Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
A Way of Seeing (Ohigan 2005)
As this is being written, the sky has opened up, as the cliché goes, and flushed what seems like its whole annual bounty of water down on us. I hope no one is adversely affected in any way. People always say, “Well, we need the water,” but, because this area has little or no means of catching all this rain, we are still in a condition of drought! Hard to imagine, isn’t it? I heard on the radio that about 80% of the rain water simply ends up in the ocean. You would think by now the civil engineers and whoever else works on such problems would have come up with something. If there isn’t a huge pack of snow on the Sierras and the Rockies, we’ll remain in a drought condition. You all do know that we are living in a desert, right? Without all the water from the Sacramento Delta, as well as the Sierras and Rockies, being channeled to us, we would not have the green lawns, etc., that we have now.
One reason the reality of our dependence on water is being brought up is that, like too many things, we tend very much to take it for granted, even when it is rationed, as in no watering lawns, no washing cars, and the like. It’s quite likely that, unless we are told to use no more than, say, three gallons per day per person and it is enforced, many of us would continue to waste water simply because we take it for granted that it will always be there.
People take for granted different things: our cars, the toilet, the supermarket, our computers (although not as many as our cars, for example, since computers tend to crash way more often), even all our electronic gadgets. These things can be fixed usually. Too often, we take our family, our friends, and others for granted, not truly realizing how dependent on them we are, just as with water. The big difference, of course, is that, being human means that we are subject to all the frailties of this condition, which means that taking for granted those around us can lead to irretrievably and irreplaceably lost relationships, relationships whose existence we depend on way more than we know. When human relationships go wrong, they are not as easily fixed as are inanimate things.
With all this rain pouring down, it’s difficult to envision that we are still in a drought condition. In somewhat the same way, with all the love with which we are enwrapped by family and friends, it is difficult to envision that we are taking them for granted, unless we think about it. However, just as we cannot live without water, we cannot live the life we are living without them. Use this Ohigan (Spring Equinox) to give some thought to your life and the way in which you are living it. Then express your love and friendship to those around you, who make it possible for you to be.
Gassho,
Donkon Jaan, Rev. John Doami
