our experience of shinjin

[Robert McCarthy]

I would love to hear from members of any experience they may have had that they relate to as shinjin. Dharmavidya has described shinjin as faith, especially the enlightening experience of the sudden awakening of faith. He refers to the ecstacy of spiritual breakthrough when the light reaches us and we feel uplifted. Two aspects to keep in mind- it is situated in ecounter and we are bombu- we may feel we have experienced shinjin, but we must accept we do not really know.

[Robert McCarthy]

so unimaginably crazy life can be. i never expected to open a discussion, never expected this subject matter and never imagined answering myself. something happens on this website- this engaged buddhhism. My last post took me into a time of primal passion earlier in my life, a time of great difficulty in my families life. At present there is great difficulty in my families life also, and the passion- primal and defying understanding returns. Easy to fall over, go into fear and need, but--- i need to be functional and caring to care for family-- i have met the nembutsu. Its maybe an hour or two since my post and a journey into despair and back to calm. The passion is real and remains. It becomes a different energy. I get the feel that shinjin is in a strange sense quite ordinary, quite a part of our lives that we can easily miss.
Namo amida bu

[Kaspalita]

Thanks for starting this thread Robert. When I first read your question what comes to mind is an experience I had during my hundred thousand nembutsu retreat, back in 2007. I came out of the whole retreat feeling incredibly high.

I remember visualising the Pureland, as in the contemplation sutra, I was imagining the trees of the Pureland, in a very conscious wilful way - here is one tree, here is the next, and so on, when I lost control of my imagination, like in a dream, when you are swept along by events outside your wilful control. I turned and began to move between one of the avenues of Jewelled trees, and as I turned as could see at the end of the row a massive Amida Buddha hundreds of feet tall, with Devas and Bodhisattvas flying around, and people below chanting - namo amida bu. He had the most intensely blue eyes, from which a great burst of light came, and engulfed me.

I guess all of this can be explained from a materialist psychological perspective, if you like, as well as from a spiritual one. One of the big effects of this retreat, and experience, on me was that I became open to many more possibilities of things beyond the mundane world, and beyond my own understanding. Whereas before, anything that I couldn't explain in a scientific way, was simply excluded from my worldview.

This is a much more dramatic encounter than the ordinary shinjin you describe, but I think I have a feel for what you are talking about, sometimes at least, I am aware of my 'salvation' if I simply entrust, and say the nembutsu, and of coruse, other times I get in the way...

[Robert McCarthy]

I am very pleased to be talking with you Kaspalita- can i use the word awesome. such a view you were given must have been so uplifting of spirit and a tangible feeling for your faith and belief. and isnt it wonderful how there can be a full psychological and full buddhist explanaiton for the phenomena. I wrote my post while still gripped by fear of mara, spent the day exhausted and understand that this terrible fear is such a gift- i have tangible feeling for my faith and belief- nembutsu tamed mara, allowed me to deal with mara.
namo amida bu.

[Kaspalita]

Hi Robert, Thanks for the reply.

I think that mara can be a window into faith too, by discerning mara, by implication we can imagine not-mara. By recognising our foolishness, we can come closer to Amida.

[Katrien Sercu]

Kaspalita, this makes me silent. Also the trust that you dare to chare this, without fear what others will think of this..I know that you life with this Pureland content and then it is so wunderful to read that then Pureland becomes visible: grace befor and after your longing to visualising the Pureland. Namo Aida Bu

[Kenny Lewis]

Hi Robert,

Thank you for starting this thread, as it's a term that I was not familiar with - I've been looking in to it now since you first bought it up on the other thread, there seem to be quite a few definitions kicking around but i am staying within the definition Dharmavidya has described shinjin as: faith.

Infact, my first meeting with 'Dharmavidya helped me to kind of indentify (wrong word i think) something quite un-namable -a meeting completly accidental, no design from either himself or I, it was only upon recapitulation quite some time later ( a month or two) that I decided to trust the fact that there may actually have been some other influence involved, which was from neither of us, directly. ( I still don't attach much of a meaning to it - its just a thing..right)

So I had to think about this shinjin thing you mentioned, granted then, what I might put here will evolve, as I do with time, I got to the point of taking refuge quietly, privatly on a regular basis ( a few years ago), which seems to have developed into being able to trust my instinctual impressions and in conjunction with not relying on overly analysing the why's - which kind of doesn't make sense on the surface of things because anyone who knows me also knows that i do a lot of asking why, 'why is this so' - 'why are conditions like this or like that' - but what I'm trying to say here is it all about my first impression of things, and trusting that, when I was younger i spent a lot of time ingnoring those initial impressions where as now I don't, if something feels right it is right, if something feels wrong it is wrong and i take it from there.

Quite difficult to explain actually, I feel like I'm contradicting myself even now, but it feels right to write this, now -- so that's my experience of shinjin -- today.

With Peace.

[Robert McCarthy]

Dear kenny, it is also wonderful to be talking with you- we have been around each other in a number of discussions havent we. I get the essential feel for how you describe shinjin and it so reminds me of what dharmavidya also says. remember we are bombu, we can have such a strong sense of knowing and we trust this to a good extent, but also we are bombu, prone to getting it wrong and that is the greatest gift- i, you, all of us give it our very best and that is always good enough for amida. namo amida by

[Katrien Sercu]

Dear Robert, here I meet you again in an 'intimate' discussion. So thanks for beginning with this!
Yes, I find this intimate and delicate: a moment of enlightening is so near of my heart, so vulnerable, so beautiful, so short..that it is difficult to express this. As if words and people can brake it down. The effect stays a while and then it is finished, but....the wonder that this is possible stay, without waiting.
The word shinjin is new for me, but the feeling is not... I'm a little bit scared to say this, as if I'm proud or wrong...but often, when I was in nature, I could have such a feeling of greatness, light, overwhelmed love and embeddiment that I seems too little to feel this all. When I lay down in the grass, looking to the sky, then the sky became the flour, so real, so full...I can not explain this.
With people it is more difficult, because I have difficulties to trust people! (That's why I need so much Amida-Trust).But I remember shorts moments of a silence, a dept, a greatness, love, felt between the eyes and the heart of a friend and me, so overwhelming that I have to look away, because it is too much. Or in some moments of brighting insight, that come from..??
For me it is a feeling of being too little for all this light and love and widness; it's fantastic but it is too much: only some moments of awareness is possible for me.
Maybe this is not shinjin? I don't know, but when I read your question, this answer came without thinking (only for the english words..). I hope to read more answers and questons here!!
With love. Namo Amida Bu

[Robert McCarthy]

dear katrien this is the first time that i realize amida trust the website is both the organization and in its name the refuge. what i call a durrr moment. i enjoy many such moments.
its a good thing to not worry too much about our words being both proud and being within faith. that is our situation. we talk to each other with the best intentions we can muster- and often enough i see later when i reread some post or other, my pride manifest. and more than that , a little ego hurt in knowing that pride has been outed in amida. seeing that often enough though takes its power away a bit. that has been my experience.
when i first opened this discussion, i really was out of my depth. i now understand that the measure of shinjin is more in the future. did the experience, which may include extra mundane features, lead to a sustained turning?
but i also like the intimacy of such a discussion. somehow i manage to turn most discussions into my own experience. that has been my way through my life. it is so good to be trusting enough to open the intimate to all those who open our posts. it is so good i think because we can learn to let go of the personal just a little and allow it to become the universal just a little. namo amida bu

[Katrien Sercu]

This touches me deeply, Robert. No words! Namo Amida Bu

[Richard Modiano]

" ...Dharmavidya has described shinjin as faith..."

In the Jodo Shinshu tradition (of which I'm a memeber) shinjin (信心) is described as true entrusting rather than faith since informal usage of the word "faith" can be very broad and in the Western culture context lead to confusion.

"... Two aspects to keep in mind- it is situated in ecounter and we are bombu- we may feel we have experienced shinjin, but we must accept we do not really know."

In the Jodo Shinshu tradition, shinjin develops over time through "deep hearing" (monpo) of Amida's call of the nembutsu and to the awakening and settlement of the mind that is aware of the working of Amida Buddha's Primal Vow, and the assurance of birth in the Pure Land at death. Thus, settled mind, anjin (安心), means that we really do know.

[Robert McCarthy]

Dear Richard, Commonly faith is regarded as an aspect of belief rather than religious practice and experience and it is a word that needs to be used with care, I very much agree. Your final paragraph very much grabs my attention Richard. The deep hearing seems an ongoing process, leading to Shinjin in time through nembutsu. Also though, I had the understanding that Shinjin can manifest relatively abruptly, perhaps even leading one to enter the stream, but only in time would we know if it has led to settled faith. It seems that amidism and jodo shinshu may differ in settled faith. My understanding of amidism is that settled faith, having crossed the river, means that you have discarded the raft. Practice remains for the love of amida, but we have not left our bombu nature while living in the mundane. In jodo shinshu, does settled mind, anjin, really knowing, take us from our bombu nature while in the mundane?