In my readings, I have always found MYOKONINS to be special, here is an exert from one of the articles I have read, the exert is not long and it is meaningful: Public Talks and Lectures by Reverend Professor K.T. Sato Spiritual Director of Three Wheels Japanese Shin Buddhist Temple, London UK “Daisetz T. Suzuki and Saichi Asahara, a Shin Buddhist Poet” When introducing Japanese spirituality to the West, D. T. Suzuki placed great emphasis on the dynamic figures of Zen tradition. With their enigmatic words, paradoxical stories and forceful actions they have indeed made interesting figures of study, a study aided by the vast collection of Zen literature and mystical writings, and by the highly visible profile maintained by the Zen school throughout Japanese history. Japan has, however, another tradition of deep spirituality, the tradition of the Myokonin, the “wondrous, good people.” It was not any Shin Buddhist scholar but D. T. Suzuki himself who first started the study of Myokonin and introduced them to his contemporaries both in the East and the West. Writings on the Myokonin in English have been largely confined to a number of articles by D. T. Suzuki, who says: “They are distinguished generally by their good-heartedness, unworldliness, piousness, and lastly by their illiteracy, that is, their not being learned in the lore of their religion and not being at all argumentative about what they believe …..they are not intellectually demonstrative, they just go on practising what they have innerly experienced. When they express themselves at all, they are unaffected, their words come directly from their innermost hearts and refer directly to the truth of their faith.” The simplicity and ‘illiteracy’ of the Myokonin meant, of course, that they seldom attained positions of religious leadership and rarely left records of their spiritual insights. Even within Shin Buddhism their position has been largely peripheral. Writings on them began to reach the general public only with the work of D. T. Suzuki, who viewed the Myokonin as representing one of the purest forms of Japanese spirituality. Gasshou
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 02:47:54 +0000
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