Never Seek the Gohonzon Outside Yourself
At a discussion meeting this evening we discussed the subject;
How has our practice influenced our view of the future.
I thought about this and determined that my vision is extremely optimistic now as compared to previously in my life. I connected two passages from the very beginning and near end of the Gosho that explain the interconnectedness of all things that are the basis for my optimism.
Life at each moment encompasses the body and mind and the self and environment of all sentient beings in the Ten Worlds as well as all insentient beings in the three thousand realms, including plants, sky, earth, and even the minutest particles of dust. Life at each moment permeates the entire realm of phenomena and is revealed in all phenomena. To be awakened to this principle is itself the mutually inclusive relationship of life at each moment and all phenomena. – Nichiren Daishonin, WND page 3
and
The essence of the sutras preached before the Lotus Sutra is that all phenomena arise from the mind. To illustrate, they say that the mind is like the great earth, while the grasses and trees are like all phenomena. But it is not so with the Lotus Sutra. It teaches that the mind itself is the great earth, and that the great earth itself is the grasses and trees. The meaning of the earlier sutras is that clarity of mind is like the moon, and that purity of mind is like a flower. But it is not so with the Lotus Sutra. It is the teaching that the moon itself is mind, and the flower itself is mind. You should realize from this that polished rice is not polished rice; it is life itself. – Nichiren Daishonin, WND page1126
This connectivity is something
that I’ve felt since an early age. The title of this post, Never Seek the Gohonzon Outside Yourself, emphasises this point – that we don’t create the earth, we are the earth.
A Lotus Flower - in Redditch, on a golf course!
Despite the petty machinations of politicians and vested groups, I believe that we people have within us the power to make our world a nicer, less animalistic place, right now. The SGI has this ideal and more and more people are coming to this way of thinking.
It’s not a case of smiling and being nice to everyone. Far from it. It’s a case of taking action, making a revolution in the ways of thinking, a human revolution, criticising and pointing out the actions and stupidity of bad people. Not turning the other cheek but arguing without backing down.
Like the polished rice, it is and I am, life itself.
The mutually inclusive relationship of life at each moment and all phenomena is shown in one of my favourite things, the Double (Young’s) Slit Experiment.
Quoting from the Wikipedia article;
A remarkable result follows from a variation of the double-slit experiment in which detectors are placed in either or both of the two slits in an attempt to determine which slit the photon passes through on its way to the screen. Placing a detector even in just one of the slits will result in the disappearance of the interference pattern. The detection of a photon involves a physical interaction between the photon and the detector of the sort that physically changes the detector. (If nothing changed in the detector, it would not detect anything.)
In other words, the photon “knows”. That’s all we can say about it. This er.. cartoon explains it…
The mutually inclusive relationship of life at each moment and all phenomena is shown in another of my favourite things, the concept of Entanglement.
Here’s Dr Quantum again, and that’s all I’ll say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5poD3nXdJ8
All this means that it’s perfectly possible for all humans to exist on our world in harmony, solving the great threat of greed that fuels consumerism and all the waste, pollution and corruption that accompanies it.
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