In January, I went out to Richmond, BC, to give the Ho-onko lecture at the Steveston Buddhist Temple. It was a nice opportunity to catch up with their sangha, whom I hadn’t visited with since before the pandemic. My host was Rev. Grant Ikuta, who of course served our Toronto temple for many years.
Here in Ontario, we were having lots of snow. Meanwhile, in Richmond, I was amazed by the thick fog. In some cases it lasted all day, and Grant Sensei had to drive carefully because you could only see a few cars lengths ahead on the road. When I went for a walk on the waterfront, you couldn’t see Vancouver Island—in fact, you couldn’t see boats that were just a short distance offshore, and people would emerge suddenly from the fog as I walked along. It was really amazing to experience.
Reflecting on that experience, it made me think about some important lines from Shinran Shonin’s Shoshinge:
The light of compassion that grasps us illumines and protects
us always;
The darkness of our ignorance is already broken through;
Still the clouds and mists of greed and desire, anger and hatred,
Cover, as always, the sky of true and real shinjin.But though the light of the sun is veiled by clouds and mists,
Beneath the clouds and mists, there is brightness, not dark.
When one realizes shinjin, seeing and revering and attaining
great joy,
One immediately leaps crosswise, closing off the five evil
courses.
Although the world still existed as it is at all times, I couldn’t perceive most of it through the fog. Thus, my understanding of what Richmond looked like was severely limited, and the sun was only a brighter patch in the fog, not something I could actually directly see. Yet at the same time, during the day, I could see my immediate surroundings even though there was some mist between them and me. It was neither light, nor dark, and as long as I was careful then I wasn’t in serious danger of injuring myself. So I felt safe, even as I could tell my perception was very limited.
Shinran says this is what our experience is like in life. Amida Buddha’s light of wisdom is shining into our lives at all times, illuminating us. Because of that wisdom-light we can have a basic awareness of ourselves and can sometimes notice when anger, greed, and other poisonous effects of our selfcentredness begin to arise. But our minds are still cloudy enough that we don’t yet perceive things as they truly are, the
way the Buddha does. We can dimly perceive that the Buddha is there enlightening us, that the Dharma is operating to ensure our liberation, but we don’t manage to see reality in a direct and full manner.
Nonetheless, this is a far better state than the true darkness of the deep night. Already we are enabled to see ourselves and those around us in a better way than if we walked around with our eyes pressed shut.
We can see (to a degree) the basic goodness in ourselves and others, and even more importantly, we can see the fog (three poisons) and remain aware of how much further we have to go to achieve genuine Buddhahood. Empowered by the light that shines through the fog of our continuing ignorance, we can make better choices and avoid some of the harm that we would walk right into at night. Dr. Taitetsu Unno used to say this is like turning on the light in the living room: if you walked around in the dark, you would
bang into the furniture, but with the light turned on you can see the coffee table and take pains to avoid it. That experience with the fog really drove home the aptness of Shinran’s metaphor for me. Illuminated by the Buddha, I’m grateful that I can see how I and my life operate in a basic way. And since that very light also reveals the lingering presence of so much “fog”, I’m grateful that Amida Buddha always grasps me and ensures that I will nevertheless be freed from ignorance in due time.
Namu Amida Butsu
Jeff Wilson, Sensei
Assistant Minister