March 18, 2010
REAPING THE GIFT
OKAY!
Okay, I’m out of the sick bed and my health is mended. Hark! What was that? An audible gasp of relief from the worried readers of this blog? Hmm? Must have been the wind. Or maybe that dragon (the one that lives in a cave and when it breaths out wind results) is relieved; “whew!”
WOW! There’s been a lot of writing happening on the comment section of the last blog since I got sick. I’m going to try and throw a blanket over all this conversation. Not a wet one I hope.
NANCY
Nancy and I have given each other Carte Blanc to say what ever we please to each other. We talk to each other quite a bit. Some may say that this is because of a bond we formed in the infinite past. But there just isn’t any real proof of either of us having had an infinite past, so I’m going to say that it’s from me hooking up with Greg on FWP and then Nancy asking me to MC his memorial and us becoming fast friends after. So when she calls me a “dumb ass”, I hear “cupcake.”
Everybody else who has commented here I only know from his or her comments.
This particular dialogue in the comment section has been a healthy reminder of what I believe, how I got to the point of believing what I believe, areas where I still have doubts and why.
“DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?” Chris Tucker to Jackie Chan in “Rush Hour”
Between the capacity of the people, the place, and the time, Nichiren usually picked time as the most important and hardest to fathom for sages. I don’t believe in prophets: Shakyamuni, Muhammad, Nostradamus, etc. That’s pretty tough for a guy practicing something during a time that was supposedly predicted to become. I once wrote about Shakyamuni and posed the question of why the three time periods, the five 500 years time periods, and people argued it was all kinds of things, metaphors being one, which weren’t true because it was a linear prediction and it really doesn’t matter WHAT the prediction depends upon because that was never the point. The point was WHY predict and why linear. Those points kept getting lost in everyone’s efforts in trying to JUSTIFY the prediction according to Nichiren.
The same thing has happened in the last blog and especially during the comments. So just to clarify: I DO NOT PRACTICE WITH ANY SEPARTION BETWEEN MY EFFORTS TOWARDS ABSOLUTE HAPPINESS IN MODELING THOSE EFFORTS ON THE SO CALLED BELIEF AND UNDERSTANDING CHAPTER OF THE LOTUS SUTRA AND THE ESSENSE OF THE INTENTION OF THE REST OF THE SUTRA BECAUSE ACCORDING TO THE LOTUS SUTRA, REGARDLESS OF WHERE MY FAITH ORIGINATES, I STILL RECEIVED THE GIFT, WHICH MAY NOT BE THE GIFT I EXPECTED, OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
The theoretical and essential cannot exist outside the relationship between each other. There is no separation. Nichiren revealed the essence of what we need to do to be absolutely happy IN THIS LIFETIME, DISTILLED in form. It either works or it doesn’t. So far I haven’t been disappointed in it. But someone has predicted that I will be. And you know how I feel about prophets.
Continue reading "REAPING THE GIFT "March 08, 2010
ABSOLUTE WONDERFULNESS
EXPLAINING THE CAUSATION OF THE TEN WORLDS
WND VOL. II PAGES 204-205
The precepts of the Lotus Sutra are viewed from two aspects. First, they are precepts of comparative myo, or comparative wonderfulness; second, they are precepts of absolute myo, or absolute wonderfulness.
First, with regard to the term “precepts of comparative myo,” it means that, when the Mahyana and Hinayana precepts set forth by the Buddha in the first forty and more years of his preaching life are compared with the precepts of the Lotus Sutra, the former are seen to be “rough precepts,” while the latter are seen to be “wonderful precepts.” The precepts set forth in the various other sutras are disliked because the are precepts before the truth was revealed, precepts to be practiced over numerous kalpas, precepts of those forever predestined by nature for the two vehicles, while the precepts of the Lotus Sutra are the precepts of the truth, precepts for the immediate attainment of enlightenment, precepts allowing persons of the two vehicles to attain Buddhahood. When the latter are compared to the former, one can see which are rough and which are wonderful. Therefore we speak of the latter as “precepts of the comparative myo.”
THE FIRST THING
It cannot be an easy task to translate an ancient language into something a modern person can recognize as a coherent sentence that will resonate its meaning within the reader. That being said, what first attracted my attention to this passage is that, in my anally retentiveness, I noticed the conclusion is inconsistent with the premise. I’m not sure if this is because of a mistake by the publisher, the translator, or Nichiren himself. But the conclusion in this case should be that the “latter” becomes “precepts of the absolute myo.” This would make it consistent with other letters by Nichiren where he argues absolute over provisional in context with capacity and time.
January 19, 2010
A Griswold Christmas
"Thus ignorance and awakening are simply different names for this single mind. Although there are two different words or terms used, there is only one mind."
"Therefore one must not cut off or do away with ignorance. For if one cuts off the dreaming mind that is ignorance, then one will also lose the waking mind, the mind of enlightenment."
WND Vol. II
The Unanimous Declaration By The Buddhas of the Three Existences regarding the Classification of the Teachings and Which Are to Be Abandoned and Which Upheld
Not just one of the most beautiful letters Nichiren had written, but somebody gave it quite a handle too.
My wife and I had gone to our itty-bitty condo in Utah, which we rent out when not being used by us, during Thanksgiving week and packed the lock out with presents for the kids, the youngest being 18 and the rest are in their 30's. I have come to think of the Christmas holiday as not much more than a reason to leave LA and get away from it all, especially the madness, the sadness, the franticness that Christmas seems to bring out of many people. As a matter of fact, that's why I bought the place 15 years ago when I was flush. And I like to ski. It's at 8,000 feet altitude and walkable to the slopes. With an unobstructed view of the mountains that takes your breath away so much so that you don't need to ski to enjoy being there. Food tastes better. Books read better. Music sounds better. I described it to a writer once and he ironically dubbed it "Nirvana".
The condo itself was originally two bedrooms. I converted an aditional small space into another room with a bed. By small I mean I actually built a bed in the room like a ship in a bottle. It's not a room so much as a cocoon. The living room sofa has a bed in it too.
So technically it sleeps eight. But six is very manageable. Six humans that is.
So the plan, and we had a plan, was for six humans and three small dogs; a pug Adel, a miniature Pom puppy Tater Tot (a miniature Pom is like a regular Pom with the same amount of hyper activity in half the body and half the brain), and a mutt named Celie, whom I've written about before. I went a week ahead of everybody else to do what us handy guys do; fix stuff. Secretly I imagined myself skiing most of the time. (Ha ha ha!) I took two of the dogs, the ones who don't mind the cold so much, with me. It's about a twelve hour drive, which I like do do in one shot while listening to books on tape. My wife and I, when we travel together, don't listen to the same stuff. She likes Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. They put me into a diabetic coma. I like Richard Dawkins or Cormac McCarthy both of whom my wife finds tediously boring. She refers to them as my "Buddha Buddies". She doesn't practice Buddhism. I don't get it either. But I think it has something to do with the fact that I chant daily and therefore I'm obsessed with Buddhism. I brush my teeth twice a day too but she doesn't refer to my preferred reading as my "dental care cronies".
When me-and-them-there-dogs-got-to-where-we-was-agoin', it was cold. Really cold. 40 degrees below freezing. When I open the car door, the dogs jumped out then jumped right back in and asked to go home again. They knew I was tired from twelve hours behind the wheel so they told me that they'd take turns driving home. I tried to explain to them that we were on vacation, this was going to be fun, and that their licenses were for being vaccinated, not driving a vehicle. "Besides, dogs shouldn't drive at night." That's what I told them and they bought it. Hey, they're dogs and the Dog Whisperer told me to take charge, so I did.
Once inside I discovered that we had no running water. With the subzero temperatures even the dogs could figure out that the pipes had frozen somewhere. So at 3AM I found myself crawling in the crawl space (thus the name) looking for busted pipes with a miners light strapped to my forehead and pulling a space heater behind me, my thinking being the sooner I started the thaw, the sooner I could take a pee inside. I got no sympathy from the dogs.
At the end of the crawl I didn't find any busted water pipes. I did find that I couldn't turn around. So while I laid there on the frozen subfloor slab, I tried to recall what Charles Bronson did in the Great Escape. Or that old guy from Strangers On A Train. I also remembered some lyrics from Big John and Timothy. Those motivated me enough to put everything into reverse. I couldn't help but laugh at myself thinking that here was yet another occasion where if I could only pull my head out of my ass I could at least see where I was going.
The next day I left dozens of messages for plumbers before finally actually speaking to one who said they would be there when they could. Everyone everywhere had busted pipes. I was fortunate to even get a hold of one. I was also fortunate to get ahold of my neighbors and let them know that there was a problem. They got me access to their places because all the pipes run under each other's units. The next night when the plumber finally came we found that someone (no one copped to it) had turned off my neighbors heat and all the pipes froze under that unit. 24 hours later, we could flush again. So where did I go pee for two days? With the dogs, of course. Where did I do everything else? At Home Depot of course. I learned a lot of clever things when I was younger and living in my car.
This whole time I was chanting that things got resolved asap and that I wouldn't let this be too distracting while I got the place ready for the family. It did and I wasn't. So far, so good. Then my wife called.
She was on the way, driving separately, and informing me after the fact that she was bringing two aditional BIG DOGS, Brutus a boxer and Igor a bulldog, belonging to HER kids. One of HER kids initially wasn't coming, but now is coming and bringing a friend. "I'm driving so I gotta go. Bye." Click. She knew intrinsically that I'd say no to the dogs for sure, possibly even say no to HER kid who changed their mind, so she took me out of that equation. We now had 8 humans and 5 dogs. 13 mammals. 16 feet and 20 paws. That's when the water heater broke.
Okay, so now I'm getting pissed. I have to get ahold of the plumber again, drop a grand for the Christmas-time-priced water heater, and text my wife to drive slower so they don't show up with the unwanted BIG DOGS, which would in turn drive the sequestered little dogs crazy all the while I have men, pipes and welding torches all over the kitchen.
Things I don't want to hear from my wife when she show's up:
"Did you get all the food on the list I gave you?"
"Oh boy, it's Christmas!"
"So, how's it been skiing?"