大谷大学一回生のときに日本語で書いたものを、三回生のときに板東性純教授の指導のもと、ロバート・フランクリン・ローズ先輩(当時大学院博士課程・現大谷大学教授）の協力を得て英訳したもの。1982年「YOUNG　EAST」Vol.8 No.3所収。

It was through Kierkegaard that I encountered Christianity. He was one of  those mad perfectionists,of which type the ranks of the religious abound.
He tried to live a sinless existence. But the more he tried, the more he found he was ridden with sin. It was only after he was utterly lost in despair that he came to truly believe in Jesus Christ. As the Bible says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," for a man not proud of himself and with nothing to be proud of will be blessed by God~this only a true Christian realizes. Although I am a student of Buddhism at Otani University (enrolled in spring, 1979), I am in one sense a Christian like you, for I realize man is truly saved by believing in the meaning of the Crucifixion. (By the way, although I know little of the matter, I feel that St. Paul might be better regarded the founder of Christianity, since he conceived of the doctrine of the atonement of Christ; whereas Christ's gospel was more a revolution of the individual spiritual awareness.)
I came to learn more about Christianity while studying the Reformation, in particular, the thought of Martin Luther. Luther interested me greatly, not only from the perspective of learning, but because I was in a deep religious crisis. I was one of those miserable sinners needful of the Gospel and this fired my eagerness to study Luther. Reading his thoughts, I experienced, though far behind times, what he had, and found Christ's love for me as well.
Luther was another “mad perfectionist" like Kierkegaard, such personalities being the type which can most deeply understand Christian thought. As assiduous as he was in his austerities, however, the more possessed he became of suspicion, hatred, and egoism !ーthe sort of crisis often appearing in the religious life. In religion, the search for perfection has to issue from the ego that man possesses, although the ego can not be perfected. Perfection is that state of selflessness in which one's mind is wholly subsumed in God or ultimate reality. The process of becoming selfless entails a period of crisis in which one is brought to face with the imperfection of the self. Unlike other crisis which will pass whether or not the gospel is encountered, religious crisis differs in its being a turning point at which one either accepts religion and lives, or rejects it and kills oneself no other alternative presents itself.
In his crisis Luther met Paul, who said: "By your belief in Jesus Christ you are saved and freed from your sins. It is solely due to God's blessing," and "The righteous man should live a life of faith." When I experienced what Luther must have felt, to my joy things became clear as if a mist had vanished. I can not look at my notebook of those days without remembering that particular feeling of joy. Written in large letters are: " 'You of little faith! Why are you afraid?' (Matthew 8: 26). . . .These words are full of vigour. They are the extreme affirmation of everything, of faith, of surrender, of life in its extreme. Only faith! and everything is good as a result! Faith is surrender, reformation by faith!"
Why then didn't I become a Christian? To be honest, a great gap lies between Christians and me. For as much as I want to pray and shout with Christians, I am a heathen in their eyes if I do not believe the way to salvation is only through Jesus Christ. There is a Buddhist sect in Japan called the Jodo Shinshu, which has marked similarity to Christianity. It was founded by Shinran, another of our mad perfectionists, who sought perfection by ascetic practices, as did Luther. But the more he practiced, the more pronounced his worldly passions became~this was the same crisis as Kierkegaard's, Paul's, and, if I may add a personal note, my own. As Luther was led to the gospel of Paul, so Shinran encountered the Buddhist saint Honen who taught, "If you believe in Amida Buddha and recite Namu Amida Butsu, you will be saved by his inconceivable Original Vow and relieved of the burden of your sins." Shinran, as did Luther, saw the light of hope streaming forth from these words. It was the same light I saw when I en-countered the teachings of the Jodo Shinshu and Christianity. Setting aside my judgment and entrusting all to Amida or God, I found my ego dissolved, my inner eye opened, my being at one with the universe; at that moment I felt such joy that I thought I would live without anxiety or distress for the rest of my life. Times change, of course, and though I am not of the same frame of mind, I have now been afforded a degree of fundamental faith, and, as I see it now, my conflicts were a trial which did good to improve me. A Christian friend to whom I told the above episode, remarked that Amida Buddha must surely be Jesus Christ~by which he implied that instead of Christ, the wrong image happened to be delivered to Japan! That's what results from a onesided way of thinking that Christ the Messiah is the only saviour. Taken to a higher level, the idea is correct, but not in the sense that one predicates the other; rather, Amida Buddha and Jesus Christ are fundamentally one as far as religious realities are concerned.
in religious ecstasy, Westerners see visions of Christ, and believers of the Jodo Shinshu see visions of Amida Buddha. Those who have never heard of Christ, or Amida Buddha, never have such visions. In my opinion, this means that Christ and Amida are not essential realities, for if they were, all people, Christians and believers of the Jodo Shinshu alike, would equally experience such visions. When the ego dissolves, as in religious ecstasy, Christ lives in the hearts of Christians as Amida Buddha in the hearts of believers of the Jodo Shinshu.
There are several fundamental characteristics of all religious experience一 insight, substantiality, ecstasy, and inexpressibility (H. Kishimoto, Mys-ticism of Religion, p. 58)一with the differences in process distinguishing religions from one another. Jodo Shinshu and Christianity, for example, are nearly identical as far as the feeling of substantiality and ecstasy are concerned, and differ only in their expression, Christians saying, "As Jesus was put on the Cross in order to expiate our sins, we are saved," and believers of the Jodo Shinshu saying, "As Amida vowed to save everybody, we are saved." A far more basic understanding is expressed by the Zen sect, and a Zen priest would state that we are all saved from the beginning. Enlightened Zen priests are usually depicted as roaring aloud, or, avoiding the fuss, having a cup of tea. Their attainment they feel is not of a higher perception, but the perception of that reality, perfect from the beginning. Although Zen is said to be a religion of self-reliance, in contrast to religions of salvation such as the Jodo Shinshu and Christianity, ultimately it is not even that. I would say that Zen is a religion of dispassion, as are true reli-gions of every kind. "Fool, wake up!" demands the Zen priest, and in this nothing is sought from us.
Salvation exists here and now. As we always have some idea, for instance, of good and evil, we cannot see purely. By putting away all such unneces-sary ideas, and living in the here and now, all at once we see the reality of the universe as it is. Says Walt Whitman, "God is perfect, and so is evil."
The philosopher Nietzsche was an irreverent man, but of deep religious insight. I felt the same joy reading his works as when I came to believe in the atonement of Christ. "God is dead," he says, "There is neither good nor evil. I affirm everything," while a Christian says that we are saved unconditionally by Christ. Common to both is the affirmation of every-thing, for religion in its true sense does not reward the good and punish the wicked; it is beyond morality and blesses everyone equally. The difference between a religion and a moral teaching can be gleaned by comparing the thought of Confucius with Lao-tzu. Confucius was a moralist who taught perfect virtue (len) and propriety (ii), and sought to discipline man into perfection by various means. Such moralist-s will divide life into good and evil, and then try to deny the evil. But existence, composed of many elements, is one and can not be divided. Man seeks to divide things, how-ever, having eaten fruit from the Tree of Knowledge from which sprang a dualistic woridview. In fact neither good nor evil exists in a universe in which everything exists beyond good and evil. When we say everything is good, good is meant as beyond the opposition of good and evil, not good as an antonym of evil.
Lao-tzu's perspective is different from Confucius'. He says that by doing away with intelligence, that is, discriminative thinking which divides and analyzes, we can achieve that transcendental wisdom beyond good and evil. Thus the ultimate object of religion is not to forget good and evil, or to overcome evil by good, but to go beyond them both.
Before eating from the Tree of Knowledge, man was at one with the universe. Once man ate the fruit and became conscious as a result, however, he grew apart from nature and the universe, experiencing what can be called alienation from God. Religion's purpose is neither to return us to the level of animal bliss or to the bliss of unconsciousness, but to attain the more perfect world of the natural and the consciousーconscious here meaning not self-conscious, but refers to the consciousness perfect in God and the universe.
The Garden of Eden can be expressed as a process occurring in our own lives: 1) the primitive Garden, where one is unconscious and at one with nature (i.e., with God); 2) the intermediate stage, where one is self-conscious and separate from nature (i.e., one's center lies not in God but in self); and 3) the ultimate Garden, where one is conscious and natural. Our childhood can be likened to the primitive stage, but soon we enter the intermediate one. To return to the Garden is possible only by becoming child-like~not by becoming a child of the first stage, but only by passing to the wider consciousness of the ultimate stage in which you go beyond good and evil. Here it is possible to forgive and affirm all, for it is the awareness that neither good nor evil exists in the world. With nothing for us to get, every-thing is perfect as it is, everything is good: "God saw all that He had made, and it was very good" (Genesis I : 31). Poets have noted this ultimate reality. Whitman, who said "There is no imperfection in the present, and can be none in the future" (Leaves of Grass), was a man who in his heart affirmed everything. The Japanese poet Chuya Nakahara wrote, "it's reality! Pure happiness! What is apparent is good as it is!" (Song of a Goat). The same poet, sometimes afflicted with the pangs of separation, would also feel the oneness of the universe: "If I feel I am but a dot in the evening sky, every-thing is all right" (ibid.).
I hope my statement that everyone is saved, irrespective of whether one is a Christian or not, did not offend you. I think Christ a great man, due in part to the efforts of St. Paul as I mentioned earlier, since the latter sys-tematized Christian doctrine through the Old Testament. But the essential issue is not whom we believe, but whether we believe or not. By believing that everyone is forgiven, saved, blessed, we stop worrying, being judg-mental, and surrender ourselves to God, allowing our egos to dissolve into the universe. We Eastern peoples think of life as a flowing stream moving softly and naturally to the still and perfect sea. We want to return to the sea, but go against the stream, flounder about, and expend our efforts to hold to the banks to keep from being washed away. For lack of faith we fear for ourselves and struggle blindly to reach the sea: "You of little faith! Why are you afraid?" (Matthew 8: 26).
1 bless your faith in Christ, I bless those who surrender themselves to Amida Buddha, I bless this entire universe. For my faith is neither in a Christ or an Amida Buddha: I just believe. Christians say they believe in God and his son Jesus Christ, believers of the Jodo Shinshu in Amida Buddha. But a Zen priest would say that he simply believes. If you press him as to what he believes, he may retort: "Do away with the word believe and ask me your question!" Zen dialogues tend to be oblique, for although "words" are the means of expression, what is being expressed transcends our usual understanding. Let me venture to say what a Zen priest believes. Their faith is not faith as opposed to distrust: it is beyond faith aiid distrust. It is the world which is as it is, where even words are of no avail to express. I want to grasp and enter that world, to dissolve this ego self into its great sea of consciousness, of pure existence, of nothingness and God, from which all things arise.
I bring my letter to a close. I hope to write again. May God bless us all!