Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
A Way of Seeing (Shinran Day, 2005)
Another month in another year has come, and we have been enabled thus far to live in it. [What an awkward sentence!] Okage-sama de, that is, through the wisdom and compassion of Amida, most of us will have been given the impetus to examine our lives and not simply passed through these years.
I have talked about the difference between the Japanese words, keiken and taiken before, but let me refresh your memory. Both words can be translated as “to experience,” but when differentiating the two, keiken means simply to pass through an event, while taiken means to feel with your whole being what is happening. You can watch a basketball game, or any kind of game, and you will have experienced it, but it is a different experience actually to play the game. You can see someone dying or dead, but it is a completely different experience to be dying yourself. I think, since I have been fortunate enough not to have had that experience yet, although we are at every moment being born and dying.
It may differ from person to person, but the most memorable events are those that would be called taiken, simply because one is personally and deeply involved in them. It is one thing, at least for most of us, to study the Buddha Dharma and Jodo Shinshu, even diligently, and it is quite another to live the Buddha Dharma and Jodo Shinshu in particular. There are more and more scholars of Buddhism nowadays, but it is quite another matter whether and how many are followers of the Buddha Dharma.
Shinran, founder of our way of seeing, i.e., Jodo Shinshu, taught that it is less important to know all the technicalities of the teachings than to realize their purport, or import. Jodo Shinshu translates as “the true purport, or import, of the Pure Land teachings.” The “shu” in Shinshu does not mean “sect.”
In this month of Shinran’s birth, I hope that we will all come to a deeper understanding, a deeper realization, of who we truly are and why we need the impetus of the wisdom and compassion shown for us in the 48 Vows, especially the 18th Vow, of the Larger Sutra. It would be a grand birthday gift to both Shinran and to ourselves.
[The 18th Vow reads, “If, when I attain Buddhahood, the sentient beings of the ten quarters, with sincere mind entrusting themselves, aspiring to be born in my land, and saying my Name perhaps even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment. Excluded are those who commit the five grave offenses and those who slander the right dharma.”]
Gassho,
Dull-rooted Jaan
Rev. John Doami
