Real Life with Ryuei

Always returning to the Odaimoku

Hi all,
Last night at Faithful Fools I talked again about the meaning of Odaimoku. I had done that a couple of weeks ago and shared some that here because the woman who sits with me was wanting to know what all of this chanting that we do is all about. She was absent last Sunday but came last night and told me that her mental state is such that she has been having a hard time concentrating or retaining anything, so instead of moving onto a new topic we just discussed the meaning of Odaimoku again. As before, she said that what I was explaining sounded like how she perceived life when she was younger, a more intuitive appreciation of cause and effect and the mysterious nature of things and so on, but now as a homeless woman with diabetes living in an SRO and not able to get adequate medical care and at the mercy of what she calls "poverty pimps" (apparently those organizations which take lots of money from the city, state, feds, etc. to provide housing and other programa but who she feels do not really deliver - I personally can't judge and am only relating what she perceives about her situation) she is finding it harder to believe that there is any justice or sense in things.

In any case, my conviction that life does unfold according to causes and conditions and that the unconditioned is the other side of the reality coin of the conditioned remains. I think that dukkha or the suffering, frustration, tragedies, everyday angst, etc. of life tends to obscure the sense and justice of things, tends to obscure for us the workings of cause and effect so that we lose our perspective, lose the big picture, and things do end up seeming to be arbitary. Instead of the Mystic Law (another translation of Myoho) or the Golden Rule, there is "Those with the gold make the rules, and those with the guns get the gold."

I think that part of what our practice and part of what coming together to practice and discuss the teachings can do is remind us of the big picture, and remind us that guns and gold are not the final court of appeal, and remind us that we do not need to give up our faith in the Buddha-Dharma, our hope to actualize the liberation of all beings, or loving-kindness for all beings, even our enemies.

I discovered last night that we could discuss all these things just in relation to the meaning of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. I think that everytime we meet at Faithful Fools we could discuss the meaning of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo in relation to anything and every explanation would be different and relevant. All of our talks come back again and again to recovering our devotion to the Wonderul Truth or Sublime Reality or Mystic Law or whatever you want to call it, and to seeing how that is like a beautiful lotus of wisdom and compassion that can blossom in the muddy pool of life's challenges, and that all the things that compose our lives are a sutra or thread of discourse trying to convey this to us in various ways. This is what I have meant by the "sole efficacy of Odaimoku" because it is from that point that we can encompass all the teachings and insights and merits of living a wakeful life.

Conversely, there are times to look to particular sources of guidance. For instance, Sunday morning we did our silent sitting session as we do every first Sunday at San Jose. Afterwords, the Ven. Ryusho Matsuda shared with us several verses from the Dhammapada and encouraged us to read the Dhammapada for ourselves. These were verses many of us have read before about avoiding fighting, purifying our minds, avoiding evil, doing good, conquering oneself before trying to conquer others and several others. Sensei acknowledged that this was very strict, because while almost everyone would admit that what these verses teach is sound advice, very few of us are able to fully live in accord with them. But that does not exempt us from trying. Sensei pointed out that the Buddha is not telling anyone to listen to him or suffer punishment. Rather the Buddha is pointing out a better way to live our lives so as to avoid suffering and create happiness for ourselves and others by overcoming our egotism.

Though it was not specifically about Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, I think that my sensei's speech was also an exposition of the inner depths and life of Namu Myoho Renge Kyo. It is to be able to live the ideal expressed in the Dhammapada (an ideal many of us expect and sometimes demand of each other but rarely of ourselves when difficulties arise) that is the reason we practice Odaimoku and refresh ourselves with the Lotus Sutra again and again each day. The two go hand in hand, the celebration and practice of the Lotus Sutra and the living out of its spirit which is described not just in the Lotus Sutra but in its particulars in the Dhammapada and throughout the sutras, all of which are rivers emptying into the ocean of the Lotus Sutra.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at June 6, 2005 09:29 AM