The Easy Path Isn't What You Think (Part 1)

Great Faith Great Wisdom is sitting on a table with the quote “Faith is the state of mind where we’re open to the possibility of seeing things as they are at any given moment."

I have begun to read the book Great Faith Great Wisdom by Ratnaguna & Sraddhapa to help me gain more insight into the Three Pure Land Sutras. Although the book is somewhat academic, it is written in a style that I find easy to understand.

I found the section discussing the path to Awakening and faith of great interest.

Shinran asks us to put our faith in Amida Buddha’s Primal Vow that assures our birth in the Pure Land. Shandao and later Pure Land masters assured us that lay people can reach the Pure Land through faith alone. There is a path to Awakening, and in principle it’s possible to awaken at any time. 

In the book Great Faith Great Wisdom, it is written: “All we have to do is look with open eyes. In principle that’s true, but in practice it doesn’t happen very often, because most of us have our eyes very firmly closed, or, to put it another way, we are fast asleep and very hard to wake. The spiritual path helps us to open our eyes; it prepares us, and most of us need that preparation. So we need to practice.”[1]

We may spend years practicing, but we never really get a breakthrough because we keep telling ourselves we’re not quite ready. Perhaps we think our desire to see things as they are isn’t strong enough, or our practice hasn’t matured enough. These thoughts can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We think we’re not quite ready, and we close ourselves off to the possibility of insight right now. This is a kind of doubt. Faith is about being open-minded. Faith is the state of mind where we’re open to the possibility of seeing things as they are at any given moment.

When we entrust ourselves to the Primal Vow, “it is a moment of great faith – faith that is tantamount to wisdom. For Pure Land teacher Shinran, this was the central and defining experience of the spiritual life. Faith was the act of entrusting oneself to Dharmakara’s [Amida’s] vows in the belief that they have made it possible for ordinary people to reach the stage of irreversibility through faith alone.”[2]

We often refer to this as the easy path. What makes the path of faith easy?

(Come Back Next Week for Part Two)

[1] Ratnaguna & Sraddhapa. Great Faith Great Wisdom. (Cambridge, UK: Windhorse Publications., 2016) P. 114.

[2] Ratnaguna & Sraddhapa. Great Faith Great Wisdom. (Cambridge, UK: Windhorse Publications., 2016) P. 115.