Clear Crystal

Good morning!

We have a nice, quiet Saturday morning with bright sunshine. This is the first day of ohigan ?????in Japan, the spring equinox. Ohigan means yonder shore, which stands for nirvana, unconditioned peace beyond billows and torrents.

Like the beautiful moon we saw last night, there is a full moon today. Like last night, it is sometimes in the clouds and sometimes just emerging from them.

We have now the sesshin ????of ohigan, which celebrates equanimity – like the equinox, a balance of day/night, chill/heat. Usually in Japan, this is the time of cherry blossoms in full bloom. People visit parks to appreciate the cherry blossoms, eating, drinking, singing, and dancing.

But now, as you know, dark clouds loom over the whole country. I watched a TV news report telling of over 7,000 deaths and more than 400,000 people evacuating or escaping to refugee centers. They are undergoing the triple suffering of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.

Inside Japan, they’re experiencing the nuclear reactors’ crises, the contamination of people, plants, and the planet. Outside Japan, people are returning home, even former victims are offering helping hands, and also people are providing free air transportation and accommodation for 1,000 children.

There are many views and opinions about nuclear power, even among the small e-list group of former company employees to which I belong. Some have agreed to deliver a report written by a former employee of the company; others disagree.

He was a foreman of pipefitters at a nuclear power plants, and he developed cancer as a result of his job. He remembered his mother saying, “Nothing is greater than death.” He decided to write and publicize a report on “The reality of nuclear power plants” before his death.

Different views come from different experiences, education, interests, insights, etc. – in short, karmas. There is a cloud of karma that prevents us from seeing the moon, the mirror moon and the mind moon.

If the mind is beclouded, it cannot illuminate and reflect the world. That’s why we must see the mind moon beyond the clouds of karma. And sesshin means touching the mind, or embracing the mind.

Usually we don’t touch or embrace our minds. We even don’t know that there is the mind. We just look around outside, busily, in the broad daylight. Only when night, disaster or death, comes, or when we sit down and calm down, can we touch the mind moon.

Then only can we see how the mind is beclouded by karma – individual, social, and historical. But we are too busy to see, touch, embrace, and enjoy our minds. That’s why we need to cultivate: to see and embrace the greater and full moon mind.

The Buddha said, “I have seen no single thing so uncultivated and unfit for cultivation as the mind.” Because we don’t cultivate our minds, we have sorrows and sufferings, disasters and deaths.

He also said, “I have never seen a single thing so cultivated and fit for cultivation as the mind.” We can cultivate the mind and verify the consequences of its cultivation.

Only when we cultivate the mind do we become familiar with the mind and embrace the mind. We come to know the mind moon, originally full and essentially always full, unless we are deluded by its phases, its waning and waxing, or by its being obscured by clouds.

We must sit down and stop karma clouds, embrace the mind moon, and take care of it. When we take care, it starts to shine, illuminate, encompass more things, the wider world, and to reflect all things, becoming one with the whole world, penetrated by this light.

We see this mind only when we completely stop karma, unbeclouded and unseparated, becoming clear crystal. We find everyone is essentially clear crystal in the Indra-net, all beautiful jewels, becoming one clear crystal.

Then we understand what life is, what death is, what immortality is, and how we can achieve nirvana and unsurpassed awakening. Of course it is not easy to achieve it, because we are always enveloped by karma clouds, and it is difficult to go beyond them.

That’s why we need to clear the clouds and touch the full moon mind, in its beautiful brilliance. We need to aspire to it, practice, cultivate, and taste nirvana and unsurpassed awakening. The spiral of aspiration, action, unconditioned peace, and unsurpassed awakening goes on and on.

We are lucky to sit together and actually cultivate our mind moons in truth, peace, harmony, and happiness on this occasion of ohigan, the day of yonder shore, with the clear, calm, full moon beyond clouds.

3/19/11