No Going Back
One of my favourite stories is Urashima Taro, about a poor young fisherman of long ago who ventures to the beautiful underwater realm of the Sea Princess. Though he enjoys a wonderful time with her, eating and playing to his heart’s content, his duty to his family and work calls. Before he leaves, the Princess gives him a coral box engraved with the Japanese kanji characters of the four seasons. It is a treasure, but she warns Taro not to open it. [Spoiler alert!] He returns to his village to find that although he believes he has only been gone for a short time, in fact three hundred years have passed. Nobody recognizes him and almost everything has changed. In despair, he opens the coral box and sees the four seasons flash before him. In the next moment, he turns into an old man, but a feeling of deep peace sweeps over him. The end of the story says that Taro’s gravestone still stands, with the dharma name, “Shaku Ho Kai (Treasure Ocean)” engraved upon it.
What can we learn from this story? The last line points out that the young Urashima Taro had left the real world to seek the treasure of happiness elsewhere. Don’t we often do the same thing when we wish we were somewhere else or when we long for “the good old days” in which our selective memories tell us that everything was pleasingly perfect and fun?
I recently returned to Toronto to spend time with family and friends after many years away. It was wonderful to be with loved ones in a place I once called home. The autumn foliage was even more breath taking than I remembered but the traffic was much worse. Many more gravestones crowded the sprawling cemetery where I paid tribute to close relatives, including an aunt whose funeral I had regrettably missed. The Japanese maple sapling she had planted for her husband now towered over their marker. The cycle of life and death had continued there while I navigated a similar but different reality in Southern California.
I was happy to attend the wedding of my youngest cousin, an accomplished chemical engineer, who wasn’t even born when I graduated and left Toronto years ago. My parents, long gone, would have been thrilled to see this beautiful bride they once doted on as a child. But life goes on. The young grow older, the strong become weaker; a neighbourhood changes; dollar bills become coins and pennies disappear altogether. My friends have not changed and yet they have, as I have for them. It is memory that makes these people and this place familiar. Indeed, all of it is a part of who I am.
Spring, summer, autumn, winter. I miss seeing the seasons in this place that is now my home, where the sun always shines and strawberries grow in December. I think about that box that the Sea Princess gave to Taro and I realize how precious and true it is. All the elements of the seasons of life we cycle through are stored in us. All the unique beings and events and causes and conditions that touch us—they are the infinite and immeasurable life that makes us who we are in each moment, ever growing, ever changing. No matter where I am, this amazing life has been so difficult to come by, it is mind-boggling. Each of us could say this. It is all the more unfathomable because we are imperfect, unenlightened beings who benefit regardless, and we have been empowered to truly live, immersed as we are in the dynamic treasure ocean of great life.
No matter how fond our memories, there is no going back, only forward. Everything changes; nothing remains the same. Recognizing with humble gratitude all that we have received, we can best honour the past by being and contributing all that we can be right here, right now, in our present condition. Then “I” disappear and truly return to the treasure ocean of Oneness where there is peace to be found in everything just as it is.
As we approach the end of another calendar year, it seems to me that the cycles turn faster and faster. Thank you all for walking this path, this sometimes bumpy road, with me. I wish you all peace, joy and well-being as a new cycle begins—in each and every moment.
Namo Amida Butsu.
Gassho,
Rev. Patricia Usuki