Good morning!
We have our sesshin today with spring-like bright sunlight and warm weather. I received a book titled The Heart of Nurturing Together, by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, from Japan yesterday. I read only the beginning part of it last night. This beginning part includes three episodes on how to nurture ourselves and others. The first one is about a mother whom he praises as “a person shining from the bottom” (of life) (soko-bikarisuru-hito: 底光りする人) with “a determined heart” (ketsujo-shin: 決定心), who was living her life at 96 or 97 with brilliance when this book was written.
Once while he was playing with his elder brother and a friend, his great aunt said, “Don’t play with poor children.” They went to their friend’s home and his friend told his mother about the incident. Unmoved, with a smiling “beautiful” (the author felt) face, with no bad words, the woman said, “Our home is poor, so it can’t be helped to be said so. Play together here, though small.” Another time, when this friend talked about his inferiority to his brother in supporting his parents, she said, “It’s okay for me to become a beggar, if you become one.”
The second episode is about two children, one Japanese and the other Samoan, who were far behind in their math class. The author tutored them after class and somehow they caught up to the topics the class was learning. He discovered they received full marks one day, and he told this to the class. Their classmates applauded their great success. When he left the classroom, the whole class followed him to the teachers’ room, applauding his success in helping the students achieve their success. He thinks the power of life itself is the contributor for everyone’s success.
The third episode is about his wife’s and his own TB. His wife had been told to observe absolute rest, not knowing that she had TB. This was due to the fact that TB was known as a serious illness in those days, just after WWII with much hardship and lack of food, and the diagnosis was never shared with patients or even their families. She was bed-ridden and soon lost her appetite, becoming thin, and at last passed away. Uchiyama Roshi got TB from her but endured the hardship even in his renouncer’s life, living on begging while the town’s people themselves were living in post-war hardship.
Uchiyama Roshi presents the formula of –α x -1 = +α, meaning that the negative factors we have become positive factors through reflection, that is, they become a remedying power, which is essentially a life power. I take this negative power as negative karma, a “stepping backward” power, that is, sitting and stilling karmas for the four applications of decreasing and stopping bad karmas and starting and increasing good karmas. The Buddha, Awakened One, became a beggar to live in the same way as the most humble, nurturing all together.
2/28/16
The above pictures of Pacific Ocean from his home were taken and sent by Mr. Noriyuki Otsukafrom Shimoda, Japan