Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
In a book written by Lama Surya Das that I have been reading lately, he wrote about a meaning of the Dharma that I had never heard before. One of the original meanings of the word, "Dharma", which we usually understand to mean "teachings", as in the teachings of the Buddha, was that the term Dharma also meant, "that which heals." The Buddha was regarded as a great physician, a doctor who helped to heal the sufferings of man. The Dharma, his teachings, are the medicine. They are, "that which heals", the sufferings of man. Man is thus the patient, who receives the medicine that heals the sufferings and afflictions of the body and mind.
I think that this example of the Dharma as "that which heals" is something that I would like to focus on for the new year.
Each year I try to have a sense of vision for the coming year, to try to accomplish something to help OCBC to expand and grow in its religious, educational, and propagational programs. My vision for this year is to establish a Buddhist counseling center as part of our program for our Sangha and greater community.
More and more, I see the urgent need for counseling, to help people address the many problems that we face in life. All of us, without exception, face problems in life. We all face illness or are tending to a family member with a serious illness. We have all lost loved ones and have been thrown into grief and despair. We all have had relationship problems, whether it was marital, parent-child, or between siblings. We face problems at the workplace and seek a deeper sense of meaning and fulfillment in our lives. We carry with us a lifetime of issues, sometimes going back to our childhood, and we continue to suffer from them.
If the Dharma is "that which heals", then Buddhism can be the medicine that helps us to be cured of those problems and tragedies of life.
Buddhist counseling can be different from other forms of western-oriented psychology and counseling because it gets to the core of the problem, which is our ego self.
Shin Buddhism has historically not emphasized this area of counseling at the temple, although to me we can find various instances in which Shin Buddhist ministers or devout lay followers like the Myokonin, were like skilled counselors. They listened to people who came to them for advice and counsel, and they shared the Dharma, the Nembutsu, like a wonderful medicine to heal the pain and sufferings of many.
Okaru, the wonderful woman Myokonin, had marital problems when she found out her husband was having an affair. She sought comfort and counsel from a local minister, a Rev. Gendo. After she poured out her heart to Rev. Gendo, he said to her, "That's good, that's good!" Okaru was enraged. Here her husband was having an affair and this minister has the audacity to say, "that's good!" When Okaru challenged Rev. Gendo on what he said, Rev. Gendo responded, "What I meant Okaru, was that this is the first time you have ever stepped foot into this temple. Now you have the opportunity to really meet with the Dharma. That's good. That's good!"
Okaru came to become a sincere listener and seeker of the Dharma, and eventually resolved her marital and spiritual problems. This was only possible through the kind and wise counsel of Rev. Gendo.
What we see in this encounter between Rev. Gendo and Okaru is to me the prototype of what Buddhist counseling can be here at our temple. First of all, there has to be a place where someone can go for counsel. There has to be a place where a person can discuss their problems and have someone listen to them. But counseling is more than just listening to people's problems. There must be a cure, a medicine, to offer those who are in pain and suffering. That is where we can offer the Dharma as the medicine, as "that which heals" the pain and sufferings of our life. The third point is that in order to come to deeper spiritual realization, a problem or suffering can be the seed, the impetus that leads to real spiritual understanding. There is a saying, "there is no greater teacher than suffering." If we can take our problem of life and allow it to be the teacher, the seed, the fertilizer, to transform our painful problem into deep insight and realization, then a counseling center can be not only a way to help people with their problems, but it can be a vehicle through which people can be led to a deep understanding and appreciation of the Dharma.
We cannot escape from our problems. We cannot ignore them or just pray or hope they will go away. We can try to forget about them by going on a cruise or to Las Vegas, but the minute we return, our problem is waiting there for us, still unresolved. What we can do is face our problems. Even embrace them. We can allow our problem to be the motivation, the impetus to truly listen to the Dharma. In Okaru's case, she came to such a deep understanding of the Dharma that she was even grateful to her husband for having the love affair that allowed her to meet with the Dharma. Here we can see that Buddhist counseling, or the Dharma as medicine, can be the greatest resolution of our problems. I doubt that someone could come to that kind of resolution of a problem like Okaru's, simply through regular counseling. One might be able to get over it, accept it, or resolve it through divorce or separation. But how can one look back and be grateful for a painful experience? Buddhist counseling, however, gives us that opportunity to transform the most difficult of sufferings into the seeds of enlightenment.
Just as a capable physician might instantly cure a patient who is in pain and seriously ill; so also, dear sir, whatever one hears of the Buddha's Dharma, be it discourses, mixed prose, explanations or marvelous statements -- one's sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair will vanish.
from the Anguttara Nikaya,
translated
by Nyanaponika Thera
p. 27, Teachings of the Buddha,
edited by Jack Kornfield.
Namuamidabutsu,
Rev. Marvin Harada
January 2008
