Orange County Buddhist Church

 A Way Of Seeing  (Got Thanks?)

Surely by now we’ve all seen the commercials for milk, although it must be said that the current ones with the extraterrestrials are not up to the “quality” of the earlier ones.  Of course, this essay is not about milk, and it certainly is not about extraterrestrials, although that might have been what caught your attention,

        Arigatai
        Mida no makoto no
        Fushigi ga nakenya
        Watashya
        Kono mama
        Shizumu no ni
                 -   Saichi

        I’m so grateful!
        If I didn’t have
        ‘Mida’s inconceivable Truth,
        I Would immediately Sink.
                -   Saichi / tr. by Donkon Jaan

Translation can be a devilish business; there is nearly always more than one way to translate a word, let alone a sentence or, as here, a poem.  If we were to give an expanded, non-poetic translation, it might be something like this:

I am filled with gratitude!  If Amida didn’t give me the Name, Namo Amida Butsu, even though its working is completely inconceivable to me, I would, since I am unsaveable [I made up this word], fall into hell.

Namo Amida Butsu does not answer petitionary prayers; it can’t, because it would go against the law of cause and effect.  It can, and does, on those occasions when it is both the cause and effect, answer the Bodhi-mind that desires to realize enlightenment.  Such a situation is inconceivable.  It is unthinkable, yet it works, because that is its nature.  That is, the sole reason for the existence of Namo Amida Butsu is both to awaken in us the desire, or will, to realize enlightenment (cause) and to enable us to realize that desire through entrusting in it (effect).

Of course, that is only half the story, as they say, but it is the half that, it’s to be hoped, brings some light to Saichi’s poem.

None of this will make much sense unless the reader has made some effort to understand him- or herself, and as Socrates put it, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Gasshō,
Donkon Jaan
Rev. John Doami

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