The eminent Zen Buddhist teacher Shinran Shonin (Japan, 1173-1263) spent twenty years in no-frills meditations as a monastic of the Tendai school, a strict Japanese Buddhist sect dominant during his time. Not finding what he was hoping to discover, he turned to invoking the Buddha Amida (Amitabha, Buddha of Infinite Light).
Shonin invoked the Amida Buddha for a year by casting himself on Amida's grace, comparable to a Christian's surrender to Christ, realizing all his efforts had not worked. Then, there was what Zen Buddhist teacher and Unitarian Universalist clergyperson James Ishmael Ford, in The Intimate Way of Zen, calls "a turning," reminiscent of the Christian term "conversion," which can be read "a turning toward, around; to take on a new form."
Ford writes of "turnings of the heart"...
What I find interesting is that nearly everyone, maybe even everyone, has had some form of this encounter. I've spoken with many people over the years. Often that first intimation was found in childhood. For many it was in adolescence. And, yes, many people cannot dredge up a memory at all.
Or the experience only came as an adult, often in association with some serious spiritual discipline. Sometimes they're explosive things. More often they're much smaller intimations.
And as to the inclusiveness of such heart-turnings, or conversions, Ford observes...
These [turning] stories are told within the context of so many different and, it seems on the face of it, wildly different religions. Sometimes it's seeing God. Sometimes it's finding God and one's self are not two. Sometimes there is no God in the story at all. Agnostics and atheists also find turnings of the heart that do not call them toward ancient religions. But something calls.
* * *
This something is not a something. Yet, we envision and speak of it that way to help us relate to it. We say "God," "Great Spirit," "Truth," "Love," "the Absolute," "Creator," "Lord," "Father," "Mother," ... Some of us prefer abstract ways of speaking of this non-something. Shonin would have referred to it as, possibly among other words, shinjin, which means "mind-heart of true faith, real understanding, direct knowing of truth, mind-heart of reality."
We are left with a decision after such a turning. Of the turning, Ford says, "It's like a seed. So small. So distant. So fragile." Will we grow from the encounter, fleshing its meaning and ramifications out over time, or continue as if nothing happened? Will we honor it as a grace or check it off as a passing mind-mirage, explained away by materialistic, secularistic psycholgical theory, our attachment to reductionistic doubt, or tribal religious dogmatism?
When living the turning over time, it can unfurl increasing depths of insight. The initial turning will keep turning. It takes some trust in what we do not understand for that to happen. This trust entails being honest about how we may struggle to believe such conversions can happen or, at least, to us. If we trust and act, the turning will show itself more and more. The Christian scripture applies here: "Faith without action is dead."
* * *
These conversion moments are invitations. The turnings are revelations. They are seductive. They hide as though they are shy and welcome us to live with them. They tend to undress themselves slowly. The unveiling takes time - possibly a lifetime or more.
My first such turning, at age nine, I have shared elsewhere on this site. The turning occurred in a little, rural Baptist church. As with all turnings, the sense was of the incoming of timelessness, the dissolving of time. The opening was of unconditional, immaculate love. I have spent over five decades growing into that encounter, welcoming it to grow within and through me. I have not always been true to that moment, but I keep returning to it. That turning is still turning me. I anticipate it will not be fully plumbed in this lifetime.
The experience adds hope, zest, and meaning to life - to you, to me. So, welcome the seed, guard it, and cultivate it. Mainly, get out of its way so it can reveal itself to you when and as you are prepared to receive what it is present to show you. And never conclude it is through showing you. One moment can hold within itself many, many unveilings of wisdom.
