A few days ago Sensei Kanjin Cederman offered this challenge to us and our practice for the last remaining 100 days of the year. I would like to offer as a companion to this an accompanying meditation to engage in as we make our way out of 2018 and into 2019.
If you’ve read my book on The Magic City you will know that I am fond of and engage in a couple of mystical practices that while not originating in Buddhist traditions do not conflict with our Buddhist practice, they are lectio divina and midrash.
Lectio Divina is meditative practice coming from the mystic practices of Christian monasteries in the Middle Ages. It is a meditation of placing one’s self into the story, in our cast the story comes from the Lotus Sutra. Midrash is a Jewish mystical practice of examining sacred texts for what is not written but surely an integral part of the teaching. I’ll explain more as I go along.
What I am proposing and will be doing is writing a series of devotions, meditations, contemplations in roughly 10 parts as we engage in Sensei’s 100 days of Odaimoku for the end of the year.
I’ve not written a book yet about the parable in Chapter IV, Understanding by Faith, of the Rich Father and his Poor Son. As I have been thinking about Sensei’s challenge for the end of the year transition the image of this parable kept popping into my mind. And so I offer to you this parable and its teachings as a background exercise to accompany our chanting.
The parable begins with the recounting of the circumstances of the son leaving his father, running away from home. During his life away from his father he became quite destitute while his father’s economic situation improved. The son becomes poor and the father become rich. The father longs for reunification with his son, we don’t know if the son had similar feelings or not.
As we begin, try if you can to set aside your intellectual knowledge of the outcome of this parable. Rather focus on your life as it is now. Let go of your expectations and at this point simply feel what is present. Take inventory of your situation. Examine how you got to where you are at this stage of your life.
Are there things you have run from in your life? What are they? Are you still running from them? When was the last time you sincerely revisited anything you’ve run away from? The point here is that all of us have at one time or another run from something. And usually the thing we have run from does not exist in the same form as when we left. And certainly we are no longer the same person who did the running in the first place.
Pick something in your life, perhaps very personal, perhaps only you would understand the dynamics. Have you run from truth, have you run from falsehoods? Have you run from something material or something immaterial and only a thought? Can you give that thing a shape or form?
At first this may be difficult to do, there may be a great internal resistance to engaging in this. The resistance may be the result of a lingering fear, pointlessness, or complacency. Perhaps you don’t want to play this game.
Yet this too is a space to engage those feelings because they are also a form of running away. There is much to learn about ourselves and we are the only ones who will be able to dig down deep to the core of our lives and examine what holds us back from profound indestructible joy. Indestructible joy that stands up against impermanence.
What have you run from, what have you avoided? Even if you don’t want to examine the things you’ve run from then look at what you are heading to. Do you know what your objective is? Will you recognize it when you find it?
In the parable, not too unlike life, the son is merely in search of a job, an improvement in his economic situation if you will. He has no idea of the great fortune awaiting him, that isn’t even on his radar. Yes we say we are trying to attain enlightenment but what does that mean?
In my conversations with people both Buddhist and non most people really don’t have a firm idea of what there faith practice will lead to in a concrete way. Yes they have ideas, and symbols, and vague images in mind but they usually lie outside the realm of reality. This Buddhism is not about becoming some mythical character, it is not about living outside the bounds of the Saha world. Many people think about Buddhism and enlightenment in two separate planes of existence, the real Saha world and an imaginary realm of their Buddhahood. There is no scriptural evidence for such a belief. Our enlightenment can only occur in this mundane realm, our enlightenment is the catalyst for transforming this realm into the Buddha realm. When we become Buddhas then the land follows and becomes the Buddha land. This we find in Chapter XVI.
So for now consider yourself the son who has run away from home. You are tired, you are hungry, you are afraid, you are insecure about your future. Put yourself in this character. Look around you and contemplate how miserable that is to be alone, and uncertain. Even if you are quite confident in your life and situation now, remember it is not guaranteed to continue without changing, change is certain. What the change will be one never knows. And that uncertainty is why we continue to practice. So put yourself in the character of the son and journey with me to the beginning of the new year.
“So as of today, Saturday September 22, 2018 there are now 100 days left in the year. So what I’d like to do is issue a challenge. And that is to chant Odaimoku for one (1) hour (or more if you like) every day until the end of the year. And I’d like you to write a determination, much like what Sensei Kanjin Cederman Shonin did at the beginning of 2018 with the 100 stick incense challenge, and sent it to the Seattle Temple to be read and placed on the altar.
Let’s reflect on all we’ve accomplished this year and end 2018 on a strong note. Gassho….” By Kanjin Cederman Shonin
Subscribe to my blog post newsletter
[amazon_link asins=’1979530815,B00HTOFM44,1975689763,147834198X,0692257470,1979814023,1511592907,1726325520,1508534780,1492886041′ template=’ProductCarousel’ store=’ryusho0a-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’5b00ab74-b021-11e8-94bb-8388b7973e5c’]
