Shinran - "I can do no good"

[truthb]

Namu Amida Butsu

In the 2nd chapter of Tanisho, Shinran says "I can do no good."

Would be curious to hear what others think he meant.

My understanding would be that he is unable to do ENOUGH good to attain Buddhahood.... but I have a hard time understanding NO good.

Namu Amida Butsu

[PadmaVonSamba]

My limited understanding from reading and studying Shinran would lead me to interpret that statement as meaning “all my self-effort is useless”, meaning that when we attach ourselves to our actions as being either good or bad, we are indulging in self-power rather than in other-power. In other words, Shinran can try to be as good as possible, but it doesn’t make any difference. Only Amida’s compassion matters.
”Enough” and “not enough” are two sides of the same coin. That’s still wallowing in dualities. In Shinran’s absolute view, there is no such thing as enough and not enough, because those are both self-power concepts.
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[GrapeLover]

Also from the Tannisho:

Good thoughts arise in us through the prompting of good karma from the past, and evil comes to be thought and performed through the working of evil karma. The late Master said, "Knowing that every evil act done- even as slight as a particle on the tip of a strand of rabbit's fur or sheep's wool- has its cause in past karma."

Further, the Master once asked, "Yuien-bo, do you accept all that I say?"

"Yes I do," I answered.

"Then will you not deviate from whatever I tell you?" he repeated.

I humbly affirmed this. Thereupon he said, "Now, I want you to kill a thousand people. If you do, you will definitely attain birth."

I responded, "Though you instruct me thus, I'm afraid it is not in my power to kill even one person."

"Then why did you say that you would follow whatever I told you?"

He continued, "By this you should realize that if we could always act as we wished, then when I told you to kill a thousand people in order to attain birth, you should have immediately done so. But since you lack the karmic cause inducing you to kill even a single person, you do not kill. It is not that you do not kill because your heart is good. In the same way, a person may not wish to harm anyone and yet end up killing a hundred or a thousand people."
Thus he spoke of how we believe that if our hearts are good, then it is good for birth, and if our hearts are evil, it is bad for birth, failing to realize that it is by the inconceivable working of the Vow that we are saved.

Therefore I would personally take such a quote as indicating that “doing good” is actually only acting out your karma and creating new karma because of it. As such, in terms of how people tend to think of the concepts, there is no such thing as “good” (because it’s nothing Pure or special—it’s just karma) or a “good person” (again because they’re just acting out their karma, and couldn’t do otherwise). All of that “good” is just samsara and cannot earn enlightenment, which is inherently ‘available’ through the Vow.

Similarly, in his “Hymns on the Offence or Doubting the Primal Vow”, he repeatedly criticises people who “believe in the recompense of good and evil”—he clearly believes in the function of karma, so what he’s criticising is the belief that “good” earns Birth and “evil” hinders the Vow, when in fact nothing can earn or affect it.

When I look at Chapter 2 of the Tannisho though I only see him saying he’s incapable of “any other practice” or “religious practice” which I’d take quite literally. He’s saying that he can do nembutsu, and even if it were hypothetically the cause for him falling to hell, he wouldn’t regret it, because he doesn’t have the capacity for other practices anyway. Part of the common theme of Pure Land practice being easy and “Self-Power” practices being very hard to make fruitful.