Great Living; In the Pure Encounter Between Master and Disciple Perfect Paperback – November 16, 2010

Loved this study of The Tannisho.Clear, insightful,scholarly,and very thought provoking.As a Dharma instructor I'm always looking for interesting new materials for talks and classes.I will definitely come back to this book repeatedly. Shoju

Great Living (In the pure Encounter between Master and Disciple)By Kemmyo Taira Sato (American Buddhist Study Center Press, 2010)Review by Andy LukianowiczThis is a wonderful book on Japanese Shin or Pure Land Buddhism, a way of Buddhism as yet little known in the west, that essentially teaches reliance on Amida (Amitabha) Buddha's Original Vow to take into the Pure Land of Great Bliss (Sukhavati), through the operation of grace (Other-power, Amida's unconditional love) rather than through the practioner's own calculating practices (self-power), all those who recite the nembutsu: Amida Buddha's Name (ten times, or once only according to other interpretations). It is a teaching and method that specifically addresses, in particular, those generally disregarded by Buddhist teachers and associations: the poor, the unlettered, and so-called 'evil' people (for example, hunters and fisherman), unable through talent, opportunity or occupation to undertake standard accepted Buddhist teachings, practice and lifestyle.Sato Sensei's book consists of a volume of essays and commentaries on Tannisho, a Record of Lament over Divergence, a collection of sayings of the great Japanese Pure Land Master Shinran (1173-1262) as spoken, often in response to a question, to his disciple Yuien-bo. The intent was at the time to correct some heterodox interpretations of Shinran's thought that were circulating at the time (some decades after Shinran's death) among his followers. Our author has recreated, over a period of eight centuries, the relationship (or as the subtitle has it, encounter) between master and disciple. Switch to our own times: Sato Sensei, a Pure Land master in charge of the Three Wheels Buddhist Community in Acton, west London, is a disciple of the Lady Pure Land master Eaki-ni, and he also had the good fortune and privilege to be sent by her to study with, and become the last student of, the great D. T. Suzuki (well-known to the Bddhist Society of U.K.), a great Buddhist master, translator and commentator, the greatest promulgator of Zen, and towards the end of his life also of Shin Buddhism, in the west. And in his essays and commentaries on the Tannisho, based on a series of lectures delivered at London University and then the Buddhist Society, London, Sato Sensei provides readers with a broad yet at the same time comprehensive understanding of some key components of Pure Land Buddhist belief, the major one being that of Other-power (tariki) or reliance on Amida's original vow.Sato Sensei acknowledges his debt to Suzuki, not least in the choice of words for his title: Great Living, the term Suzuki used in his translation of Shinran's masterwork Kyogyoshinsho to render gyo, usually translated as “practice, teaching, faith and realization”: not ritual or meditation but the way we live our lives is our practice.Sato Sensei also recalls a memorable teaching given by Suzuki when he compared partial reliance on self-power to total reliance on Other-power through the the different ways a monkey and a cat mother (respectively) carry their young; grasped, so her young must grasp, too, by the monkey mother, and gripping in her mouth, so the kittens need do nothing, in the case of the mother cat: a wonderfully homely and everyday (and so typically Buddhist) yet memorable image.Sato Sensei's own careful attention to translation is evident when (in chapter 4) he discards the usual translation of kawarime using the static term 'difference', in favour of the dynamic 'turning point', shedding fresh light on the transition Shinran taught from the difficult (to realize) Path of the Sages – all other, conventional, Buddhist practices – to the easy (to practise, consisting only in recitation of Amida's name, and easy to enter Amida's Pure Land where one is enlightened listening to Amida Buddha's teachings) Path of the Pure Land Buddhist, in this specific case concerning the practice of love (hiji).Chapter 3, on Shinran's well-known, seemingly paradoxical statement “Eevn a good person can attain birth (in the Pure Land), how much more readily, then, the person with bad karma”; chapter 8, on non-practice and non-good; and chapter 10, where Shinran elucidates his own master Honen's teaching on nembutsu as the meaning of non-meaning, all deserve special attention. Regarding Chapter 3, and more fully explained in chapter 13, is Sato Sensei's carefully thought out transition of Shin practice from Amida's Ninteenth vow (ethical stage, of reliance on self-power practice) to the Twentieth vow (ethical-religious stage, but reitation of the nembutsu as a 'good' act to achieve liberation in the Pure Land) and finally the Eighteenth vow, the purely religious stage, where the nembutsu is recited in joyful gratitude to Amida for conceding such an easy manner of deliverance). As Sato Sensei comments (with regard to Chapter 16) “your ethical and moral effort is meant to be relative, not absolute.” “Whereas,” (on the same topic) he states “faith experience effortless liberation”. There is also (Chapter 16) a warning on over-intellectualising the teachings, using learning as a method of controlling the teaching (and others), clearly another strategy of the ego mind not to give up its domination of the individual's mind/heart.Also of great interest is Sato Sensi's discussion of the myokonin (unworldly saint) Asahara Sai-chi (Sato Sensei has published in Japan a collection of his poems; the final chapters Suzuki's Mysticism Christan and Buddhist are devoted to translations of 146 of Sai-chi's poems). However I would emphasize that the whole of Sato Sensei's work merits careful reading and rereading.There is in this book much to ponder and much to be learned, for example on the issues of motivation, practice, and realization, for according to Shin Buddhism it is precisely by giving up one's egoic pursuit of enlightenment through determined practice, relying on self-power, and instead surrendering to Amida's Other-power, that understanding and self-knowledge dawn.A truly remarkable, engaging work by a contemporary teacher of an ancient tradition, encapsulated in a twelfth century text, making these teachings as relevant today, in the west, as eight hundred years ago in Japan.As Sato Sensei succinctly yet eloquently puts it: “Once true faith is attained, the Name works with absolute freedom throughout the whole individual.” But let's finish with some heart advice given personally to Sato Sensei by Suzuki, that he generously shares wih us: “Practise the nembutsu just like the wind flowing effortlesly through the sky!”