Kanai Tada

“ It is quite true that the Three Worlds are full of pain, whether we like to think so or no. The pale, lightless, flames of suffering are at this moment around us on every side. From time to time we may, it is true, enjoy some transient feeling of pleasure, but it is the pleasure of an untrue vision, the precursor of fresh pain, and when it has vanished, nothing is left but the flames of suffering.
Furthermore, flame kindles flame, and the fire burns on for ever: suffering brings forth suffering, in endless succession. ”

“ The gales of mistrust and unbelief are raging to-day in the world; for the majority of men are ignorant of the Sacred Name, and treat it with contumely. We, on the contrary, foolish and faulty though we are, contrive to pass through these storms with the help of the divine Name,—and, pray, how is it that so great a happiness has fallen to our lot? "Often does the heart of belief arise within us, and we rejoice from afar in our distant home of rest." ”

“ Nay, rather, are not we ourselves guilty of the same sin of dissembling? For the moment, it may be, the sky is clear,—that is, heart, mouth, and body may all be righteous and pure. But the germ of all evil lies within us, and so weak are we that we cannot tell when the evil will break out, nor what form it will take. Nay, if we look back on ourselves, we shall see that sin is not only a possibility but an actuality, and that in some degree at least we have been guilty of all sins. ”

“ You would never think, at a first glance, that the wind could ever blow, or the rain-storms descend, on such a peaceful world. You could not imagine that, over such a beautiful, peaceful, sky, thunder-clouds could ever roll and crash, or lightnings dart and play. And yet, in an instant of time, the weather will change, clouds will rise as it were from nothing, here one and there another, the sky becomes overcast before your very eyes, the storm growls on all sides, thunders roll and lightnings flash. The winds are like angry devils, the rain covers the road axle-deep in floods. ”

“ It is not pleasant to have to call ourselves ignorant persons and sinners, but for the present those are the names that we must take. For, sad to say, there is within us a still worse heart of deceit. We are quite aware that we ought to reckon ourselves in the crowd of sinners, but our great aim and endeavour is to appear to be good men: we are fully alive to the ignorance within us, but we want to make a show of being wise; and so long as we have such a mind in us, how can we cast off Wickedness and Folly, and advance along the road of Honesty and Uprightness? ”

“ No one lives the same life over again, and we do not know why we live it at all. Some hold that the end of existence is happiness, others that it is progress. Can it, however, be said that there is such a things as true happiness in the world? In the midst of joy we are overwhelmed with sorrow: behind pleasure you always find some lurking pain, and the shifting breezes of Impermanency, sweeping over this world, shrivel up the fair flowers of happiness, as the Morning Glory shrivels under the Rising Sun. ”

“ Three thousand years in the past, three thousand years in the future, can make absolutely no difference to this Name. It has precisely the same virtue, whether in distant India or in near Japan. Nor is it a matter of three thousand years only, nor of India and Japan only. At all times, and in all places, it is the same. This One Name stands revealed in the midst of a world of Shadow and Vision, and it alone is neither Shadow nor Vision. It is revealed in the World, but it belongs not to this world. It is Light. It is the Way. It is Life. It is Power. ”

“ The Tathāgata saw that we could find no haven of rest, and that we were constantly beset by the storms of sin and evil, and, thanks be to His Mercy, He has given us His Name and His Call to save us. What an inexpressible happiness this is for us! Here we find nothing but persons that vex us and things that give us pain: if then, in the whole Universe, and more especially in that Afterworld to which we must all soon go, there were no Voice to speak to us, how black it would all be! And how joyful it all becomes, when we hear the Voice bidding us fear nothing, for that He sees us. ”

“ Nor where did this prodigious mass of sin and wickedness come from? We can only say that it came from that human heart of ours which but a short while ago was so clear and bright. We can no more foretel the changes of the weather than we can those of the heart. The heart which looks like a calm and placid pool, is in reality the abode of countless and terrible poisonous dragons that dwell beneath its surface: it expands itself like the bright sapphire vault of Heaven, yet it is but the reservoir in which are stored the rains and winds of perverse thoughts. ”

“ But the man who has once been delivered from a quagmire will do his best not to fall into it a second time, and Nehrodoff, his eyes straight before him, and looking neither to right nor to left, learned to look at things from a subjective stand point, assumed the attitude of a master, and stepped boldly forward on the right path. He would no longer follow the world, he would follow the light of conscience within him. He would consult none but his conscience, he would do what his conscience told him was right, and leave undone what his conscience condemned as wrong. ”

“ But they forget the fact that a dark shadow is always lurking in the corner of our intellect, however clear it may be. They are unaware that the seed of corruption is conceived in the womb of our moral nature, however pure and unspotted it may be. There is no absolute purity in this world, nor is there absolute light. For in purity, and at the bottom of light, lies hidden some darkness. These two are constantly struggling, one against the other: there is no end of the strife. Humanity is the fencing ground of opposing rivals. ”

“ It is a happiness which reaches into the future, which has no bounds, and is a true happiness. We can behold that true happiness, now, in the present.
13. Thus we see that there is now a line of light running through and threading together our lives, past, present, and future, which hitherto seemed to be but the confused visions of a dream. Our human life, which was but a waking dream, is one no longer: it is the gate which leads us to the precious Land of the Tathāgata. We ourselves, who were but a dream, are so no longer: we are the Saved, the Sons of Buddha. ”

“ Peace of mind, therefore, has, as we see, no connection with pride of birth or station, with reputation or wealth, with life or death, with the outside world, or the body of flesh; it depends entirely on the presence or absence of falsehood. Be our station never so lowly, our rank never so mean, let our names be branded as criminals or rogues, let poverty or death stare us in the face,—so long as our inmost heart is free from falsehood, so long shall we be at peace. When this peace is attained the Gate of True Religion opens to us. ”

“ If it were not for them, we might forget the Buddha as many a man forgets his parents when he has nothing to remind him of them. We should be like the turbulent, quarrelsome, vagrant-knights in the prison of Echizen: we should forget the Tathāgata, and remain hopelessly involved in the meshes of Suffering.
But some will say, "We have no images, yet we never forget the Tathāgata: our hearts can never forget him." Such men are exceptions: we ordinary beings, who are always falling into habits of forgetfulness, cannot possibly afford to do without the help of images and symbols. ”

“ The heart of the mock-modest man is never clear and bright as a cloudless sky: there is always something that he is holding back, some "hidden root of bitterness" laid up within. It is true that the Suffering caused by this mock-modesty is not so conspicuous as that caused by the deceit of which I spoke before. There is always something of dimness and uncertainty about it; but, for that very reason, it is more difficult to do away: the Suffering which it causes always lies deep down in the hidden recesses of the heart, and is the secret cause of constant distress. ”

“ My dear brethren, it will not do for us to cling to our old robes and weep because they are taken from us: we must not want to resume once more the old rags which we have cast off from us. My past is my dead self: the Tathāgata takes that dead self and disposes of it as he likes. Why then should I look back on that dead self, which is now in the hands of the Tathāgata, and think of it with regret and sorrow? If you wish, brethren, to go on fretting and worrying for ever, all you have to do is to resolve in your minds to set no store by the happiness which the Hotoke gives you in the present. ”

“ But shut our eyes to the danger as we will, the fact remains that a house on fire is a house that is being burned; we cannot rest easily in it, and our life is always full of discontent. I, you everybody,- we are always desiring something that is outside of us and beyond our reach, and yet, when we get it, it is rarely quite what we thought it would be. And even when the realization meets our expectations, it is of no real use to us, for it is but a shadow in our Vision. ”

“ Or, perhaps, you will say that progress is the end of existence, and that its ultimate aim is something that is above us. When clouds drift over the sky, they really move neither backwards nor forwards. And we, whose Future is all darkness, how can we have a definite aim before us, and how, lacking that aim, can we think of making progress towards a goal? It follows, therefore, that happiness and progress are, both of them, empty expressions incapable of realization, and that we ourselves are vainly trying to realize things that cannot be realized. ”

“ The honesty and uprightness of which we are speaking is something quite different: we mean by it the opposite of falsehood, the unvarnished truth, the thing as it is. The good man shows himself to the world as the good man, the bad man as the bad man,—just as he is,—that is what we mean by honesty and and uprightness. Let every man show himself in his true colours, whether they be fair, or whether they be foul, that is honesty and uprightness. It is the nature of snow to be white, of charcoal to be black: let each be true to its nature, and then there is honesty and uprightness. ”

“ Let us boldly and openly speak the truth about ourselves. For the Way of the Hotoke is the Way of His Name, and our Heavenly Father has not concealed His Name, He has told us that His Name is "Amida the Buddha to whom belongs all Glory:" and we have taken Him as our Father and are being saved by Him. How then can it be right for us to defile His Name with a lie? "An honest heart is Paradise." Let us speak the unvarnished truth, and say to those who question us, "My life is sinful." ”

“ The lad of our story,—he was only a lad,—got his pleasure from the reverence he paid to the dolls which symbolized his earthly parents: and we,—poor prisoners, fretting and chafing in the dungeon of human life,—need as aids to our perfect comfort, case, and spiritual strength, some symbolic representation of our true Father, the Tathāgata.
Now, where shall we get this symbol of the Tathāgata from? Shall we get an image or a picture to represent Him, and pay it reverence? We may. An image is a precious thing, and so is a picture; but we cannot always be worshipping them. ”

“ We stand on the top of a flight of moss-grown steps that lead to some venerable, half-ruined temple embowered in fallen leaves, and there comes over us an indescribable feeling of reverential awe which strikes our inmost hearts. This feeling comes to us from the sight, in the shrine, of some image or picture in which the artist has done his best to pourtray the figure and heart of the Tathāgata Who has saved us. It is, however, but an indirect, secondary, representation that we thus get, and a direct representation is far better than any symbolic portrait. ”

“ Whether we really must conform or not we do not stop to enquire. We just cower before the waves of worldliness, and hold up suppliant hands to its advancing might: all,—I as well as you,—prostrate ourselves before it. This was exactly Nehrodoff's attitude: it is equally the attitude which most of us take up. And the very fact that we have thus bowed the knee to the Powers of Evil makes it doubtful whether we can quietly pass through this world, as we had hoped. For even suppose we do get through life to our present satisfaction, what good will that do us in the end? ”

“ The mind becomes like a dancing-floor of devils and evil spirits, and when their dance shall cease we cannot tell. We should like to stop their revels but we cannot: to restrain them, but they refuse to slacken their speed; and we learn then, by sad experience, that the pool of sin and wickedness is a bottomless one, that its dimensions defy measurement, and that, however proud we may be in our self-conceit, we are yet stupendously ignorant in our shallow views of things. ”

“ The past through which we have come is dark, the future in front of us is dark too. And we, who live in this hostelry and enjoy its protection, know not when we shall leave it to plunge into the thick darkness of our further journey. Darkness is always the parent of fear: this darkness is standing waiting for us with jaws widely opened, ready to swallow us up. When we think of it our weak hearts fail us, and we tremble for terror.
3. It is not only about the past and the future that we are absolutely ignorant: we know nothing even of the present. ”

“ In the meanwhile, the thunders of lust begin to roar, the lightnings of anger begin to play; envy, hatred, estrangement, violence, effeminacy, meanness, a quarrelsome disposition, a mind that hates justice,—all the blasts and tempests of perverse thoughts,—come bursting across our spiritual sky, Winds such as do not usually come from the bags of the Wind-God, rains such as are not ordinarily stored in the cisterns of our firmament, come sweeping over us. ”