Good morning!
Did you see the bright full moon last night and the brilliant beautiful sun this
morning in the great glimmering sky? Great, you saw and enjoyed them! We can now
enjoy abundant flowers all around us, window-sides and world-wide. Happiness is
here now, with them and us, especially after our solid, serene sittings. We can enjoy
them in nature, sow seeds, or grow them, but all originally from nature.
Carl Busse (1872-1918) made a poem titled “Over the Mountains:”
Over the mountains,
Far to wander, people say,
Lives the Happiness.
Aah, so I went,
In the swarms of others,
Came back with cried out eyes.
Over the mountains,
Far, far away over there, people say,
Lives the Happiness.
Everyone wants happiness, but it is rare for us to get happiness. Usually we seek
happiness far far away. So, we wander and stray into foreign and others’ realms.
Thus, we come back with tearful eyes. We seldom find the true treasures. If
happiness is far out somewhere else than where we are now, we will never get it.
Even if we get it, we must lose it, if it is outside of us.
Because we wander around in the dusty dangerous swarms of others seeking the
Happiness, we must come back with swollen eyes weeping, believing in people’s
hearsays. It is like moles’ mud-meddling in mundane matters, maladies, and
miseries seeking matter, might, and me from the triple poisons of craving, anger,
and delusion, only falling into sinkholes.
Mundane matters are materialism, militarism, and me-ism epitomized in money-
ism, murder-ism, and mole-ism. Economics, politics, and egoistic are piling up a
pyramid pointing to the planetary perishing. Politics, either plutocracy or
democracy, paves the path to mobocracy by mole-ism, with the triple poisons,
driven by karma kinetics.
As we move with action (karma), we separate self and other, in and out, for safety
and survival. We usually get our source of sustenance from outside us, food, clothes,
shelter, etc., thus we make our habits to seek source of happiness outside also. Then,
karma (action/habit) machines drive everything – me, mind, matter, might, money,
more and more mundaneness.
Happiness is everywhere, but we missed the way of finding it. It is right here and
now. It is our cores, coeurs, hearts, essence that find and feel happiness, but fumble
and fail it easily and erroneously. Whenever we see sorrow and suffer, we seek solace
in nature, and find happiness in the original nature of all, called Dharma
(forms/norms, phenomena/principles).
So, if we want happiness, we must come back to the root of all life – Dharma Dhātu
(Domain, Root). The heart is the source of life, the heart of the world, giving life
blood and the world beauty. If we lose it, we lose all with all life functions and all the
world meanings. If we lose our human hearts, we are not any more humans, much
less Buddhas, but ghosts, devils, beasts, …
This morning I saw a TV program on the Northeast Japan Earthquake. The tragedy
of man-made miseries is that man-made machines and ways are short-sighted, short-
circuited, and small. A sad story there was that the school safety guide stipulated the
disaster refugees should go to its gym and class buildings were locked. Tsunami, not
earthquake, took many lives in the gym.
Man-made mundane mandates make the superceding supramundane life of
Buddhism morbid and moribund throughout the human history all over the world.
So-called secularization squander and spoil the holy harmony, health, and happiness
of wholly wholesome world and ways of religions in the natural Indra-net life system
– Dharma-dhātu (world) and Dharma-body.
Like the full moon representing the Buddha heart, we must mirror the sunlight of
life-giving truth, warmth, and harmony, illuminating abundant beauty, goodness,
and holiness of nature in the great space. The Buddha said that we must make the
right “mental orientation from the source” (yoniso manasi-kāra), think, act, and live
in accordance with the Dharma.
The triple learnings of sīla, samādhi, and prajñā and the triple treasures of Buddha,
Dharma, and Sangha are correct countermeasures ceasing the triple poisons and
triple mundane maladies. Limitless life and heart (light, liberation, love) learn from
the selfless supramundane Buddha Dharma and line up Sangha of the Buddhas in
and out, near and far in space and time.
Our ordinary community is dominated by karmas. So, it is difficult to keep the true
triple treasures, specifically true Sangha, especially when it is mixed with the
mundane elements. Unlike the Southern tradition, where renunciants and lay people
are distinctly divided in their lives and living ways. its organizers must practice,
perfect, and protect the Buddha Dharma genuinely.
Where, when, who, and what lives happiness? Here, now, Buddha, and Buddha
heart lives holy harmony, health, and happiness beyond man-made mundane
matters, maladies, and miseries. The Buddha Way like birds’ way goes sky-high and
traceless, free, and full, saving all at any situations from samsara suffering. Come,
sit, stop samsara, and see supramundane suchness.
5/26/13
Note: The original poem of Carl Hermann Busse is:
Űber den Bergen
Űber den Bergen,
Weit zu wandern, sagen die Leute,
Wohnt das Glűck.
Ach, und ich ging,
Im Schwarme der andern,
Kam mit verweinten Augen zurűck.
Űber den Bergen,
Weit, weit drűben, sagen die Leute,
Wohnt dal Glűck.
Mount Kinabalu, N.J.