I was thinking (or is that "mentation".....
) of opening a new thread on
hakarai AKA "no-calculation". But there seems to be enough threads. With a woolly mind like mine most words tend to blend into each other, as the threads do. We murder to dissect, said William Blake, who spoke to angels, and once reported seeing his brother's spirit, upon that brother's death, leaving his body and ascending "clapping his hands with joy". Anyway, enough of Blake.
This thread was on the pre-eminence of Grace. Grace is a word that for me blends into many other words. Grace is the Reality in which I live and move and have my being. Most things follow, including the way of no-calculation.
Hakarai is a technical Shin Buddhist term. It can be looked up in the Glossary of Shin Buddhist terms on the Collected Works of Shinran site. (But as the zens say, better to see the face than to hear the name.)
Shinran, one "father" of Pure Land Buddhism, used hakarai as a synonym for self-power. It refers to all acts of intellect and will aimed at achieving liberation. "Specifically, it is the Shin practicer’s efforts to make themselves worthy of Amida’s compassion in their own eyes and of clinging to their judgments and designs, predicated on their own goodness, for attaining religious awakening.
Pure Land is often confused with Christianities "salvation by faith" but Pure Land arose from the fog of the non-dual East. For Pure Land, "salvation"
is faith - or, looking up the glossary again, "shinjin".
No-calculation fits with all this. Plotting one's own "salvation" (or enlightenment) when such has already been given as pure gift seems to be a waste of precious time. Just say thank you and get on with it.
The "battle" between self-power (
jiriki) and Other Power (
tariki) is another problem you can look up in the Glossary, but really "calculation" is self power, and being devoid of calculation is Other Power.
(Note:- Other Power in no way refers to a power "up there" or outside of us. No theists allowed in....
)
As my master Saichi has it (to whom I am apprenticed)
O Saichi, will you tell us of Other Power?
Yes, but there is neither self power nor Other Power.
What is, is the Graceful Acceptance only
Often you find yourself calculating when on the hakarai path, but that is all part of the way. It can even be part of the fun.
"My eyes being hindered by blind passions,
I cannot perceive the light that grasps me;
Yet the great compassion, without tiring,
Illumines me always"
(Shinran, from "Hymns of the Pure Land Masters")
.....or, for my Christian friends, here is Mother Julian of Norwich:-
If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.