Recently an Internet religious discussion forum hosted the question of hope’s power to sustain faith. The following is my somewhat modified reply, in which I deny the notion of
"Spe enim salvi facti sumus unum" [Wiki translation] or the principle which, like Luther's "sola fide",
proposes that hope alone is or can be the basis of faith.
Depending on a religious person’s perspective, I do suppose that some few people can sustain their faith on the principle of “Hope Alone”.
However, from my own perspective, faith should only be a secondary interpretive tool which helps the intellect delineate a primary, “foundational” religious experience. Without that kind of hands-on, immediate spiritual encounter, faith is just empty words about a doctrine, or else about some other person’s experience (e.g. a founder of a religion, a saint, a guru, etc.), but not one’s own experience, which is the only decisive matter to those for whom “faith” is equally “gnosis” or “knowing”.
So, for me, one’s interpretation – one’s “faith-in” or “faith-about” – of a core spiritual experience or experiences must be based on that initial and initiating experience of the Sacred Transcendent … or it will be absent its most cogent and driving factor – spiritual experience – and it will consist of nothing but mere words combined with wishful thinking – wishful thinking being one aspect of “Hope”. So a faith and/or a hope that is not based on a liberating sacred experience is bound to be nothing but a shell whose missing core is its central, crucial, essential “gnosis” – at best an empty faith and a pointless hope.
This issue is illustrated in Jodo Shinshu/Shin Buddhism’s teaching of Shinjin – Amida Buddha’s sheer, unearned gift of “perfect faith” – a faith that is at one and the same time “gnosis” because the gift of faith is itself the living experience of the living Buddha’s activity in oneself. In the reception of Shinjin, spiritual faith is conveyed in-and-as spiritual knowing. And so is spiritual hope, which is based on the received experience. But sayings like, “Our hope is in Amida Buddha delivering us to His Pure Land”, while emotionally true, still don’t cover the experiential nature of Shinjin.
Yes, Shin people are hopeful about their ultimate destiny of being transformed into Buddhas in the Pure Land, but that hope, because it is based on the prior experience of Shinjin, is far more than “mere” hope as cheerful, blissful anticipation. On the contrary, because it is based in the Shinjin experience, Jodo Shinshu “Hope” is expressed in the adherent’s own perception of the Shinjin-mind and the state of non-retrogression, both of which preclude a “falling-back” into pre-Shin modes of thinking and living. Once embraced by Amida, the Shin person is never let go. And that security, of course, extends far beyond both the secular and the standard religious connotations of Hope. Shinjin permits us to actually, in this life, step aboard “the Raft from the Other Shore” – the “vessel” which will safely transport us over the storm-tossed ocean of samsara to the shore of the Pure Land, where Faith and Hope together merge into Amida’s infinite compassion and find their true original nature in Buddhahood itself.
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Isn’t it rare though to receive Shinjin?
I don’t know the statistics but according to Jodo Shinshu, it is relatively rare to receive Shinjin. I would guess that’s because so few people know of Jodo Shinshu outside of northern Asia, Japan, and Japanese-populated areas like parts of California in the US. The “theological” reason given for this is that in order to be fully aware of the grace offered by Amida Buddha, one’s karma has had to ripen to that point. Again, of course, karmic ripening is not due to any self-power practice – it’s a “natural” function of one’s spiritual condition. One becomes aware of the Amida Dharma, something “clicks”, and conversion occurs via the bestowal of Shinjin to the adherent.
At this point I would be happy to have hope; hope that there is an ultimate goodness, and that this goodness accepts me, bad as I am.
Yes, Shin offers full acceptance of us “just as we are” – I.e., we are all “bad” – a state Shin refers to as being “bombus” – unenlightened, ignorant beings who are led by blind passions. We cannot enlighten ourselves by our own efforts, so we rely completely on Amida Buddha to do it for us (kind of like in Christianity where Jesus saves us, but works do not and cannot save us).
Shin also teaches that if one’s faith is aimed at Amida but is still imperfectly realized, Amida still accepts us and has “many mansions” in the afterlife which are like “suburbs” of the Pure Land. So it’s not hopeless even if one’s faith has not yet fully reached “Shinjin level”. Amida’s compassion is so great that those who sincerely call upon his Name (Namo Amida Butsu) will have a share in the Pure Land – either in its fulness, or in one of its outlying “suburbs”.
That’s good to hear. Shin is such a wise and happy faith.
Yes, that’s how I experience Shin – as a wise and happy faith which has at its center a wise, compassionate Buddha who saves me in spite of myself.
🙂