Illumined by the Limitless: Shinran and re-imagining ‘practice’ **Order Retreat**

What if we re-imagine ‘world’ as sacred, as ‘Buddha’, as compassionate towards us? What if we meet ourselves with total honesty, as flawed, karmically conditioned beings? What if we allow ourselves to deeply realise the ego’s failure to ‘manufacture’ awakening, no matter how hard we try? What if, instead, we entrust ourselves to our connection with the Dharma, and simply live our relationship with the sacred – with “Amida” or ‘the limitless’? And what if we awaken into knowing our finite selves to be illumined by the infinite?

With his radical teaching of entrusting to Other Power, Shinran explored the path of faith to its fullest extent in twelfth century Japan. He overturns conventional tenets of Buddhism – and blows wide open our assumptions about how to live the Dharma life. Yet he is simply drawing out and taking to their furthest limits some essential teachings of the Buddha, and, later, Bhante.