Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
We are approaching Obon, a time when we reflect on those loved ones who have passed on before us. When we think about it, although we feel as if our life is our own, in reality it is not. It is a gift, it has been bestowed upon us, from generations and generations in the past.
We all know that we were born from our parents. Without them we would not have been born. Our parents also had parents. Without our grandparents, we would not have been born. Some young children nowadays are fortunate enough to have known even their great grandparents. Without our great grandparents we would not have been born either.
Our insight into our life doesn’t seem to go much beyond a couple of generations. We can easily see and understand our parents and grandparents making our life possible, but we don’t think too much about ten, twenty, or thirty generations back in our past.
In the book River of Fire, River of Water, Taitetsu Unno quotes a Japanese poet by the name of Mitsuo Aida. In that poem, Mitsuo Aida writes that if you go back ten generations in your past, there are over 1,000 people responsible for your life coming into being. It is even more amazing if you count back twenty generations. Unbelievably, if you go back twenty generations in your past, there are over one million people directly responsible for your life coming into being. If even one of those one million people are missing, then truly we would not have been born into this world.
Twenty generations might seem like a long time, but it probably only goes back about 500 years or so. If you roughly figure that a generation occurs every 25 years, then every 100 years there would be four generations. Twenty generations would be exactly 500 years, or around the year 1500.
You could continue to go back further and further, even before man walked the face of the earth. Our ancestors then would be the various forms of life that existed prior to man, the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
Although we are Buddhist, I am sure that everyone has heard about the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. When I was in college I took a class on the bible. I wrote a paper on the Book of Genesis in which the story of Adam and Eve appears. This story relates how life began on earth from these two individuals, a man named Adam, and a woman named Eve.
Personally, I cannot accept taking this story literally, but if you take the story poetically, symbolically, then there is a wonderful message in the story.
If we all descended from Adam and Eve, then that would mean that all people of the earth are part of the same family, a family not of Christians or Jews, Buddhists or Muslims, but a family called, “humanity.” It would mean that all people of the earth from time immemorial are our brothers and sisters. How can we quarrel and fight with those with whom we share the same family? To call each other Iraqis, North Koreans, Republicans, Democrats, is to miss the most important classification – that we are all human beings. I think that the story of Adam and Eve teaches us the common humanity of life that we all share with all human beings, now, from eons past, and for centuries to come.
Next year we hope to publish our next BEC book, which is a translation of another Japanese author, Hideo Yonezawa. In his book, Yonezawa Sensei talks about the Pure Land as not being a realm out there or somewhere that we go to when we die, but that the Pure Land is the world around us that we live in. Yonezawa says that we have come from the Pure Land, we live in the Pure Land now, and that we “return” to the Pure Land when we die.
Yonezawa too states that if you trace back your ancestors in time, eventually you would reach the very beginnings of the universe. In my words, I would say that we are born not from Adam and Eve, but we are born from the universe. The story of Adam and Eve is a poetic way of expressing that origin of life, that is even beyond human understanding. It puts that mysterious origin of our life into the world of myth, which stands beyond time and space.
Obon is a time when we remember those who have passed on before us, from generations ago, to recent times. When I think of, for example, my own grandparents, many thoughts arise and I realize that I have learned many important values from them.
My Grandpa Harada was a wonderful baker and cook. He also had a keen sense of humor and was a great story teller. I think I received from his life the value of humor and being able to laugh.
Grandma Harada valued education. Although she had little education in comparison to nowadays, I think I learned the value of learning and education from her.
My Grandma Tameno was generous and giving. When I went to Trick or Treat at Halloween, I would get a whole bag of goodies equivalent to what I had received from going to all the other houses. I think she taught me the value of giving.
Grandpa Tameno had a deep faith in the Nembutsu. He continues to teach me that my own understanding is so shallow and limited in comparison to what I felt from his simple recitation of the Nembutsu.
This year at Obon, while I recall people in my past, I also reflect back further, to my own birth into this world from the very universe itself.
Our emergence into this world is like a single wave that rises to the surface of the great ocean. Who knows how long it took that individual wave to emerge, within the vastness and unfathomable depth of the ocean. But yet the wave emerges, from eons of time and space. The wave that emerges is unique. There is no wave like it amidst millions of waves. This one wave rises above the surface and has its unique life as a wave. It is a brief and fleeting life, in comparison to the eternity of the ocean, but nonetheless, it has a most precious and rare life as a wave. The little individual wave, because of the great ocean beneath it, rises to the surface and begins its own unique life. We too, because of an infinite number of people, causes and conditions in our past, appear into this world and receive this thing we call life. May we reflect on this precious, unique life that we have been given from the universe as we observe our Obon this year.
Namuamidabutsu,
Rev. Marvin Harada
