If consciousness is

a part of nature,

then whose is it?

Or, again, whose isn’t it?

Flowers that have been pollinated manifest changes—in shape, color patterns—that bees recognize; they move past these flowers, conserving time and energies, seeking nectar elsewhere, pollinating other flowers along their way.

Birds fly in flocks, swoop and swirl and find their way, together.

Synergies, sympathetic correspondences of consciousness at work.

Late in his long life of study, practice and reflection, Shinran wrote of ji nen, naturalness, things working in and of themselves, in concert with all else—he said ji nen was at the heart of true awakening, thus not ours alone to claim.

This same principle of naturalness, the very same Chinese characters, was taught by early Taoist masters as well.

The eminent Buddhist scholar, Hisao Inagaki once referred to Amida as a “person.” When asked how myth, a fiction, could be a “person,” he clarified: myth does not mean not real; it means reality of a different order.

Amida then, Life itself, the working of the universe itself, is “person” in that it is the source of “personhood,” the foundation of everything we recognize as person or self, specifically including consciousness—so reality itself is our real self and, furthermore, might readily, even best, be understood, all reality that is, not as “what,” but as “who.”

Think of the differences implied in this stance with respect to the world at large, where hierarchies of differentiated objects fall silent in the face of the all-embracing call and response song of unlimited relations and friends.