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It was a LOL moment when I saw this. If you hang around Buddhists enough or read Buddhist literature, eventually everything seems to have a Buddhist message in it, even a baseball bat. So what’s Buddhist about this?
Baseball bats were sticks used to hit a ball so the hitter of the ball can run around a square like field faster than the ball gets caught by the opposing team to hit the runner before the runner return to the starting point. Two options to make this “home run” is for the hitter to be a real fast runner or, design a bat that can hit the ball further out, giving the runner more time to make the circuit. It was easier to fiddle with the bat. Bats came in all sizes and shapes - short ones, fat ones, flat ones and even mushroom shaped ones. Batters used to whittle their own bats into any shape they thought would work and use any wood they wanted. f the 136 pages of Official Baseball Rules, ٭٭ rule 1.10 (a) states: The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.
Well, based on this rule, our hitter cannot use his bat to play baseball in a game that includes rule 1.10 (a). But what about a baseball game that does not follow all 136 pages of Official Baseball Rules?
Actually, there are lots of bits here to choose from regarding Buddhism. The one that that made me laugh was the idea of rules. Here was an idea, a customized bat that could help a slower runner achieve a home run. In one context it would be praised and in another penalized. One may argue that “but those are the rules,” yet how many times have we had arguments, fights and even wars to change the rules to rules we “know” are the true ones?
We seem to always want to change rules to rules we say are the “right” ones, the ones the “other” side just doesn’t seem to want to listen long enough to understand and “get.” But what about the “rules” or beliefs we make and impose on ourselves? We begin to measure ourselves and judge ourselves on subjective scales even if we pretend we don’t. I know I do. I’d like people to see me in a certain way and am crushed when they don’t. My rule, Anita’s rule 3.63(e) is hard and fast, but I always seem to fail to follow it and then, penalize myself more harshly than others could. If they even knew, they’d laugh and think my rule 3.63 (e) was silly to begin with.
Yet how often do we forget we are all bonbu, all subject to our humanness? Could we just, think about how we use these rules to create walls that separate us not just from our others, but from our own humanness? Is it possible for “us” to truly listen to “them” and hear what they have to say?
It was this common denominator of our humanness that Shinran Shonin understood when he explained how the Primal Vow of Amida Buddha embraces us all, never to let us go, even when we can’t let go of our own rules.
Namo Amida Butsu
In gassho
Rev. Anita
rev.anit.cbt@outlook.com
٭Naked Physics by Edwin F. Meyer, Gedanken Publishing, Berea, 2011 p.49
٭٭ http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloads/y2010/official_rules/2010_OfficialBaseballRules.pdf
Answer at end of this issue.
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