “Vow” and the “Name.”
While seemingly separate (a heterodox view called “faith in the separateness of the Vow and Name;” 誓名別信 seimyō besshin), because the Name came about entirely because of the Vow, the Name and the Vow are said to be entirely one. The Name is the essence of the Primal Vow, which states:
If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten quarters who sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and call my Name even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain perfect Awakening.
That the Name is the essence of the Primal Vow is established by Shinran Shōnin in his Kyōgyōshinshō, who writes:
The Tathāgata endows his Sincere Mind to the ocean-like multitudes of beings who are full of evil passions, evil karma and perverted wisdom. This is the true mind endowed by him to benefit such beings; hence, it is not mixed with doubt. The basis for the Sincere Mind is the Sacred Name of the supreme virtue.
This further establishes that the Vow containing the Name is the Sincere Mind of the Buddha (Tathāgata) Amida, which is bestowed on all sentient beings. All sentient beings, then, upon hearing about this (i.e., literally hearing about the Name within the Vow; hearing the Name), come to entrust and allow the power of that Vow to work within their minds. Thereby, through the Vow’s power, they are brought unfailingly to attain birth in his Land and attain ultimate awakening as buddhas.
It is for this reason that we say that the Name and the Vow are not separate, but ultimately one. When one has faith in the Name, one understands the essence of the Vow and entrusts in it. This is because the Name expresses “Namo Amida Butsu,” where “Namo” signifies the ordinary sentient being who takes refuge and entrusts and “Amida Butsu,” the Buddha, the object of refuge. Within the Name, then, is the affirmation of the oneness of the ordinary sentient being and the ultimate Dharma of suchness (a principle called the “oneness of sentient being and the Dharma;” 機法一体 kihō ittai).
Therefore, on this topic, in the Tannishō, Yuienbō states:
On the matter of confusing practitioners of the Nembutsu who are ignorant of even a single letter by challenging them, “To which do you entrust yourself in saying the Nembutsu – the inconceivable working of the Vow or that of the Name?” without clarifying thoroughly these two kinds of inconceivable working.
This indicates that there are people who, misunderstanding the matter of the Name and the Vow, use their own limited calculations (計らい; hakarai) and come to believe that the Name and the Vow are separate and that it is possible to have faith in these as two different and separate things. While they are unable to “clarify fully” these two, their calculations are fundamentally misplaced because they take as their object that which is “inconceivable.” One must fundamentally come to the Primal Vow with the humility of the twofold profound conviction:
The conviction of oneself as a sentient being (ki; Namo), the limited and defiled self, endowed with defilements and unable to attain any state of liberation by one’s own power, and thus the object of the infinite compassion of Amida Buddha.
The conviction of the working of Amida’s Vow (hō; Amida Butsu), which is infinite compassion and wisdom directed to the limited sentient being functioning solely to bring them liberation from the mire of saṃsāra.
Yuienbō, then, continues:
Through the inconceivable working of the Vow, Amida Buddha devised the Name. To begin with, then, it is through Amida’s design that we come to say the Nembutsu with the belief that, saved by the inconceivable working of the Tathagata’s great Vow of great Compassion, we will part from birth-and-death. This being realised, our calculation is not in the least involved, and so, in accord with the Primal Vow, we will be born in the true fulfilled land.
That is, when we entrust ourselves to the inconceivable working of the Vow, taking it as essential, the inconceivable working of the Name is also included; the inconceivable working of the Vow and that of the Name are one, with no distinction whatever.
This makes it clear that the Name and the Vow are one and the same. Faith in the Name is faith in the Vow. When Amida devised the Primal Vow, he also, therein, devised the Name whereby sentient beings are liberated from saṃsāra. To say Namo Amida Butsu is to say the Primal Vow and realise its manifestation, as an infinite and pure kernel of the Dharma-body, in this defiled world of saṃsāra.
The object of faith and utterance when we say the Nembutsu is something inconceivable and beyond calculation by the limited minds of beings within saṃsāra. Thus, the mind of faith in the Name and Vow, the mind of Shinjin (信心), is a mind that does not cognitively design or calculate that by saying the Name or by having faith one will do or be anything special. But by the natural working of the Vow, we are brought to attain birth. On the contrary, when we calculate that we say the Nembutsu for certain benefits, or that by saying it in a certain way a certain number of times we will attain something special, we end up having faith in something of our design and not in the infinite and inconceivable Vow which is the call of the infinite to the finite. As Yuienbō continues:
Next, people who discriminate good and evil acts and consider them aids or hindrances to birth, interposing their own calculation, do not entrust themselves to the inconceivable working of the Vow and, striving to do acts that result in birth with their own designs, they make the nembutsu they say their own practice.
Then, failing to connect the mind of the finite sentient being to the inconceivable and infinite mind of awakening, they end up remaining within a dualistic world. Even when they die, since they had a kind of faith in the Buddha, they do attain birth in the Pure Land, but it is a dualistic version of the Pure Land that does not represent the absolute fulfilment of buddhahood:
People with such an attitude do not entrust themselves to the inconceivable working of the Name either. Even though they lack the mind of entrusting, they will be born in the borderland, and land of sloth, the castle of doubt, or the womb palace…
While the borderland is a pleasant place, as represented by the dualistic imagery of the Pure Land sūtras, it is intended to draw us to the Pure Land and make us know that it is a place we should go. It is not, however, the ultimate intention of the Buddha’s Vow, which is to allow us to be brought to the infinitude of Buddhahood. Therefore, once we come to fully entrust to the Other Power of Amida Buddha in the borderland, we come to pass from there into the fulfilled land of Nirvāṇa. Thus:
In the end, they will attain birth in the fulfilled land by virtue of the “Vow that beings ultimately attain birth.” This is the inconceivable power of the Name. Since it is also none other than the inconceivable working of the Vow, the two are wholly one.