At
year's end, thumbing through our daily schedule calendar is like reading
a personal diary of the past year's events. Packing our personal
belongings in preparation for relocation is like reviewing our entire
life. Some people are born and raised, live out their life and die in
the same home town. Others are caused to move about and resettle
frequently during their lifetime. For these individuals, the lack of any
permanent roots become the roots themselves. We often become merely
accustomed to change, not necessarily more tolerant of it. We often fear
change and find it more reassuring to continue an untenable situation
than seek a positive solution. How many victims of spousal abuse are
unable to leave home? As Shinran Shonin has pointed out, although we
desire birth in the Pure Land, this hellish existence is our home, the
place we know best and feel most comfortable.
In
sorting through our lifelong possessions in preparation for moving, we
become aware of the accumulation of things in our life. Looking forward
to our new future, it is easier to discard items from the past. What was
once considered precious and worth keeping, now seems to be an
unnecessary burden, something to be abandoned. And so we make choices:
what to keep and what to throw away. Changing times make it easier to
discard some things. When old computer software programs or fashion go
out of date, there is no need for making a decision about throwing them
out — we know that their time has come and passed. We change as well.
Old collected books and magazines once thought worthy of keeping and
transporting, now no longer interest us. It is amazing what we carry
along thinking it is important, only to be stored in boxes in a closet
or tucked away in a drawer in our new home. We never seem to get around
to using most of it. We never seem to appreciate what we already have.
Most of our life is spent in storage.
On
what basis do we think something important enough to take with us on yet
another move? During the terrible fires in Laguna Hills a few years ago,
some people risked their life to return to their burning home to
retrieve mink stoles and jewelry. Others risked their life to save their
pets. Yet others, returned to a burning house to carry out photographs
of their children. In sorting through and viewing old pictures of
family, lost loves, places we've been and people we've known, it is as
if we have lived many past lives, prompting us to ask, "Who am I?
What is the essential me?" Or perhaps, "What am I not? What is
not essential to my well-being?"
In
preparing to move to Vista during the holiday season of last year, I
hurried to place my discarded items in the trash dumpsters of the large
apartment complex in which I was living before anyone else, anticipating
how easily they would become filled with yesterday's momentos and gifts
once Christmas was over. Surely
enough, the day after Christmas, all the dumpsters were overflowing. It
was as if people were discarding the unnecessary parts of their lives.
What was so important on Christmas Eve (such as wrapping paper, the
Christmas tree and even the presents themselves) merely became trash
after Christmas was over. Are we keeping the important things in our
lives? Or are we merely transporting those items of value from one place
to another without understanding their worth or utilizing them in our
everyday lives?
Will
the new acquisitions we make upon relocating become useless someday too?
Perhaps it is better to leave some things behind. Since some things are
more readily replaced at our destination we often discard the old in
anticipation of the new. Why are some out of date things merely
obsolete, while others become classics? At a rummage sale, what is junk
to one person is an antique to another. Although a 1946 phone book or a
twenty-year-old medical journal would be interesting to look at, they
are not very useful today. How marvelous to think that the sutras we
chant in our temple each weekend, although being thousands of years old,
are as applicable to our lives today as they were to our Buddhist
predecessors long ago.
When
it is time to move, sometimes we are mentally prepared although our
karma is not yet exhausted. Sometimes we are not mentally ready, but
residual karma moves us along anyway. Isn't it best, therefore, that we
start getting prepared for our next move right now. Karmically speaking,
we are moving (flowing, changing) with each moment. Let us each live the
present moment to its fullest potential within a life of gratitude, a
life of Namo Amida Butsu.
Please
accept my deepest gratitude for having provided me this wonderful
opportunity to work beside you and to learn from you. Please continue to
teach and guide me always.
