Good morning!
We are very fortunate that we can sit in peace and harmony here, now, with all.
This is the way the Buddha and all ancestors lived their whole lives.
The news from Japan this morning was all about the second anniversary of the Great
East Japan Earthquake, which claimed more than twenty thousand lives and missing.
More than 310,000 are still refugees, and more than 160,000 are evacuees from the
Fukushima nuclear disasters, many of them leaving homes, jobs, families, etc.
We have more disasters and destruction in store; the human race especially is causing
the global problematique – nuclear holocaust, global warming, mass extinction, etc.
How can we stop and be saved from them? The Buddha showed how we can live in a
wholly wholesome way and world with holy harmony, truth, goodness, and beauty.
Dogen described the concrete path and process of how we can achieve the Buddha
Way, the Awakened Way, in his Genjōkōan, Realizing Universal Truth:
To learn the Awakened Way is to learn the self. To learn the self
is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all
dharmas. To be verified by all dharmas is to drop off the bodies
and minds of the self and others. The trace of awakening is at
rest and extinct. The traceless awakening is furthered on and
on.
“To be verified by all dharmas” means to be verified by all things in the world –
the sky, stars, mountains, rivers, plants, animals, etc. How can we be verified by
them concretely?
We must be verified by the concrete lives and living ways of the Buddha and
ancestors with their warm hearts, blood, bones, flesh, and skin. So, we must
study their living ways.
Our lives and living ways must be warmed, warned, and attested by them right
here and now, each moment, every day in our continuous concentrated cultivation
and verification.
When we practice, we become familiar with them more and more, with our warm
heartbeat, bloodstream, constantly in affinity with them in amrita, ambrosia of
immortality.
So, let us continue our cultivation and verification here and now in our every day
living with our Buddha bodies, minds, and worlds.
3/11/13
Colors of peaks and
Sounds of valleys are
Altogether voices and
Forms of our Shakyamuni
One of the five poems in reference to the Lotus Sutra by Dogen
