Skateboarding
Go Skateboarding Day
Today is Go Skateboarding Day! I’ll confess I have only been on a skateboard, the modern version that is, only once in my life. For those as old as I am the idea of riding on a skateboard conjures up two radically different images.
Skateboarding when I was a kid amounted to taking a pair of old metal roller skates, breaking them apart and nailing them to the bottom of an orange crate, and applying a set of wooden handle bars to the front. The whole contraption was a far cry from the exhilarating phenomena that is achievable by the modern versions.
There are a couple of things I wish had been around when I was a kid that are very common today, skateboarding and snowboarding. My single experience on a modern skateboard was fun, if not kind of scary. Some of my classmates in Japanese class, a couple of years ago, brought a board to class one morning so I could ride. We were in class on slick linoleum floors and the darn thing was so fast and I was so unsteady it left me on one hand excited and on the other concerned for my safety.
I have put snowboarding on my ‘bucket list’. It is my intention to try snowboarding in the fall of 2014 after I have completed my Chaplain residency. I figure that if I break any bones I’ll have plenty of time to heal up afterwards.
Trying new things is one of the things that keeps me feeling young. Of course I do have to use some common sense since recovering from a mistake or accident takes longer now than when I actually was younger.
“‘Now I will expound the Dharma to you.’ When he had said this, five thousand people among the bhiksus, bhiksunis, upasakas, and upasikas of this congregation rose from their seats, bowed to the Buddha, and retired because they were so sinful and arrogant that they thought that they had already obtained what they had not yet, and that they had already understood what they had not yet. Because of these faults, they did not stay. The World-Honored One kept silence and did not check them.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter II)
Change and experimentation can be both fun and troublesome. Some people aren’t so good with either, some are better. But in reality we all experience change, the difference is how we deal with it, how it comes to us, and what benefit or value we see in the change process.
Thereupon Sariputra, who felt like dancing with joy, stood up, joined his hands together, looked up at the honorable face, and said to the Buddha: ‘Hearing this truthful voice of yours, I feel like dancing with joy. I have never felt like this before. Why is that? We Sravakas and the Bodhisattvas heard this Dharma before. At that time we saw that the Bodhisattvas were assured of their future Buddhahood, but not that we were. We deeply regretted that we were not given the immeasurable insight of the Tathagata.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter III)
With the teaching of the Lotus Sutra for the Buddha’s contemporary disciples was a dramatic, if not radical change. We as moderns can’t quite experience the change because for many of us it was our first introduction to Buddhism, so it is where we started. But that was not the case for those who had been with the Buddha throughout his teaching life.
Yet when we compare what the Lotus Sutra teaches with other religions it is very radical, if not as much or more than during the Buddha’s lifetime. For some among the Buddhas congregation the change was too much. For others it was a game changing exciting revelation.
“The Buddha will remove any doubt of those who seek the teaching of the Three Vehicles. No question will be left unresolved.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter I)
Every day we have an opportunity to experience one or the other of these two feelings. We can choose to walk away, ignore our practice, and grow distant from the truth of the Buddha within us. Or we can celebrate the experience of enlightenment welling up within our lives. Enlightenment is on my ‘bucket list’ how about you?
