When I arrived here tonight, I saw a very clean
backyard terrace. We observe our place getting
cleaner and cleaner nowadays.
When Ryokan stayed at peoples homes a while,
the family atmosphere became always warm and
harmonious.
I posted my translation of a part of email of my
good friend sent from Japan which is his report
of meeting his former student and her mother.
He recently found his student’s email address
through the facebook and contacted her. She
was extremely moved by talking over the cell
phone while walking on Ginza street.
The student and her mother, contacted by the
teacher when the student lost her father and she
worried about her mother in sorrow, visited him.
He talked about the great people he met.
Teacher Toru Matsui thought about how to avoid
killing living beings and ate chrollera only for three
years for the physical test.
Her mother saw the framed calligraphy of Tangen
Harada Roshi on the wall. The calligraphy read:
Great heart: protected by all embracing all
Joyful heart: grateful for all find joy in all
Mature heart: limitlessly comiserate limitelessly
devote
the hearts of bodhisattvas
To embrace all and save all is great and unusual.
These three hearts may be from the four Brahma-
Vihara, Brahma-residence or Brahma-living.
Brahma is the universal principle penetrating
through the universe. The four are friendship, com-
passion, joy and renunciation or equanimity, which
may correspond to the four prajñâs (prognoses):
loving words, giving, beneficial actions, sameness.
Dogen said “If not with all from the very beginning,
it is not the practice of the awakened ones.” We
must work with all bringing warmth and cleanness
in our daily life.
(11.1.5)