Centering Your Life
Rev. Taitsu Imai
1980
In his book, Intently Watching Death, Dr. Kishimoto wrote back, while he was a visiting professor at Stanford University, he was told he had a cancerous growth and had only six more months to live.
Intently Watching Death was written 10 years after Dr. Kishimoto received this news; so the diagnosis was not altogether correct. During those 10 years, however, Dr. Kishimoto lived with a heightened sense of his life because he realized that each day might be his last. This made him a keen observer of the world about him.
In his book, Dr. Kishimoto says we are losing our sense of life and living. He says this loss is due to the technological society in which we live.
In the past, everything was made by artisans. If it was a house, each worker started by helping to lay the foundation; then he helped raise the walls, and so on, until the house was completed. Each worker helped at every stage of the work; thus, each had a sense of contributing to building the house. He had a sense of accomplishment when the house was completed.
In a technological society, work is extremely specialized. The work we do is such a small part of the whole that we lose sight of the overall function being performed. The classic example of this is the worker who, when asked what he did, answered, “I screw on the nut number forty-three.”
Although this worker was employed on an assembly line that turned out automobiles, he had no sense of helping to create the automobiles. This part of the overall work being performed was so small that he had no concept of why he was screwing on not number forty-three.
This sense of work cannot help but influence our view of life. If our vision is fragmentary, as this worker’s was we have no sense of belonging.
Is this why we are so addicted to television programs? Do we want to become part of something so badly that we are satisfied by vicariously watching other people’s lives? If we do, we are like a doughnut: we have a hole in our center.
There is an interesting Sutra titled Zohuyu-kyo. And it is the following story:
Long ago, some monkeys lived in the large tree that grew by the ocean. One day a huge mountain of foam came floating in from the ocean. When the sun shined on it, the foam glowed in seven colors. The monkeys had never seen anything like it. They lost themselves in the beauty of that mountain of foam. They thought it was an ideal place to live.
“Oh, what a beautiful mountain!” they said. “If we live there we will always be happy! How much better to live there than in our old tree!” One monkey could not contain himself. He jumped into the mountain of foam. The other monkeys thought “that wonderful land is just waiting for us, let’s go too!” And they also jumped in. None of the monkeys were ever seen again.
Because the monkeys were not satisfied with their life in their old tree, they were easily diverted by the shining mountain of foam. If we allow ourselves to become fragmented because of the society we live in, the same thing that happened to the monkeys will happen to us. We will easily be diverted by the inconsequential things that are really detrimental to our lives.
This is why we should center our lives on the Nembutsu.
In all things and actions that are taking place in and around me, I must be able to see them in their pure nakedness, and their real simplicity. But what takes place in our innermost self, which is contaminated by imperfections, ignorance, and desires, is an illusory projection of simple reality.
We see only what we want to see; we tend to hide these shortcomings from ourselves. Like the monkeys that were so shortsighted and could not see and accept all things as they are, we find it difficult to accept things as they really are. This is why we are urged to center our lives around and in the Nembutsu, to let it guide us through this turmoil we call life.
Adapted and excerpted from Insight: A Collection of Essays by Jōdo Shinshū Ministers in America, Buddhist Churches of America, 1980
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