A brief address on the occasion of my Kikyoshiki

(Click on this link to hear a recording of this piece)

I think that perhaps the single most important thing to try to do for you today, as an expression of my profound thanks to all of you for being here with me on this very special occasion, is to give you a sense of why, back in June of this year (2023), I asked my friend, meditation teacher, and ministerial colleague, Miki Nakura-sensei, whether I could receive a dharma name in a Kikyoshiki ceremony in which I would publicly commit to the Jōdo Shinshū path, living within Amida Buddha’s Primal Vow.

To tell the whole story would take way too long, but I think I can tell you something helpful in a reasonably brief fashion. 

To borrow some words of James W. Woelfel, looking back through my life — which is, remember, deeply rooted in the liberal, Free Christian tradition — I realise that:

“. . . in my own ongoing struggle to make sense of the Christian context of life- and world-interpretation, I find basic elements of that context which I simply cannot render coherent any longer, and I earnestly wonder how other persons manage to.”

Although I could not have put it as clearly as this at the beginning, it seems to me that from about the age of 14 or 15, this struggle has been underway. Consequently, for 43 years now, including 3 years studying Christian theology at Oxford University, I have genuinely been trying my hardest to render the basic elements of Christian life- and world-interpretation coherent in a way that didn’t flatly contradict the admirable and inspiring teaching and example of the human Jesus. Today’s ceremony is therefore, in part, a frank admission that I have not been able to resolve this contradiction. But, to my surprise, along the way, I have slowly discovered something that is able to render coherent, or at least genuinely meaningful, what I believe I had learnt from the example of the human Jesus. 

Although I became interested in Buddhism very early on, it was not until the early 2000s that I began seriously to look again at the Buddhist tradition and, in 2007, I read something written by Michael McGhee which introduced me to the work of the Japanese 20th-century philosopher, Tanabe Hajime. I was so taken with what I read that I immediately emersed myself in Tanabe’s 1946 masterpiece, “Philosophy of Metanoetics” in which he drew powerfully upon some key ideas of Shinran Shonin and the Jōdo Shinshū tradition of Pure Land Buddhism. Now, relevant to my story here, in chapter 7 of that book, I was particularly struck by the following passage:

“Shinran’s religious thought deserves special attention in our times [1946] precisely because it is relevant to the needs of present-day intellectuals. Its profound and wide-reaching truth can appeal to the hearts of our people — nay, to all people everywhere. I have no doubt that of all the sects of Buddhism, the doctrine of Pure Land Buddhism is the most accessible to the Christian world. It is comparatively easy to read its mythological elements in symbolic terms, and its doctrine makes no appeal to miracles or anything that contradicts the scientific mind. If, as we shall see shortly, the core of Shinran’s thought lies in metanoetics [i.e. repentance and letting-go of self-power], it has internal affinities with science through the principle of absolute criticism described earlier. In this sense, we might even say that it is more accessible to the modern scientific spirit than Christian theism is.”

This struck me, and continues to strike me, as right and so for the next 16 years I found myself exploring ever more deeply, not only the Kyoto school of philosophers but also the Shin Buddhist tradition as a whole, but especially that represented by the Shinshū Ōtani-ha branch of Jōdo Shinshū through figures like Kiyozawa Manshi, Soga Ryojin and Yasuda Rijin. This is also the tradition to which Miki Nakura-sensei belongs, and which, of course, I am now about to join. Along the way, I also discovered, to my utter delight, that between 1887 and 1922 the Unitarian movement, of which I am, of course, a minister, had extensive connections with Jōdo Shinshū ministers and scholars. One of those connections was with Joseph Estlin Carpenter, who was both a key founding figure of this Cambridge Unitarian congregation and also a pioneering scholar of comparative religion. In his review essay “Religion in the Further East” (Hibbert Journal 7:700) written in 1909, Carpenter said about a work by the Shinshū Ōtani-ha Jōdo Shinshū priest, Tada Kanai, that:

“It will be to the lasting shame of Christian sectarianism if the Buddhism that expresses itself thus remains estranged from the character and the message of Jesus Christ.”

So, with a real, direct link made between Jōdo Shinshū and the Unitarian tradition [see also here], I felt even more inspired and encouraged to push on with my explorations, and one author whose work I particularly came to value was Alfred Bloom, an American scholar who pioneered Jōdo Shinshū studies in the English-speaking world. In 1946, he was sent to Japan to serve in the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service, but at this point in his life he was still promoting an evangelical form of Christianity. In a short, biographical essay called, “A Spiritual Odyssey: My Encounter with Pure Land Buddhism,” he tells us what then happened:

“[I had the] opportunity to give talks in Christian churches in English as a means of helping Japanese youth learn English and hear the Gospel. On one occasion, as I preached on the Christian idea of grace, the minister translated my words. He said, “This is like Amida [Buddha].”

Bloom recounts that, this brought him up short because he had been taught to believe that only Christianity had the truth about how the world is and our place in it. For him, the sudden experience of the Gospel being translated so directly into the terms of another religious tradition proved to be a pivotal, life-changing moment in his own journey of faith. Naturally, for me, as a liberal Christian, Unitarian minister who was now intra-acting powerfully with Jōdo Shinshū thinking and practice, Bloom’s story was of greatest interest to me and, taken together with the earlier experience of Carpenter, I began to understand that my own spiritual journey, though unusual, was not one which was taking me through wholly unknown or new territory. Instead, I began to see it was a journey with a long and honourable lineage.

While there’s much more I could add, I’ll begin to draw to a close by highlighting some of Bloom’s words from 1984, which encapsulate my reasons for embracing Jōdo Shinshū as my personal faith, something which I feel assured, will help me better fulfil my role as an advocate of free-religion ( 自由宗教 jiyū shūkyō) working within the Unitarian tradition. Bloom wrote (the quotation is found on p. 15 of the pdf, on the page numbered, 115):

“Shinran’s thought completes the evolution of liberal religion as it has developed in western society. It permits a person to maintain a critical religious stance which is a key element in religious liberalism, while at the same time, it promotes a deep religious commitment and devotional perspective harmonious with intellectual endeavor. It makes possible a more integrated religious existence in the western context than is now provided for by many traditional western denominations.”

To put it simply, after 43 years of exploring liberal religion from within the liberal Christian and Radical Enlightenment tradition, I think Bloom is right and, basically, this is why I have taken the step I have today. But be in no doubt, taking this step away from Christianity and formally into Jōdo Shinshū is not a rejection of what I feel I have learnt from Jesus and the liberal Christian tradition, not at all. Instead, I feel that this next step on my personal journey of faith, in which there is no final graduation, represents a deepening of my understanding of all I have learnt until now. 

But, today, with a wholly clean heart and full belief (pathos), I find I can say along with my own liberal, free-religious exemplar, Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei that, although my own religious life “has been nurtured equally by both Buddhism and Christianity” I have reached the point where I know that, “temperamentally, I . . . lean more towards being a Buddhist than a Christian” (“God or no God?”, Creation, Issue 77, 1957) and so the time has simply come publicly to admit that I can no longer ignore the graceful call of Amida Buddha. And so, here I stand, I can do no other.

Thank you all for being here with me today.

Namu Amida Butsu.

—o0o—

The Dharma Name (Homyo) I was given by Miki Nakura-sensei was:

釋聞信 Shaku Monshin

“Shaku” ( 釋 ) refers to Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha.

“Mon” ( 聞 ) refers to “hearing”, and “shin” ( 信 ) refers to “faith.” 

Taken together, “Shaku Monshin” means faith arising from hearing the Dharma taught by Shakyamuni Buddha.