Mar - Senshin Buddhist Temple

Prajna
Vol. XLXIII, No. 3
March, 2006
Light of Compassion
To
Enjoy
Whenever I go to India, or more recently,
Bhutan, Laos, and Cambodia, I am struck by
how connected everything is. No matter how
basic or how plush ones accommodations,
one is only a few steps away from walking on
the earth, among plants and animals. I
remember as a child living in south Los
Angeles under similar circumstances. There
were open fields and a slough nearby where
we fished for crawdads, sailed homemade
boats, chased butterflies, and watched thousands of red-winged blackbirds take flight all
at once. Life was less compartmentalized
then; we walked more, talked more, knew our
neighbors, etc., etc.
We have become increasingly more efficient
in all that we do but seem to enjoy it less. In
the city of Luang Prabang in Laos, I watched
a group of people eating at a simple outdoor
café on a bank overlooking the Mekong
River. There is something tuggingly attractive about seeing a group of people eating
leisurely and talking a whole evening away
with a steady traffic of people, animals, birds,
and butterflies passing by. The only thing
close to it in Los Angeles is a summer
evening in East L.A. There is a sense of
community, of all-inclusiveness, and the
importance of enjoying life in enjoying each
other. It is not about struggling and striving
for a future time of enjoyment or a future paradise. It is about enjoyment and paradise
now, for everyone and every place. The pure
lands are described as the environment of a
Buddha. A Pure Land is where the Buddha is.
Likewise, Buddha moments are Pure Land
moments. Those moments are the purpose of
all our endeavors, successes and failures at
Senshinji. It is the difference between a temple and a community center. A temple is very
often a community center, but a community
center is not a temple.
The moments of Namoamidabutsu are often
dreamlike – clear light and clouds. It is like
Chuang Tzu’s dream. The great Taoist
Chuang Tzu once fell asleep and dreamt that
he had become a beautiful butterfly fluttering
effortlessly through a field of bright flowers.
And when Chuang Tzu awoke, he could not
determine whether he was Chuang Tzu who
had dreamt he was a butterfly; or whether he
was now a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang
Tzu. That beautiful paradox is not of the
world of objectivity, common sense, efficiency, being in control, having a purpose and
diligently pursuing it. Chuang Tzu’s dream is
the stuff of religion and art, of ritual, chant,
and dance. It is something to be done over
being observed, and this with a minimum of
analytical thinking. So the next time you
oshoko, the next time you gassho, the next
time you say Namoamidabutsu, pay attention.
Gassho,