Good morning (13 March 2011 Sunday Morning Service). Thank you all for coming to the temple today and thank you to all the folks who have joined us online as well. Today we gathered together as a Sangha and celebrated the day praising the Lotus Sutra by reciting passages and chanting the Odaimoku, the sacred title. As it says in the sutra we have partaken of the medicine, which is good in flavor and color and cures all ills. The great physician, the Buddha has provided for us a way in which we can attain the Enlightenment of the Buddha.
One of the characteristics of Enlightenment is to be able to perceive the true nature of reality. This sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? Yet when we get into trying to figure out what it means it is difficult to actually be able to figure out what it means and what the implications are for our lives. In a way what it means is that we can see things as they truly are, to see things for what they are and to appreciate them and their relationship to ourselves.
Today I would like to give you all a gift, well I suppose I can really only give the folks here at the temple the physical gift, for others listening to the podcast or for those joining online you will have to use your imagination. The gift I am going to give you is truly a unique gift. It could be said that while there are probably billions like it in the universe the one I will give you is truly unique among all those similar. This gift is rare, since it is so unique. It is special, and it can teach you a great deal about life if you are receptive.
If you will hold out your hand I’ll place this gift in your hand.
As you can see now what I have given you is a pebble. It may not look like much and you may be wondering what is so unique about it and how can it teach me anything. What is this, you may be saying, a pet rock or something?
I would like you to examine the pebble I have given to you. Look carefully at it. Now if I were to collect all the pebbles back again would you be able to pick yours out of the group? Perhaps you could, perhaps you could not.
One of the ways you might be able to identify yours would be to make comparisons between yours and others. You might think that yours is flatter than the others, or yours is longer, or bigger, or rounder than the others. Initially you may catalogue your pebble in relation to other pebbles, similar but different.
How often in life do we make distinctions between things based upon comparisons to other things which are similar. We say a tree is a dogwood as opposed to an oak, but do see what is unique about one dogwood compared to another dogwood. We say sometimes that a person is one way as opposed to another way. We spend a great deal of energy making comparisons between things without truly looking at a thing and seeing its uniqueness.
We may think of ourselves in relation to others as well. We may say I am not as smart or clever as another person. I am not as fast a runner as so and so, or I am skinny compared to this other person, or that other person is better at sports than I am. We make all kinds of such comparisons every day.
But what I would like for you to do is to look again at your pebble. Look at the indentations in it, look at the coloration of it, look at its shape. Try to begin to see just your pebble and look at all the things that you can see in it. Feel it in your hand does it feel warm, cold, light, heavy and so forth. Try to begin to see your pebble for what it is in and of itself without making any comparisons to other pebbles. After a while you should become so familiar with your pebble that you could pick it out without fail from among many other similar pebbles, not because how it relates to the others but because of its truly unique characteristics.
Now look at the other folks around you, see if you can see them in a new way. See them not as how they are different from you or from others in the room but for the unique things that make them who they are. In the same way look at your own life and notice not your faults and how they relate to the skills of others but how they make you a truly unique and special person.
When I was younger I was not very good at sports. In fact beginning in high school I would pass out or become faint when I would exercise. I was diagnosed with a heart murmur and low blood pressure, and so was not allowed to engage in really vigorous activities. Even before that I was always the last one selected to be on anyone’s team. It made me sad and I felt in many ways inferior. Yet in the classroom I noticed that many of the more athletic folks would come to me for help on schoolwork. Some would come to me to help them with math since I was very good at that. Also for some strange reason I seemed to be pretty popular with kids in general yet still no good at athletics. What I began to notice is that there isn’t anyone who is perfect. I noticed that even the seemingly perfect kids had some thing that they were not good at. I began to have some confidence in myself again, and was more accepting of my own weaknesses.
Some of us suffer from many insecurities and some of us are very confident and self assured. But often times we are which ever way because of comparisons to other people and not from a true assessment of our own uniqueness. We often put people down for a variety of reasons without looking closely at their unique qualities.
Some of you received pebbles that have irregularities in them, none of you received a perfect pebble though, because there isn’t a such thing except that each one is perfect in and of itself.
The Buddha taught a message of equality and he also taught a message of appreciation for our unique qualities. We all possess equal potential for the attainment of enlightenment and we all can become Buddhas, but we will attain an enlightenment that is truly unique for ourselves.
