This page does not add a new doctrine. It records the author's method: asking what Shinran meant to say, and restating that in words that can reach people now, from the work in South America.
M-01 Starting from words that arrive
When I read established Buddhist explanations, I sometimes feel they assume a Shinshu member, someone who already shares Japanese religious culture and Buddhist vocabulary.
The people I meet in South America are not always like that. There are Catholics. There are evangelicals. There are people of other religions. There are people who barely know Buddhism. Still, death, grief, family, life, and parting — human problems — are there.
So I build the explanation in words that actually arrive. It is not meant as a critique of the school, nor as a rejection of authority. It began in practice: how to speak in words that reach people.
M-02 Keeping Shinran's words and conveying what he meant to say are not the same work
Putting Shinran's words before a person of today, just as they stand, does not make his intention arrive by itself. The language of the Kamakura period carries the society, religion, culture, and linguistic sense of that time.
So I do not think: "Shinran said this, therefore people today should memorize this phrasing." What I ask is: "Why did Shinran say it this way? What was he trying to see through those words?" Only then do I ask how I would say it, if I were to tell it to a person now.
Keeping the wording and conveying the meaning it carried are not the same task. I also do not think it is enough to swap old Buddhist terms, one by one, for modern equivalents. I ask what that word was trying to say. If that meaning still arrives today, the original Buddhist term is not always required.
M-03 Not making bonbu a special class of human being
For me, "bonbu" does not name a special group within humanity. Nor is it a word for sorting people into "bonbu" and "those who are not." I start from this: a human being, all of us, is bonbu.
So I feel little point in defining "a bonbu is this kind of person" in order to sort others. That Shinran speaks of himself as bonbu also belongs with this reading. I do not, however, cite as historical fact that Shinran said "all of you are bonbu." Treating bonbu as "us," not "those people," is the stance when I restate Shinran's intention in my own words now.
I add, as my own reflection, that I sometimes see bonbu as the human being who takes things only in their three-dimensional form at that instant. That is the author's thought, not a definition asserted as Shinran's own. Glossary T-12 and axiom A-12 fix the other side: that bonbu is not abandoned.
M-04 My thinking model — ∞ and 0
When I think, I sometimes use the symbols ∞ and 0. This is not a mathematical theorem, nor a new theory claimed to hold in mathematics. They are symbols in my own thinking, for considering the relation between the infinite and one person.
If one person's existence is seen on the scale of the universe, of time, of possibility — a vast scale — it appears as an almost infinitesimal point. That contrast is what ∞ and 0 mark for me.
Being close to 0 does not mean that person does not exist, has no worth, or is abandoned. It leads to the thought that the individual who appears as a tiny point is still not excluded from Amida's compassion.
M-05 1/∞ = 2/∞
The notation 1/∞ = 2/∞ is the same kind of symbol. It does not use a mathematical equality to prove Amida's compassion mathematically.
What I am marking is this image: Amida's compassion is not portioned out according to human worth or headcount, whether one person or two. It is not a share of a finite resource — less because there is one, more because there are two. Seen from the side of the infinite, one and two are not in a relation of snatching compassion from each other.
This is not a first-in-the-world expression, nor a wholly original theory. It is a record that I think with these symbols.
M-06 On 0 = ∞ and 0/∞ = 1
0 = ∞ and 0/∞ = 1 are not offered as the result of a calculation either. They are symbols for thinking the relation between the side of the infinite and of emptiness — which human cognition does not grasp directly — and one concrete person.
In my image there is ∞; from it a tiny point appears as 0; that point shows itself as one concrete person. It is a model for thinking, with present-day symbols, the relation between emptiness — hard for human cognition to grasp directly — and the person in front of us.
I do not write that Buddhism teaches 0/∞ = 1. I also do not write that, mathematically, 0/∞ = 1. It remains my own thinking model.
M-07 Why I use this notation
I do not use notation to prove religion with mathematics. I use it because, for someone who does not know classical Chinese, Buddhist terms, four-character compounds, or the context of the sutras, it may arrive more directly: "so this is what people then were trying to say."
Especially for someone with a technical or scientific background, an abstract relation marked in symbols can sometimes make the point easier to grasp than a long religious explanation.
Understanding and assenting, however, are not the same. What I aim at first is that someone understand what I am trying to say. I do not ask that it be believed as a required truth.
M-08 Practice in South America
One reason I need this method is the kaikyoshi work in Brazil and South America. In Japan there is, to some degree, a shared background of Buddhist words and temple culture. In South America, Buddhism has to be spoken also to people who do not share that background.
So it is not enough to translate into Portuguese an explanation that already works in Japan. The explanation itself has to be rebuilt until someone without that cultural background can still follow it. I do that as my own kind of "translation."
M-09 The aim is not to create a new doctrine
I am not trying to found a new school. Nor do I claim that my thought is the correct Jodo Shinshu. Instead of repeating the given wording, I ask again what Shinran meant to say, and I practice how I would tell it, in my time and place.
The wording therefore sometimes differs from explanations already in circulation. That does not, by itself, mean creating a new teaching. What is written in the axiom model, the glossary, and the claim registry also comes from this method. It is not the adding of a new T-number.
I do not want to dress Shinran's words in a modern style. I want what lies in those words to become, again, speech that reaches a human being, in my time and place. That is why I keep practicing this restatement.