Good morning!
Now irises are in full bloom here and outdoors. The flower heart seems the Heart of Nurturing Together by Uchiyama Roshi. The last part of its third chapter was the last part of a series that appeared in the monthly Comprehensive Educational Technique (Sogo Kyoiku Gijutsu) issued by Shogakukan. The book’s title was taken from the fourth chapter, added later, Tomoni Sodatsu Kokoro. Sodatsu may be literally “grow,” but it sounds like self-growth. “Nurture” sounds like other-nurturing, but the point is in Tomoni (Together), nurturing together (self and other, teachers and students).
The title this last part or series is A Little More Abundant Heart (Mou-sukoshi Yutakana Kokoro-wo). Education is not just educating students to make small persons into hungry ghosts, matter or money mongers, but to make great persons that blossom their life reality – before and beyond small self-identity, ever-changing and dynamic. It makes human societies truly great persons’ societies. So, A Little More never stops. Education is thus not just labor for money, but a Calling or Heavenly Occupation. It must educate children to “Break Own Desire,” not simply accelerating it endlessly, ending in disasters.
He says “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls into the Earth and Dies” must be the motto of the educator’s calling. Bodhidharma traveled to China, crossing seas and passing over mountains for three years, and spent nine years sitting in Zazen facing the wall at Shaolin Temple, rejecting the power patronage of Emperor Wu. He educated “one or half a genuine person,” and his successors followed suit for six generations, then spread wide, making the basis of Oriental Culture. This is the true example of a grain falling and dying, without which there is no education – he believes.
The last section, “Let Each Child Bloom His Life Flower,” summarizes the twelve-month series A Little More Abundant Heart, showing this age of abundant living but, in inverse proportion, too poor in heart, ending in poor life. With bloody eyes we pursue gain and success, and the successful pursue more gain and those who fail complain of more loss. Presidents, premiers, or even People’s Republic leader, and candidates for them, seem so short-sighted, shallow, and selfish, how can we bloom and bear fruit? Let everyone return to his or her life, and live the life of a violet or a rose or…
5/8/16
