Good morning!
We have a nice, sunny spring Sunday with a serene atmosphere, especially after sittings. Now we can open the windows and hear the singing of birds, and even see them and flowers. In Japan they are going to have the Flower Festival, celebrating the Buddha’s birthday, shortly.
When we sit, we can become buddhas, awakened ones, enjoying this
purity, peace, and prognosis – unbound purity, unconditioned peace, and
unsurpassed awakening beyond all mundane matters. In Japan they had a strong storm, so I am afraid that cherry blossoms fell in many places.
Yesterday I watched an NHK TV program titled Science Zero, featuring
science news. This episode was about magnesium batteries. The inventor
talked about the disaster where hundreds of people died due to the lack of
communication – the news of Tsunami.
So, he wanted electricity available limitlessly. He said fossil fuels, uranium, etc.will be gone, but we have a limitless amount of magnesium and salt water from our oceans. Pouring sea water on magnesium alloy makes batteries. A company produced combined batteries and the inventor could drive a small car more than 100km with salt water.
We can have batteries mass produced with ten times more power than the
usual ones, from a limitless resource and without dangerous pollution and
radiation. The Fukushima disaster continues, still spilling contaminated water,
and with blackouts caused by short-circuiting, in one case due to a mouse,
because there is too much radiation for human access and maintenance.
The Manhattan Project left contamination, even now 1,000 times the
allowable limit. There is no allowable limit, actually. Its Hanford nuclear
waste storage site has millions of tons of waste leaking toward the Columbia
River, and has now announced the possibility of a hydrogen explosion like
the ones that occurred at the Fukushima plants.
We must really see far enough to the future, and much less should we haveeven started such thing as nuclear power, which still has no safe way of storing spent fuel for the required tens of thousand of years. The battery inventor said that we must really think about our descendants, so that they can come and live in peace. Where do all these problems come from?
Essentially they are from the triple poisons of delusion, desire, and divisiveness,which develop into the triple maladies of me-ism, materialism, and militarism,now expressed in money-ism. Money is superseding life. Why such inverted,perverted views? Because we are caught by our karmas. That is why we must sitand stop them, and go beyond all karmas. So, we must have the triple learning.
The first is sila – strong, straight backbones like great old trees settling deepinto the ground, unmoved by anything. The second is samadhi – the most important one.
This sitting is the harmonious unified sense of the whole world in purity
and peace. This leads to the third one, prajna, prognosis – seeing far, wide,
and deep enough to keep all things in truth, peace, harmony, and happiness
without the triple poisons and the triple maladies.
When we sit, we find abundant truth, goodness, and beauty – holy (wholly
wholesome) harmony, health, and happiness – which all can share without
wars, pollution, lack of resources, etc. – just like this Buddha here –
everyone can just sit in total satisfaction in purity and peace.
Only when we stop our karmas, can we be in suchness. Sitting is stopping all
karma kinetics and kens of the triple poisons and the triple maladies. This is stilling all samsara sufferings – up and down, birth and death, etc. – the inevitable dichotomy in a changing world, unlike nirvana, unconditioned peace.
That is why we need the Awakened Way. This is the purity path and
purification path. It is also called the poverty path. In the mundane sense
the Buddha and bodhisattvas look like poor people without possessions, but
actually they are the richest and happiest, making all truly rich and happy.
This is the indestructible and undiscriminating holy harmony and happiness.
Thus, this is abundant and all-inclusive – the life of limitless light, liberation,
love, and learning, not limited, limiting living ways.
Dogen’s Collection of Cautions of Learning the Way – the Awakened Way –
advises beginners, and all. The fourth chapter, “One should not practice theBuddha Dharma with the grasping mind,” advises us:
Of the above, in practicing the Buddha Dharma, one must necessarily receive the true tenet of the leader, and should not employ one’s own cautions. Much less, the Buddha Dharma cannot be attained with the fabricated mind or with no mind. If the firm practice mind and the way do not coincide, the body and mind never become stable. If the body and mind are not
stable, the body and mind are not comfortable. If the body and mind are not comfortable, there arise thorns in verifying the way. How should one practice in the so-called coinciding of the firm practice mind and the way? The mind does not grasp or discard. The mind has no fame and fortune.In practicing the Buddha Dharma, one should not practice for (the eyes of) others. The practitioners, as the people, of today are far and remote in their minds from the way. If people appreciate it, they practice it even though they know that it is contrary to the way. If people do not respect and admire it, they neglect it and do not practice it, even though they know that it is the right way. You try to observe in a quiet mind. Is this mental action, Buddha Dharma, or not the Buddha Dharma. Be ashamed of it! Be ashamed of it! It is illuminated in the sacred eyes.
Now the practice of the Buddha Dharma is not done for one’s self. Much less how can it be for name and fame or profit and benefit? One should practice just for the sake of the Buddha Dharma. No buddhas practiced for themselves or for others, but practiced just out of compassion and commiseration for all living beings. This is the perpetual way of the Buddha Dharma. Don’t you see this: Little worms and beasts nourish their young.
The body and mind suffer hardship, and their livings undergo suffering. When their children grow old eventually, there accrues no benefit for the father and mother. However, the compassion of being thoughtful of their children is like this, even among these small beings. This is naturally like the thoughtfulness of all buddhas for all living beings. The exquisite dharma of all buddhas is not limited to one piece of compassion, but appears in all gates universally. The root is the same with all others.You are already the children of the buddhas, why don’t you learn the Buddha’s mode? The practitioner should not practice the Buddha Dharma for the self; should not practice it for fame and fortune; should not practice it for fruit and reward; should not practice it for miraculous powers. Only to practice the Buddha Dharma for the sake of the Buddha Dharma is indeed the way.
So, it is clear that we must stop our karmas, see far, wide, and deep enough
with prognosis, unsurpassed awakening. We should follow the Buddha
Dharma, not the small self, like blind people touching an elephant, insisting
on their own opinions, and fighting for them.
They are wrong in the view of King Mirror reflecting truth, peace, and
harmony, which is the Buddha mind, seeing profoundly enough and truly
enough, keeping the truth in the long run, and essentially here and now.
So, only practice makes perfect. Practice here and now can confer amrita,
ambrosia of immortality.
4/7/13
