Denial that “One’s True Nature is Buddha” and “The Pure Land Exists in Our Mind”

In the Special Preface to the Chapter on Faith of his Kyogyoshinsho, the Venerable Master wrote,

Monks and laypersons of this latter age and religious leaders of the times, who have fallen for the idea that “one’s true nature is Buddha” and that the “Buddha’s Pure Land exists in our mind,” belittle the True Enlightenment of the Pure Land. They are deluded by their practices of meditative and non-meditative good deeds and are thus blind to the diamond-hard shinjin.

In other words, this is the Venerable Master’s criticism of those who attack the Pure Land teachings while following the Path of Sages, or who outwardly follow the Pure Land teaching but whostill cling to “self-centered effort” (jiriki). But even more, it is a disavowal of the following positions: 1) that there is no “Pure Land apart from what is in our mind” (yuishin-no-jodo), and 2) that “our basic nature is Amida Buddha” (koshin-no-mida). If these two positions are denied, then the positions of “birth in the Pure Land in the present” and “becoming a Buddha in this world,” are also denied.

These concepts are found in the Tendai school of Buddha-dharma. There, the concepts, “there is no Pure Land apart from what is in my mind” and “our true nature is Amida Buddha” are asserted, as is, “I am Amida. Amida, in other words, is myself,” and, “this shuba world, itself, is the world of ‘Ultimate Joy’ (gokuraku) and this world of ‘Ultimate Joy’ itself is the shuba world.” This position asserts that distinctions such as those between Amida and myself, between the Pure Land of Ultimate Joy and “this defiled land” (shuba) are no more than the differences between enlightenment and delusion.

Master Honen, who rejected the Path of Sages, also rejected these concepts. In Volume 5 of Wago Toroku (A Record of the Light), there is the following passage:

Amida Buddha in the “Pure Land teaching” (Shingon-kyo) is the Buddha based on shinjin, and we should not seek elsewhere. In this teaching, Amida Buddha is the Enlightened body of Hozo Bosatsu. He exists in the Western Direction and is quite different (from the Buddha spoken of in the Tendai teachings).

Again, in Saiho Shinan-sho (Notes on Leading to the Western Direction), Master Honen said in a dharma talk:

That is why this teaching is about birth in the Pure Land. We do not speak about performing “practices” through countless lifetimes; rather, we speak of a world of Ultimate Joy (gokuraku) that exists apart from this shuba world, that Amida Buddha exists apart from myself, and escaping transmigration in this world for birth in the Pure Land where we will attain the ultimate Enlightenment.