Not that it is easy to be a Buddhist on a mountain top. It has its own difficulties as Shinran Shonin realized in 1201 CE when he came down from Mt. Hiei. But just try being a Buddhist living at home, with family, with a job, with bills to pay… And add the coming holiday season from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day and the formula for our good Buddhist intensions just melts away.
Starting around now, cultural anxiety fueling excess consumerism to have the “perfect” holiday season begins to set in. It’s a little bit like sweeping the kitchen floor every night. It looks clean enough, but when you begin sweeping the floor with the broom, it is surprising how much is collected from the entire floor. We just collect it onto the dust pan and out it goes into the garbage can. But is the floor really clean?
Again, it looks clean, but when we take a wet mop to the clean floor, the water in the pail tells a different story. The grey water in the pail verifies it wasn’t. Our ego is like that, in a way.
We think we used the Buddhist teachings to train our mind, but we’ve only cleared the big obvious ego particles away. The little ones hide behind their size. We don’t even realize they are there. We may not even realize we have little particles of ego left. All those microscopic particles of thinking that we have control over our ego are the ones that make that pail of clean water dirty.
So how do we make a clean sweep of our infinite number of little thoughts, that when combined makes us anxious, dissatisfied, unhappy, and in general, locked into samsara and with it, dukkha? We begin by realizing we continue to sweep our ego under the rug thinking “it’s no big deal.” We just hate getting rid of our ego, even if it is possible to do so.
We are human and in my opinion, that makes us bonbu by definition. What Shinran Shonin did was to share with us the teachings of the Buddha of how people like you and me, everyday people, can follow the path that leaves dukkha behind in this life. We have been shown the Pure Land path. We who are not monks or nuns living in a monastic setting, we who live in the time of Mappo when the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha are already in the last Dharma age, a stage where it is nearly impossible to attain enlightenment by self-power.
And like the novice monk in Nightstand Buddhist, we are given the opportunity to let go of self-power and accept being embraced by Amida Buddha who welcomes us all to “come as you are.”
Namo Amida Buddha
Namo Amida Buddha
Namo Amida Buddha
Rev. Anita
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