Good morning!
We have snow falling now, with the white world covering distinctions. Last night Ekan, one of the first seven ordainees here, sent me an email congratulation for Hanyu’s championship performance of stardom figure skating at the Peace Festival. Hanyu is 23 years old and Uno, the silver medalist, is 20. The same day Fujii 15 years old beat the two national award shogi chess crownships. A 19-year-old boy had a shooting spree, killing 17 people, a few days ago here. The difference between them is that of a life led by cultivation or karma.
An interviewer asked Hanyu about his future. Hanyu said there was nothing now but happiness. The Buddha said – when devil told him to go back again for his failed begging – that he lived on joy. He could taste amrita (ambrosia, immortality) always in happiness. The so-called national leaders are now eating and feeding poisons, pushing the world to the brink of annihilation as hungry ghosts, fighting devils, and hell beings. Buddhahood never develops without cultivation, and can never be attained without witnessing.
Dogen mentioned a Buddhism of one color. What color is it – blue, green, or white like snow or this wall? White is no color, reflecting all of the color spectrum. Snow is water wherefrom all life forms have come. Sitting melts karma colors into emptiness (śūnyatā, lit. zeroness), as you experience in sitting and expressed in the Heart Sutra. From emptiness, all originate in interdependence in no self-substance, self-sameness, and self-sovereignty. Without witness of this we suffer, going through the Six Paths of hungry ghosts, etc.
From the long night of nescience, craving, and hatred we have created the fictitious unidirectional pyramidal civilization (=urbanization) with delusion, bondage, discrimination, exploitation, and destruction by fighting for money, matter, and might. From constant concentrated cultivation we can realize a natural cyclical Indra-net culture (=cultivation) with awakening, freedom, equality, love, and peace by sharing life, heart, and harmony. A 40-billion-year-old life as light can reflect each other in truth and ethic.
2/17/18
