Citation

Kiyozawa, Manshi. “The Indispensable Conditions for Religious Conviction.” December Fan: The Buddhist Essays of Manshi Kiyozawa, translated by Nobuo Haneda, Shinshu Center of America, 2014, pp. 19–23.

Quotes

• species:
• themes:

Collations

• Religious conviction is the inner peace gained by relying on that which transcends man.
• Religious conviction is achieved by completely detaching oneself from all forms of dependence and reliance on self-efforts.
• To attain religious conviction, one should depend solely on religion.
• To attain religious conviction, one should pursue renunciation of self and all other concerns to focus solely on religion.
• One doesn't have to be a hermit or a monk. One can continue engaging with the world, but a person with religious conviction has a mind independent of all other concerns and focused solely on Amida. That person is not distracted nor disturbed.
• Love and revere all things. There is nothing in the world to detest or despise. This world is the best possible one.
• A person who has attained religious conviction is a free person, for whom nothing is an obstacle.
• When a person attains religious conviction, everything he does becomes religion.

My thoughts

The main point here is complete faith to Amida, which is Weiman and Dewey's God. That super human power will do what it does. To recognize this is to say that whatever we are doing is simply part of that larger process. We couldn't see our efforts as that thing that changes this power beyond us. To do so is to be disturbed and distracted and to put too much power on the self. The self is there but it is a powerless self compared to Nature, Amida, or God. To have full faith on Other Power means to shift our perspective on everything that we do. Everything we do is simply in accordance to that larger process of life. The world is good as it is.

Prompts