direction. It is the train that does so. Naturalisation is like that. Altho it is a “coming to naturalness” that does not mean it is a return to how we were. A person who naturalises as a citizen of France, say, was not a citizen of France before they did so. No more is a person who naturalises as a citizen of the Pure Land. Yet, by awakening to faith, everybody can enter. To do so they have to die. This vow omits the reference to dying without anxiety. This is because if this vow is relied upon alone without the 18th, there is no certainty. We cannot assess clearly our own virtue nor know whether it will be sufficient. Those who rely upon merit are bound to exist in a condition of uncertainty. It is faith that brings peace of mind. Virtue that issues from faith is a joy in itself. Virtue that is intended as a substitute for faith is an unreliable friend. There is a very nice Chinese story about this. A man dies in this world and arrives at the first level of the heavens where he meets a panel of divine bureaucrats whose job it is to assess his virtue in order to allocate him to an appropriate realm in the afterlife. He feels rather confident of himself as he waits, listing all the good things he has done in his life. Then he is fetched from the waiting room and shown into a large hall in the centre of which is a huge set of scales. There is an arm on a pivot. At one end it has a fixed weight. At the other end is a basket. His virtues are to be weighed against the fixed weight. If the scale tips he will go to the higher realms. If it does not he will be sent to the fearful lower regions. Minor gods are hurrying about marshalling all the tokens of virtue that have built up in the heavenly records department during the man’s life. These are brought in in boxes that will be tipped into the basket. There seem to be a fair number of boxes so the man still feels fairly confident. They start to tip the boxes, one by one, into the basket. Then something awful happens. The man realises that the virtue tokens are slipping out through he interstices in the basket work. He feels himself start to shake and then boil with fear and indignation. None of his precious virtues is staying in the basket, all are slipping through and blowing away on a cold breeze. The basket is not shifting. The man’s anger and fear are giving way to sadness and despair. He sinks to his knees. The last box is emptied into the basket and the effect is just the same. The tokens slip out and blow away on the breeze. He has nothing left to offer. He looks the prospect of the hell realms in the face for he first time. He feels strangely empty. Suddenly, to everybody’s visible amazement, the scale tips. The basket slowly descends and the fixed weight rises into the air. Everybody runs to look i the basket. There at the bottom is a single nembutsu. The man suddenly remembers a brief time i his life when he had found faith. The dark hall fades away and he finds himself in a new hall full of light and grace. Virtue is only virtuous when it is done without any selfish calculation or attachment. A virtuous act is something given away freely. It is not something one stores up or hangs onto. A truly virtuous person hardly notices the good they do and counts it as little. They are much more acutely aware of the benefits they receive and the hurts they may have caused. Yet, if a person has faith and remains aware of their bonbu nature, then, in fact, others will notice a change in them and find them easier to live with. In consequence, they will no longer live always in the hall of judgement, but will often find themselves in happier climes. This, of course, will only increase their consciousness of the benefits they receive and further occlude any consciousness they might otherwise have had of the small acts of goodness that others perceive in them.
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