This week was Rosh Hashanah. Among my adoptive people and according to the Jewish Calendar today is the third day of the year 5766. It's nice having so many new years to celebrate. I expecially like Rosh Hashanah because I like beginnings. It is kind of nice that it occurs around the same time as other important events, such as the time of the Atsuhara persecution among Nichirenists or the date when the Dai-Gohonzon was said to have been inscribed.
People can ask me "how can you be a Jew and a Buddhist?" Have you turned your back on Christianity? Have you turned your back on Nichiren? I can answer them, no I haven't turned my back on anyone, but ultimately there is only one vehicle. What is that vehicle?
The Rabbi told a story. It's a familiar one I've heard it from Buddhists too. This version is from the Talmud. Seems there were travellors at sea for a long time. They grew hungry, seasick and weary. They spied an island on the sea and anchored next to it with joy in their hearts. Here was a time for a picnic, to stretch the legs, to sleep on solid land under the stars, to rest. So they dropped anchor and went ashore. They were so happy to get off the ship.
They lit a fire and comforted themselves by it. And then an awful thing happened. The island moved. It seems it was a behemeth of the sea resting on the surface of the ocean, and smarting from their fire, it rolled over. They were, to a man tossed in the sea where they floundered until the ship came by and picked them up.
Are we not like those men? Don't we ache to get off of our ships? Yet, the "ship" is our "community", it's what can rescue us when things go wrong. Life seems solid, but is like this island. The Japanese once believed their entire country is such a place, resting on a giant behemeth. Thinking of the "solid things" of life as not so solid in the grand scheme of things is actually very smart. Hurricane Katrina was the "behemeth turning." Life has a way of turning on us. So we have to seek community where we can find it.
All those traditions, stories, fictions and truths, all are there to help us deal with life when it turns. Once you realize that and you detach from fixed views it becomes easier to both deal with the "behemeth turning" and to appreciate the teachers who have offered to lend us deck space on their decks, their boats, their ships, their homes...etceteras... and to see truth for what it is. We need not ever accept lies -- but we need to teach ourselves to recognize truth in all it's guises.
When I left the Gakkai, "the behemeth turned." Now I am sailing with what seems like a different ship. Yet there is in truth only one ship. That ship, the great vehicle, doesn't belong to any one nation, tribe, or religious group. And yet is the property of each of them.
Chris
Posted by cholte at October 6, 2005 05:00 AM