As our technologically rich lives continue, we are
often faced with the decision to enjoy the changes which enhance our
lives or ignore them and survive with what we are comfortable. As
humans, we often don’t accept change, especially if thrust upon us
without our asking. Even the very engineers and scientists involved in
revolutionizing our communication systems resist technological change
which tend to consume them at an ever increasing rate. Can you imagine
now that it took Americans over 45 years to adopt the telephone fully
into their lives. A recent revolution that is being met with resistance
is communication over the Internet. Although there are reputed to be
over 100 million Americans now on the net, that represents less than one
fourth of the humans in the United States (more or less). Our former
full-time minister, Rev. Art Takemoto, is on the net! He struggles with
the quirks and unfriendliness of the email and computers, but
appreciates this as yet another form of communication in our culture to
get the word out.
He recently wrote to me, and with his permission, I
share some of his thoughts as it relates to most of us and our temple.
Change is pervasive, continuous, and ever present. You and I are
changing, our lives and events are changing, our relationships are
changing, and our beliefs are changing. You can ignore change, you can
resist it and try to fend it off, but it happens anyway. The light of
wisdom and compassion of Amida shines regardless…in
gassho, Clif Shigeoka
from: aatmeiyu.aol.com,
10/2/98
Basically what we need to do is make the Temple
relevant to our needs by truly re-affirming our belief or conviction in
the Jodo-Shinshu understanding. It is difficult because, it means a
great deal of self analysis. which we do not want to do. Many of us only
have a surface understanding of life itself. Unfortunately, it takes a
radical happening or circumstance to awaken to the shock of life. When
things seem to be going along smoothly, we cannot think of it happening
to us. We cannot appreciate life because we cannot seem to identify with
Wisdom and Compassion that surrounds our very being because it is not
visible to our naked eye. Can we not understand or relate with all the
things that surround our lives as Wisdom, Compassion: the air, the
water, the soil, the wind, the rain, etc., etc., our friends, our
enemies, our relatives, the plants, animals marine life, etc., that help
make our very being.
Should that understanding truly come to be, should we
not then have some sense of gratitude for all that help to sustain us?
Many of us only think that we do all the things because we are told to
do so, but are we not caused to do the many things because of all that
surrounds our being and therefore, it is that which we given the
privilege to do, if we will.
You have come to understand the meaning of life by
experiencing a crucial condition; to live or to die. Dying is ultimate
and no one can deny this, but we lose perspective as to what is living,
what enables us to live. Certainly, without all these external
conditionalities, how can we live? We are given the circumstance to live
and therefore, as we find in the Ondokusan, "We acknowledge and
repay, though our bodies be reduced to powder, our indebtedness to the
Compassion Tathagata." This, then becomes the positive aspect of
the Buddha Dharma, of doing out of gratitude. Death is inevitable and in
accepting this condition we call death, in deep realization of
"life", strive do we to enhance living by giving, by being
grateful for "life" as the result of all conditions that have
surrounded this very being.
Buddhism, is not negative. It tells us what the
reality of life is, and, in being able to accept that conditionalities,
we are part and parcel of Wisdom and Compassion which we label as Amida.
Take care and regards,
Gassho, Namoamidabutsu
Art Takemoto
.
