Prayer for Love and Mercy

 So, I was able to move from Shinran to Christianity easily, but since I'm a textualist (as I was with Buddhism), I decided to start by reading the Bible. But Christianity is convenient, isn't it? Like Islam, it has a well-organized set of original texts. Buddhism apparently attempted to compile the Buddha's teachings in a collection of Buddhist scriptures, but even so, the volume is so vast! It's impossible to keep track of it. So, when I thought about talking about the Bible, I knew I couldn't do something so pretentious, and I have no desire to do so now. But back then, whenever I read the Bible, I would find myself constantly reading only  "God will save you." This was troubling. No matter where I read it, it always said  "God will save you." That "you" refers to all of humanity. Fortunately, I'm sure that all of humanity includes me, so when I personally read the Bible, I hear  "God will save you." And at that moment,...

 So, if, as Christ said, it's harder for a rich person to enter heaven than for an elephant to go through the eye of a needle, then who will enter heaven: a rich Christian or a modestly content Buddhist? I thought about this and came up with the answer: "Both can enter heaven." God is merciful, after all. Buddha is, of course, merciful, too. So what about Christ's words? They are simply true. Isn't that a contradiction? No, it's not. The key is, all you need to do is get an elephant through the eye of a needle. Surely God could do it. According to those physicists who keep confusing us with complicated ideas, the universe began as a speck smaller than an atom. Who would have thought that this incredibly vast universe was just a speck smaller than an atom? When I read the book, I thought, "Hmm, I see," conceptually, but the other day, while walking along the Tama River and looking out over the Kanto Plain in the distance, I imagined this landscape con...

 I've been saying I'd go to Christianity for a while, but it's been getting delayed. Shinran was a good bridge to Christianity. Thinking about it, maybe this was God's guidance. Or perhaps Buddha's guidance? Looking back, I feel like Shinran was preaching within Buddhism the Christian concept of original sin, such as the theory that the evil person is the true vessel of existence, and telling his disciples, "I am an extremely evil person." I don't know if that's what they were referring to, but "Shinran's teachings are Christian!" There seem to have been people who say this, and I think I even saw a book with a similar title somewhere. Some Buddhist scholars also seem to say that Shinran's teachings are unique even within Buddhism. The same goes for Amida Buddha, who is seen as the atonement of humanity, and Jesus Christ. Perhaps that's why, when I went to Christianity after following Shinran, his teachings made perfect sense ...