We are all loved

This morning somebody wrote in to Radio 2, called in, texted to Clare Balding's faith program on a Sunday morning to say thank you to Satya and to the temple, but they named Satya for facilitating the Joyful January. Which they'd really appreciated. And I was very pleased. A few years ago, I would have been pleased but also upset that they hadn't mentioned me on the radio. But this morning I was just pleased, and this is the Buddhist quality of mudita, or sympathetic joy, celebrating the good fortune others. It's one of the four brahmaviharas that Satya mentioned in her talk a few weeks ago. These are one of the many lists of qualities that the Buddha described, things that are good to cultivate, or we might say things that embody— things that are embodied by somebody who who is full of faith. I want to record this. It's recorded. The other brahmaviharas are equanimity, compassion, and loving kindness. And all of the lists that we have like this, we can use whether it's the precepts or the Brahmaviharas or the Six Paramitas, we can use as a sort of mirror to our own practice. So I can say, well, when is somebody successful around me and I don't celebrate that? What are the times when I don't celebrate the successes of the people around me? When don't I feel this natural joy? Coming in somebody else's success. And what that shows me is, it shows me some insecurity, it shows me a bit of ego, it shows me a bit of my bambu nature. And in the text that we just read, the Heiheiko Suhotsuganmon, it talks about confession and repentance, being the doorway that opens you up to receiving the light of the Buddha. Investigating the causes and conditions that give rise to the times when we don't meet these ideals, the times when we don't express joy in other successes, or, you know, whatever the whatever the precept is. And yesterday at the retreat, we were doing some chi kwan, and I gave the instruction as usual, you know, those parts of yourself that you discover that don't match up to those ideals, or any part of yourself, but particularly those parts, bring them to the Buddha, allow the Buddha's light to wash over them. But we know that Amida's light is not contingent upon us doing anything. He's already blessing those parts of us. We don't actually need to make an offering of them. What confession and repentance, confession and repentance allows us to do is notice that those parts of us are already bathed in light. Because actually those places where we don't meet the ideal, they're often the places that we don't want to look at, that we don't want to acknowledge in ourselves. It's easy for me to joke about being grumpy a few years ago, if I hadn't been mentioned on the radio, because it wasn't true today, but it would have been much harder when I was still in that place of thinking, "Oh, why haven't they talked about me?" It would have been harder to acknowledge that in the moment. This practice of confession and repentance is just noticing that part. And in that act of noticing, as well as noticing what you might say the darker places of ourselves, noticing that it's already lit up by Amida's light. It's already got that thin golden line around the edge of it that shows the Buddha's light is shining. So it's not that we have to do anything with it, it's not that we have to lift it up and make an offering of it, it's not that we have to let go or worry that we don't feel we can let go of it at the moment. All we have to do is notice that It's already blessed. It's already being bathed by the Buddha's light. Just allow our inner gaze to shift slightly to see the darkness, but to see the light as well. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.