To Hear AND Receive

The following is adapted from a Dharma Talk I presented at the Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple on Sunday, October 6, 2024. I offer it to Being Bombu readers in gratitude to the LAAHBT for allowing me the chance to share my message.

Every Sunday in my temple and in Jodo Shinshu temples throughout the United States, we chant what is known as The Three Treasures. You can read two versions of it here (Thanks, San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin!). Known in some Buddhist schools as The Three Refuges or The Three Jewels, it is our weekly homage to the triple gem that is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The words themselves are a profession of our core beliefs as Buddhists. At its opening, it reads, 

Difficult is it to hear the Teachings of the Blessed One. Now we hear it.

Then again at the end, we see, 

Even through ages of myriads of kalpas, hard is it to hear such an excellent, profound, and wonderful doctrine. Now we are able to hear and receive it.

And with the last sentence, it finishes,

Let us thoroughly understand the true meaning of Tathagata’s Teaching.

Taken together, these are just five simple sentences that serve kind of like bookends to the rest of The Three Treasures. In between them, we pledge ourselves to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Those are the parts that we say together on Sundays, whereas it is the leader who usually reads the opening and closing. I choose to describe those opening and closing passages as “bookends” on purpose. You see, professionally, I am a librarian and have been for almost 40 years. Bookends are something with which I am very familiar. What do they do? They hold up the books - keep them standing or from falling all over the place.  Yes, the books that stand between them are very important. But without a solid set of bookends to keep them straight, they fall down. That is what I believe these opening and closing words do for the pledges we make in The Three Treasures. While the three homages we say in between are also key, it is the opening and closing passages that give us a framework for standing upright in those promises we make.

As I said, they total a mere five sentences. But take a close look at them. Each emphasizes the same thing - something on which Master Shinran placed great importance. What do we see? The word HEAR is used over and over again. It is purposefully repeated for emphasis. And notice too when that word is used. It is not while we are chanting together. Rather, it is while the leader is speaking. What are we supposed to be doing while the leader is speaking? Hearing their words - listening and reflecting on what is being said. In Japanese, this is called monpō, and it means “listening to the Dharma.” This is not just any kind of listening but rather an active kind of listening by which we strive to receive the message that is being delivered. In English, we say that this is “deep listening.” Shinran had another word that he also used to describe this kind of listening. He called it chōmon, which is a type of “transformative listening,” and he considered it the most important practice of all. 

Just how important to our liberation did Shinran believe hearing and receiving the Dharma is? Well, I’d like to borrow some of his own words on that point. In Chapter II of his Kyōgyōshinshō, we read,

Even if the whole world is on fire,

Be sure to pass through it to hear the Dharma

And later in the same chapter on Revealing the True Practice, he quotes the Verses on the Larger Sutra as saying,

Even if the whole universe were filled with fire,

Pass through it straightaway to hear the Buddha’s Name.

I do not know about you, but I would say that Shinran’s message in these passages is quite clear.

When Youien, Shinran’s disciple, compiled his record of the Master’s teachings - The Tannishō, he too noted Shinran’s emphasis on the practice of “deep hearing”. In fact, in his highly-regarded commentary on The Tannishō, Professor Taitetsu Unno goes to great lengths to explain this doctrine to us. He wrote that “[d]eep hearing leads to a twofold awakening: appreciating the boundless compassion of Amida, and simultaneously seeing into the bottomless depth of blind passion.” Professor Unno gives us the best description of “deep hearing” that I have ever encountered. He said that,

Deep hearing, then, is not just an auditory sensation, involving the ear, but a matter of the whole person. "Deep hearing of the Dharma" means embodying the Buddha Dharma, an experiential awakening of the total self, conscious and unconscious, mind and body.

Through the professor’s words, we truly get a sense of just how powerful this type of listening really is. Shinran himself believed that deep listening was a pathway to developing Shinjin, or true entrusting, and thus the best hope for us bombu today.

Let us stop for a moment and process this lesson. When we come together to hear the weekly Dharma message at service or when we read and discuss the teachings with one another, we are asked to do so not just with our ears but the whole of our being. This is what it means to RECEIVE it, as well as hear it. It is only in doing so that, as the professor says, we can hope for a total, experiential awaking of our selfs. This is not the type of listening that we tend to do during our daily lives. It’s not even the type of listening our husbands, wives, parents, or bosses expect when they ask, “Did you hear me?” Now, I will grant that some of the folks in our lives probably do wish that we listened to them with the same intensity that we do the Dharma. But come on, we ARE only human, after all! We have our limitations and our flaws.

It is interesting, though, that it was exactly these limitations and these flaws of ours that Shinran had in mind when he prescribed this practice of deeply listening to the Dharma. He had experienced firsthand the futility of trying to reach enlightenment through the many physical and mental efforts that were the focus of other Buddhist practices. If monks and mendicants could not secure Nirvana through their strenuous efforts, how on earth could common people with their busy and frenetic lives - not to mention all of their blind passions - do so? He believed and taught that our best hope and recourse was simply to entrust ourselves to the Compassion of Amida Buddha and his Primal Vow.

All of this, of course, begs the big question for each of us personally. How do we open our hearts and minds so that we might develop this type of complete entrusting? Well, according to Master Shinran, we do it by listening deeply and wholly to the Dharma. This is the “hearing” and “receiving” that we talk about when we recite The Three Treasures. It is a hearing and receiving that, if you will forgive the sports analogy, levels the proverbial playing field. Remember that it was Shinran who taught us that Amida’s Compassion receives us all without discrimination, regardless of our faults or shortcomings or even strengths. There is nothing more required of any us than our capacity to listen attentively and deeply and to see the workings of the Primal Vow all around us. As we listen deeply to the Dharma, we become more aware of our own limitations and Amida's boundless compassion, leading to a natural deepening of Shinjin and our own true, entrusting hearts.

I want to emphasize here that we are not just talking about that which is audible. “Listening” in the Jodo Shinshu context expands to cover the myriad ways we encounter the Dharma in our lives. It covers all of the forms in which the Dharma can come to us. This includes the things we see, hear, touch, taste, and even sense. Whether it is in the workings of nature around us, the kindness we receive from others, or the goodness that we see happening amidst the chaos of this world. The Dharma is always being spoken. It brings me both an immense sense of joy as well as purpose to know that all I have to do is listen to it deeply - that all of you just need to listen to it deeply as well. And it fills my heart with gratitude that we can come together in our temples and sanghas to listen to it together . . . to, as The Three Treasures says, “hear and receive it”. Keep that in mind the next time you are chanting it!