Orange County Buddhist Church  

A Way of Seeing  – Father’s Day

(If you are a more or less regular reader of this column, you will have noticed that there is now a subtitle, something which I have refrained from using in the past, simply because it is not always easy to categorize them, which is what subtitles do in a sense.  However, because OCBC is now going to archive the ministers’ columns, subtitles would make it easier to find columns on particular subjects.  Or so they say.  In any case, an attempt will be made to subtitle my columns from now on, as well as those that have been saved from the recent past.)

Father’s Day probably has a slightly different significance to me than it does to most of you.  The simple reason is that the only father I know directly is myself, because my father died before I was two years old, and I have no recollection of him whatsoever.

All of the things that many fathers do with their children, especially with their sons (I mention that since I am male), like going fishing, playing sports, going on trips, the nurturing of a competitive spirit, and so on, I missed doing, at least with a father or, even, a father-figure.  Of course, I played basketball; if you are a Japanese American, you play basketball.  That was almost a given, whether or not you had a father.  In San Francisco, where I grew up, hardly anyone played baseball, probably because there weren’t many baseball fields.  No one, not even adults, played soccer.  Since I had no father, or anyone else, to teach me how to fish or to take me fishing, even when I grew up and tried fishing on my own, I didn’t much care for it.  The main reason is that I was mostly interested in eating fish, not catching them!  As for competition, I think I was as competitive as anyone else.  I wanted to win the game, just as everyone else did; of course, for one’s own team.  Judging from some of the horror stories I hear and read of parents nowadays, especially fathers but too often mothers as well, it might be a good thing that what competitive spirit I have I gained on my own.  I’m sure that since we are all Buddhists who live in the spirit of the Golden Chain and the Three Treasures, we do not shout or scream at our children or at referees or coaches.

All this might make it sound as though I did not need a father, but that would be a wrong conclusion, I believe.  In fact, when I was in grad school going for a master’s in psychology, which I never finished getting, one of my profs told me I should go for psychoanalysis because he felt I was rebelling against him as I might against my father by falling asleep in his class!  I thought I was falling asleep in his class because he was so boring!  I thought he was kidding, but he had such a solemn face when he told me that he must have been serious.  I never did get any psychoanalysis, so if it ever seems that I am acting childishly, maybe that’s the reason.

There is a difference between being childish and being childlike, as you’d probably agree.  Being childish is being very selfish; being childlike is being innocent, trusting, saying things as one sees them.  In a sense, being childish makes me the target of Amida’s wisdom and compassion; being childlike makes you almost like a Buddha.  In the former case, of course, I must realize that I am being childish, or selfish, and that, in fact, I am selfish to the core.  That is why Amida made the vows so that even I could realize enlightenment.  Amida’s compassion made it necessary for Amida’s vows.  In a sense, Amida’s own enlightenment depends on my enlightenment, because unless someone as selfish and ignorant as I am is not enabled to realize enlightenment, Amida’s vows are not accomplished.  Unless the vows are fulfilled, Amida remains Hozo Bosatsu, Dharmakara Bodhisattva, and cannot become Amida.  But Amida is Amida, so the vows have been fulfilled, and I am enabled to realize the same enlightenment.  All that is necessary for me is to let go of myself and entrust myself to Amida, although this is easier said than done simply because I am so selfish.

This may be a strange way to put it, but perhaps I should thank my father for dying so early in my life and making it possible for my selfishness to grow without his firm hand to guide me.  On the other hand, my mother packed a pretty mean wallop, too!  But that story will have to wait until Mother’s Day.

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