Satya Robyn delivers a Bodhi Day talk on refuge in Pure Land Buddhism, reading from John Provoskopoulos's compilation and a poem by Asahara Saichi, a Myokonin. She tells Saichi's life story and reflects on bonbu nature, awakening of faith, and the coexistence of gutter and sparkles in finding comfort through Namu Amida Butsu.
Chapters
Good morning. Namomi tabu. It's the Bodhi Day 2018, and the theme of our day today is refuge. It feels like a real privilege to be sitting here in front of you speaking about such a huge topic. And what I sometimes do when I feel a bit overwhelmed by a topic is I kind of go to a favorite book and just open it and see what the universe has for me. And I went for this book by John Provoskopoulos, The Fragrance of Light. You might know his book Call of the Infinite, which is a really beautiful book. He's a Shin Buddhist in Australia, and this is basically a book of all his favorite quotes from from the sutras and from Pure Land teachers. And at the back there are some longer poems, and there's one by a man called Asahara Saichi, who was born in 1850, and I'll just read the end of it. I'm gonna read it a couple of times. So, Saichi, he's sort of talking about himself, 'Saichi, you are so miserable.' 'Miserable I am, but I see the sparkles, I see the sparkles. My deluded thoughts are still there, no bones about it. And this is something our Oya allows, for they become the seeds of our joy in Dharma. Until life's end, they will go hand in hand with me.' How this makes me feel happy all over. Saichi, how will you spend your future? I'll spend it in the mercy of Amida. Where have Saichi's desires gone? They are still here. I hate, I love, I crave. Parent's mind and child's mind, between them there is no restraint. "Namu Amida Butsu" is both parents' "come" and child's "yes." So what I really loved about, well, I'll say in a minute what I really loved about it. I want to tell you a little bit about Asahara Saichi before I go on. So, Saichi was born in 1850, and he's what's known as a Myokonin. Which is a Japanese term, and Dharma Vijja likes to translate it as shiny person, shiny person, and it can also be translated as a person of light, but a simple person. And Myalkonins are mostly associated with Pure Land Buddhism because they are associated with people of very deep faith who don't necessarily do much intellectual kind of thinking about things. They just are full of the Dharma, they're full of joy, the joy of the Dharma. D.T. Suzuki wrote this about them which I think is quite nice, which I'll read out to you. They are distin— so he's talking about Myokonins. They are distinguished generally by their good good-heartedness, unworldliness, pious— piousness, and lastly their illiteracy, that is, not being learned in the law of their religion, and not being at all argumentative about what they believe. They are not intellectually demonstrative, just go on practicing what they have innerly experienced. When they express themselves at all, they are unaffected. Their words come directly from their innermost hearts. And refer directly to the truth of their faith. And they have often gone unrecorded in history because nobody's really writing down what they say. Asahara Saichi was— he made clogs, he made kind of Japanese shoes, he was a cobbler and carved the wood, and he wrote down his poems on the shavings of wood and it's said that he compiled in the last years of his life, there are about 10,000 of these verses that he wrote. He wrote one every, a couple every day for, for a decade or a couple of decades. He was actually born into quite difficult circumstances. He was born into a family, a poor family, and his dad quite quickly left to become a monk. So he kind of lost his dad, and then his mum remarried and he went to live with one of his grandparents, so he lost both of his parents, but they still lived in the same place, they're all living in the same area, so I imagine that being a little boy and being rejected by both of your parents must have been pretty tough. He was interested in dharma quite early in his life, and he, in his 20s, he decided he was going to listen to all the dharma talks, and he continued to kind of be interested in the dharma throughout his life. He married and he did various jobs, but it was only when he was about 55 that he came back to where he used to live and became a cobbler, and at that point he found a local priest who he had a real, a beautiful connection with, and over the next 5 years he practiced with this priest. I read yesterday that one of the things that happened at that time was he really wanted to be good, he really wanted to be a kind of a virtuous person, and he thought that virtuous people looked after their parents, so he invited his dad, who was still like an living in a little sort of hovel somewhere as a monk, if he'd come and live with the family. And his dad said, "No, I'm not going to come and live with you." And that was a really big thing for him. It sort of subverted his ideas about what he should do, or what should be fulfilling to him, or what would make him a good person. And then it said that at the age of 60, he attained faith. So I guess this is kind of a shin idea that there's an awakening of faith in a particular time. And what I also like about this, the story of his life, is it kind of gives us hope because, you know, he lived for many years before something sort of just slid into place and he became transformed. He wrote about this moment, he said, "My eyes change, the world changes, this place turns into the Pure Land, how happy I am. Namu Amida Butsu." So that was what he wrote when that moment happened, and there was something about seeing through different eyes which transformed the world for him into the Pure Land. So to go back to the poem, there are a few different points that I really like, and these points also repeat through the rest of the poem. If anyone wants to read the whole thing, then let me know. The first thing, the first sentence, you know, "Satya, you are so miserable." That's repeatedly in this poem and in his other writings, he returns to his own wretchedness, his own bonbu nature, his own limits. He says, he says, "Saiichi's heart, how miserable! All kinds of delusion thickly arise all at once. A hateful fire mixed with evils is burning. Saiichi's heart worrying, a heart in utter confusion." And this is one of the things that I really appreciate about Pure Land Buddhism. It was the very first encounter I had with the Pure Land liturgy, or the Pure Land philosophy, was talking to Sam and Helen after a service in the Buddhist House, and they were using the word "bon bu," and I asked them what they meant, and as they described 'bon boo' in their own words, I felt this relief, like, 'Phew, okay, so it's allowed here in this place to be bon boo.' And I still think that's quite radical for a lot of religions, actually. I think it's very easy in all religions to get caught up in not wanting to really see the depth of our wandering nature. So this is a theme that we always return to. And he says later, he says, my deluded thoughts are still there, no bones about it. He's very clear. And I think that for me it's helpful to always return to this place. I am still full of greed, hate, and delusion. And yes, there have been changes, but once I start to forget that, that's when I get into trouble. I think that's when spiritual materialism creeps in, spiritual, um, yeah, pride, I guess. So that's the first thing that we always go back to, the fact that wombu nature remains. The next thing I really like that he says is that my deluded thoughts are still there, no bones about it, and this is something our oya, Amida, allows, for they become the seeds of our joy in Dharma. So that feels really important that It is our very limit— limited nature that shows us the Dharma, that somehow forces us to look to something else, to something bigger than us. And if we don't really see how limited we are, there's no reason for us to look. We just keep looking at ourselves thinking, "Oh, am I doing okay here?" Or, "Oh, I'll work really hard and then I'll fix it," or whatever. There's something about that first step in the 12 steps which is a deep, deep acknowledgement of how dependent we are and how How we need help. How we need help. And this is not a popular message in the West. You're all in this room, so you're kind of, sort of, with it, but this is not what people want to hear. People want to hear that if we give them tools, they will be able to fix themselves. And yes, tools are very helpful. I use lots of tools and they are extremely helpful for me and other people. I'm a therapist, that's That's what I do for a living. And we need to go back again and again to the First Noble Truth, to our Bambu nature, suffering and limits. And this is the gate through, it's the sanghaemon, into contrition, into grace, into Amida. The other thing I like about this poem, this series of poems, is that— is the sparkles. Very fond of the sparkles. There's a little note on the bottom that— the bit where it says, 'Satya, you're so miserable.' 'Miserable I am, but I see the sparkles, I see the sparkles,' which refers to the Oscar Wilde quote which some of you might know: 'We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. So the stars is the sparkle, and the sparkle comes with the gutter. So if we focus on Bamburi nature to such an extent that we sort of forget to look at the stars, then we're missing out on something beautiful— the gifts. And in my experience, they're always kind of mixed in together. You can't get the sparkles without the gutter. You can't get the lotus blossom without the mud. And the last thing that I'd like to leave you with is the comfort of refuge, the comfort of this thing that we do, which is calling to Amida and allowing Amida to come. To us, and he says, "Parent's mind and child's mind, between them there is no restraint. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is both parents' 'come' and child's 'yes.'" And for me, in that 'yes,' there is, there is a deep, deep comfort which moves me as I think of it. That we are received, we are received, and we are received exactly as we are, with all of our delusion. And, you know, Saichi really lays it on pretty thick in terms of his own opinion of his own nature. He says in one of his other poems that he wishes that his dad would have died earlier. He really wanted for for the whole thing to be solved and for his dad to just die. And he returns to that as an example of how, how our limits lead us to be cruel and impatient and blind and hurtful to other people. And as it says in the Tai Chi Chi prayer, you know, we're full of sorrows and we're full of this kind of, this mess, and we feel okay. I can't remember the exact verse, but some of you will remember it, that both of those things go together. So I'll read it one more time. Saichi, you are so miserable. Miserable I am, but I see the sparkles, I see the sparkles. My deluded thoughts are still there, no bones about it, and this is something our Oya allows, for they become the seeds of our joy and dharma. Until life's end, they will go hand in hand with me. How this makes me feel happy all over. Saichi, how will you spend your future? I'll spend it in the mercy of Amida. Where have Saichi's desires gone? They are still here. I hate, I love, I crave. Parent's mind and child's mind, between them there is no restraint. Namo Amida Butsu is both parents' kung and child's. Yes. Just before the end, I know that feels like a good end, but I just got one more poem I just want to share. This is the poem that he wrote about dying. Saichi, what if you stopped breathing now? Yes, fine, I'll stop breathing. Within you. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu. Namu Amida Butsu.
