What are these two ESSENTIAL pathways?  

The first is the path of self-power.  It is the path of doing some sort of discipline, wisdom and practice that, step by step, and life by life, will enable a person to climb the mountain of enlightenment.  This is the kind of Buddhism that most people are familiar with.  It’s the path that depends on PRACTICE – and that tells people that PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT…literally.  It is a heroic path, for heroic people, of heroic dedication and unswerving commitment.

The second is the path of OTHER-power.  It is the path for those of us who are not heroic – who simply don’t have the capacity, who are too ignorant, too distracted, too caught up in their day to day dramas.  It is the path for those of us who are – more often than we’d like to admit – just plain foolish.  It is the path for those of us who recognize that we have evil tendencies that simply cannot be eradicated, no matter what kind of practice we might attempt.

In this path of OTHER-Power, we depend on someone or something entirely outside of our finite, limited selves to attain our aspiration for Buddhahood.  And, because of Shakyamuni Buddha’s explanation one day at a place called Vulture Peak, we know WHAT that something else is.  We know WHAT we can depend on – and WHO we can depend on.  For it was there on Vulture Peak that Shakyamuni Buddha taught us about the person and work of ANOTHER Buddha – a transcendental Buddha named Amida.

It was on Vulture Peak that Shakyamuni Buddha first explained that for those who cannot follow the discipline, wisdom and practices of the path of self-power – there IS another way to complete the journey of birth and death through countless lives.  There IS another way to break the karmic bondage that has caused us to suffer.  There IS another way to attain the perfection that only a Buddha knows.

Master Shinran became the ultimate teacher of this other way – this way of OTHER-power.  He taught people – plain people as well as educated people – how to experience the blessed state of SHINJIN – the state of KNOWING, in THIS life, that we would become Buddhas immediately after this life is over, simply by depending on the person and work of this transcendental Buddha named Amida.

This state of KNOWING – this diamond like FAITH that is the core of SHINJIN – is not something we can work up.  Rather it is something given to us by Amida Buddha himself.  It is given, freely and fully, to the person who truly YEARNS for complete liberation, and yet knows he (or she) cannot achieve it – and then comes to entrust himself completely and utterly to Amida Buddha, who has vowed to save us all, and is fulfilling his vow right up until this very moment in which you are reading these words.