One Together

Minister’s Message

One Together

If you look at the January issue of the BCA’s Wheel of Dharma, you can read the New Year’s Greeting from Monshu Koshin Ohtani, the head abbot of our organization, Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha, in Kyoto. His greetings always begin with the words, “Immeasurable Light and Life,” referring to Amida Buddha, the immeasurable light of wisdom and infinite compassion of life, all life. The Monshu asks us to question the way we perceive things in our contemporary world. For example, though many of us may believe that technological advancement and economic strength increase happiness, he points out that we are simultaneously oblivious to our greed, limited intelligence, and disharmony with nature. We cannot pick and choose what we wish, and ignore the outcomes of our ignorant motivations.

As Nembutsu followers on the dharma path, we need to be mindful of our interdependence not only with other human beings, but with all life, without which we would not exist. Yet we forge ahead voraciously, pursuing individual comfort and glory and thinking only of ourselves. Forgetting the laws of karma, we ignore the effect that our thoughts, words, and deeds have on ourselves and others.

When the politician exhorts the people to seize the moment together; when he calls for collective action because no single person can do it alone; when he observes that “our obligations are not just to ourselves but to all posterity,” is it not stating the obvious? For like it or not, the reality is that we are in this together, and not only the people of this nation, but all living beings on this earth and perhaps beyond. Indeed, we are out of harmony with nature because we are too blinded by self-attachment to realize that our well-being depends on the well-being of all life. This should be obvious, but apparently it is not. Indeed, our intelligence is limited if we believe that there is any separation between self and other. How do we perceive life—my life, your life, the life of someone in another country, or the life of the fish in the ocean or the trees in the rainforests? Do we see it all as One, flourishing together?

Infinite Compassion comes to us from the collective aspiration of those who have gone before us and those who share this world with us, and it will continue long after us. It is unconditional, regardless of what we take or what we give. It is that which enables us to realize the full potential of our lives, even as we are oblivious to our dependence on countless unnamed, unrecognized others.

The same light shines on all of us, without discrimination. Shinran Shonin wrote, “Dharma-body’s wheel of light is without bound, shining on the blind and ignorant of the world… when a person encounters this light, all bonds of karma fall away; so take refuge in Amida, the ultimate shelter.” [Hymns of the Pure Land, 3-7].

How can we understand this in everyday terms? I heard hints of it in a poem written for the nation by Richard Blanco, titled “One Today,” in which he inventories so many beings and so many ways that Other is a vital part of each of us. Here are the first two stanzas:

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores, peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies. One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors, each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day: pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights, fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper – bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us, on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives – to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did for twenty years, so I could write this poem.