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I. Morality and the Evil of Ajatasatru
The Contemplation Sütra,30 the Sütra of the Immeasurable Pure Enlightenment of Equality (an alternate version of the Larger Sütra31), and the Nirvana Sütra32 all tell the story of Prince Ajatasatru with King Bimbisara, Queen VaidehT, and Devadatta in Rajagrha; the story is also quoted in Shinran's Kyögyöshinshö, Jödo monrui jushö, and Jödo wasan.33 The story centering on Ajatasatru found in the Nirvana Sütra is quoted in the part of the Kyögyöshinshö's chapter on faith that takes up the problem of the salvation of the most evil person (who before then had no way to be saved), and so one can surmise that for Shinran the problem of the awareness of evil is expressed through the story of Ajatasatru. Given, too, that the exegesis following this long quotation is brief to the point of being perfunctory, one can deduce that Shinran intended to resolve the difficult problem of the salvation of the most evil person by way of the story itself. Ajatasatru is here the epitome of the evil person; his patricide is the epitome of sin. Shinran's study of this evil points to the goal of Pure Land Buddhism as a religion for the abjectly ordinary person: the salvation of the evil person.
It was said that before Ajatasatru came into the world, all the ministers (diviners) had predicted that this child would surely kill his father, and for that reason, at the moment he was born he was cast by his mother from the top of a tower. Ajatasatru, hearing this story from Devadatta, followed Devadatta's provocations, and put his father to death. Afterward, regret (kökai arose in him and he agonized deeply, and at last he went to Sakyamuni and attained salvation.
In this story, the problem of evil is continually linked to the idea of karmic retribution (inga öhö ...). (In Buddhism, the concept of causality [inga has a general meaning and is used to refer to both natural phenomena and human acts, as well as to talk about the relation between practice and enlightenment. In this paper, however, I discuss the relevance of karmic retribution vis-à-vis human moral action, and use the term causality only in this sense.34...