“Ultimate Truth” and “Conventional Truth”

The term “ultimate truth” (shin-tai) is understood using phrases such as “superior principle” (shi gi-tai) and “first principle” (dai-ichigi-tai), and refers to truth itself.

“Conventional truth” (zoku-tai) is understood to mean “secular truth” (sezoku-tai), and refers to truth from a secular or worldly point of view.

“Ultimate truth” is also understood as “transworldly truth (dharma)” (shusse no ho) and “conventional truth” as “worldly truth” (seken no ho).

As previously mentioned, among the views of those who assert that Master Rennyo distorted the Venerable Master Shinran’s teachng, is the problem of “the two truths of the ultimate and conventional” (shinzoku nitai). In this case, the “ultimate truth” of “the two truths of the ultimate and conventional” is considered to be “transworldly truth” (way of birth in the Pure Land) and “conventional truth” to be “worldly truth” (moral and legal laws).

Those who consider the essence of the Venerable Master Shinran’s shinjin to be abandonment of governmental authority emphasize Master Rennyo’s use of phrases such as “‘king’s law’ is primary” and “take the secular path.” They assert that Master Rennyo’s statements such as:

• “Outwardly maintain the ‘king’s law’ of the five Confucian virtues of benevolence, justice, courtesy, wisdom and sincerity, and inwardly rely on ‘Buddhacentered power’”
• “Do not neglect (the rules established by) the “inspector supervisor” (shugo) and the “lords of the district” (jito)

are expressions of “the two truths of the ultimate and conventional” (shinzoku nitai) that the Venerable Master Shinran never spoke of, and therefore is completely different from the Venerable Master’s teaching. They criticize Master Rennyo for kowtowing to those in authority.

And even when it comes to the Venerable Master Shinran at the age of 84 having to disown his son, Zenran, such scholars assert that the basic reason the Venerable Master did so was that Zenran associated himself with those in power, and not because of differences in how birth in the Pure Land could be attained.