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Updated: August 5, 2024
So also is the rigid classification, so prominent in "the old sects," of all beings or pupils into three grades. As in Islam or Calvinism, all believers stand on a level. To Shinran, faith was the sole saving act. To rely upon the power of the Original Prayer of Amitabha Buddha with the whole heart and give up all idea of ji-riki or self-power, is called the truth.
The regular doctrines of Buddhism that salvation comes only through self-effort and self-victory are rejected, and salvation through the merits of another is taught. "Ta-riki," "another's power," not "Ji-riki," "self-power," is with them the orthodox doctrine. Priests may marry and eat meat, practices utterly abhorrent to the older and more primitive Buddhism.
Therefore the wise man ought to practise pure behavior; passing through the wilderness of birth and death, pure conduct is to him a virtuous guide. From pure behavior comes self-power, which frees a man from many dangers; pure conduct, like a ladder, enables us to climb to heaven.
But it was my habitual practice to withdraw the boys from the routine of the book, and to appeal to their self-power in the treatment of questions not comprehended in that routine. At first, the change from the beaten track usually excited a little aversion: the youth felt like a child amid strangers; but in no single instance have I found this aversion to continue.
I have seen the boy's eye brighten, and at length, with a pleasure of which the ecstasy of Archimedes was but a simple expansion, heard him exclaim, 'I have it, sir. The consciousness of self-power, thus awakened, was of immense value; and animated by it, the progress of the class was truly astonishing.
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