Beyond Billows

Good evening!

Suddenly many flowers have started blooming. Magnolias, pears, plums, hyacinths, forsythia… just after ohigan, ???, the spring equinox. Magnolia in Japanese is mokuren, ??, wooden lotus.

We say “atusa samusa-mo higan-made” (Heat and chill until the equinox. ?????????). However hard summer or winter is, at the equinox, it is balanced – equal in day and night, heat and chill.

So, we call ohigan, yonder shore, beyond billows and torrents. We have a lot of billows and torrents in our world. When we come here and sit, we have peace and harmony.

I found a card in my mailbox. When we visit temples we see a stone basin with a square “mouth” in the center that contains water for washing.

This square, or “mouth” element, combines with each of the four characters that surround it to create a four-word maxim: “I know only satisfaction.”

If we are satisfied, we can live on joy, even without food. If we are not satisfied, even a world filled with gold is not satisfactory. So we say, “Happiness consists in contentment.”

It’s said, “One moment of a spring evening is worth a thousand pieces of gold.” So, let’s enjoy this moment, in this spring evening, in holy harmony and pure peace!

3/23/11

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