A Zennist's Vision of the Time for Dharma (Religious Truth) to Become Manifest

Abstract

There are two types of religion. The English term comes originally from the Latin religio. Its signification is as follows. Although created by God, human beings as creatures rebelled against God. As was to be expected, they were punished by the wrath of God and became estranged. Yet, they have been reunited with God (in the sense of religio) through the mediation of Jesus Christ. This is what is all about. The first type of therefore arises from the fact that we put the Absolute, called God, before eyes and hold that we are saved by believing in God. This we call a religion of salvation, and Christianity is the typical example. By contrast, there is another type of religion, in which we do not put God before eyes, nor do we recognize human beings as substantial things to be saved. In this particular sense, this type of adopts a standpoint of noGod, no-soul. It is a that holds that human beings live and die a religious life simply because they are themselves their own Self, or, put more accurately in ordinary language, because our Self becomes manifest to egos. Namely, this is a in which everyday egos realize True Self in that they are awakened to the Original Self. The first-mentioned definition of is not applicable in this case; and yet what we have here, actually, is a of awakening. We can find its two typical examples in the original Buddhism of Sakyamuni Buddha and in the Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism of China that is directly connected with it.