Fall Ohigan 2010: Escaping the World

Posted: September 19, 2010 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Buddhism, Japan, Poetry, Religion | Leave a comment »

I wanted to share this poem from the famous Japanese poem anthology, the Hyakunin Isshu:

[84] 世の中よ Yo no naka yo
道こそなけれ Michi koso nakere
思ひ入る Omoi iru
山のおくにも Yama no oku ni mo
鹿ぞ鳴くなる Shika zo naku naru

For which one translation by the University of Virginia reads:

From this world I think
That there is nowhere to escape.
I wanted to hide
In the mountains’ farthest depths;
But there I hear the stag’s cry.

This poem was composed by Fujiwara no Toshinori, a celebrated poet and Shinto official of the Court,¹ but who tired of life there and entered the Buddhist priesthood in 1176. Of all the poems in the Hyakunin Isshu, I find this one of my favorites because it carries an important reminder that you can’t really run from your problems no matter how far you go. You have to face reality one way or another, so better to sit in quiet contemplation and work things out than to vainly run away from them.

That of course is the rub. People don’t want to face the problems of life. We’ve developed a knee-jerk reflex of running to whatever comforts us whether that be our favorite TV show, favorite food, favorite music, favorite swimsuit model on the Internet, etc, etc. These provide us temporary escape, but sooner or later, the problems of life, like creeping vines, come back.

The Buddha gets a bad rap among critics for being pessimistic, but traditionally the Buddha has been revered as a kind of “doctor” who cures the ills of the world. The Buddha cannot cure your arthritis medically, but can help you to come to terms with it, and show how a considerable portion of it is mental agony on top of the actual physical discomfort. The Blessed One cannot help with your love life, but can help put it into perspective. Wisdom can be a bitter pill, but sometimes bitter pills are good medicine.

As such, the Buddha provided a simple “diagnosis” of the fundamental problems people face in the world, collectively known as the “Four Sufferings”:

1. Birth (being traumatic)
2. Old Age
3. Illness
4. Death

Or in the Buddha’s own words in his first sermon:

“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress [the first of four Noble Truths]: Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.

Run as we like, the sufferings of the world cannot be evaded. It’s also silly to try and somehow deny them either or to sugarcoat them with beautiful philosophies and ideas that sound great² until the next big problem unfolds and our lives fall apart once more. We can enjoy temporary amusement, sometimes very good amusement, but it cannot last, and we’re back where we’ve started. Thus, much of our energy and life is spent in a kind of aimless wandering, going from one relief to the next, which the Buddha termed Samsara, with no particular end in sight. The efforts we expend here create metaphorical snowballs that roll downhill establishing the conditions that cause us to be reborn again and again, repeating the cycle, reliving the Four Sufferings and so on. The Buddha never actually condemned the world, but simply called to question our way of interacting with it and our constant state of denial and lack of vigilance.

Further, in discussing “snowballs”, the Buddha described existence like so (as quoted in the book What the Buddha Taught with Pali-language terms included):

When this is, that is (Imasmiṃ sati idaṃ hoti);
This arising, that arises (Imassuppādā idaṃ uppajjati);
When this is not, that is not (Imasmiṃ asati idaṃ na hoti);
This ceasing, that ceases (Imassa nirodhā idaṃ nirujjhati);

Everything arises as a form of conditioned existence (i.e. its existence depends on something else and is thus conditioned by it) and because its contingent it ceases sooner or later. One’s life begins this way, and ends this way. Then, in the same way life begins anew due to external conditions only to lose it again later. Again, the Buddha isn’t being negative or pessimistic, but simply diagnosing how the world works, and in turn he encouraged people to see and perceive it for themselves. The only article of “faith” in Buddhism is that if you follow Buddhism long enough, you’ll see what the Buddha saw, as did many others in the past.

When your doctor tells you that you have cancer and only 3 months to live, you’re probably going to either be in denial, or accept the prognosis and make adjustments in your life.³ In the same way, when the Buddha preaches these teachings, people may be inclined to deny them and rationalize their own self-centered view of the world, or panic and get upset, or to let them sink in and consider the implications. The Buddha simply taught a radical new way to see the world to help people gain a badly needed perspective and to awaken their minds to the truth.

That of course brings us to the Japanese Buddhist holiday (twice a year) of ohigan, which means to “cross to the other shore”. The symbolism, as mentioned in past posts, is that of the current “shore” we’re on of frustrations, sufferings and contingent states of existence and the “other shore” which means Enlightenment and Nirvana which is neither nihilism, nor a state of conditioned existence either. In between is a great river or ocean one must navigate through using the teachings of the Buddha and past masters who’ve gone through it themselves and come out better people for it. The waves in turn may be seen as the various phenomena that arise in a conditioned way, then disappear, as well as debris floating on the surface.

These metaphors are strictly within the context of one’s mind. The problem begins and ends with the mind, as there is no external shore to cross over, no matter what people tell you.

More importantly though, as one begins to see the suffering in one’s own life, they reach a point when they turn the Mind’s Eye outward and see the same suffering in those around them. I am inspired by another poem in the Hyakunin Isshu by the Abbot Jien (慈円, 1155 – 1225) of the Tendai sect of Japanese Buddhism:

[95] おほけなく Ōkenaku
うき世の民に Ukiyo no tami ni
おほふかな Ōu kana
わがたつそまに Waga tatsu soma ni
墨染の袖 Sumizome no sode

Or in English (same translators as above):

From the monastery
On Mount Hiei I look out
On this world of tears,
And though I am unworthy,
I shield it with my black sleeves [of a monk].

Like ourselves, people around us live in their own bittersweet private hell of frustrations, aging, illness and so on, and yet just as we work to free ourselves from our own mental prison, we can help alleviate people around us starting with our loved ones, but also extending to local charities the community and so on. We cannot run from our problems, but through insight we can do much to change them, and Ohigan is a great day to take time out of one’s busy life, even if for only two days out of the year, and reflect.

Happy Fall Ohigan!

Namo tassa Bhagavato,
Arahato, Samma-sambuddhasa

¹ And whose son, Fujiwara no Sadaie, is the compiler of the Hyakunin Isshu coincidentally. Small world, no?

² And sell well in bookstores, videos, podcasts, seminars, etc. Amazing how easy it is to play on one’s hopes and fears under the guise of “spirituality” and make a big profit from it too. Some of them even taut themselves as “inspired by Buddhism,” “incorporating Buddhist teachings” or even Buddhists themselves. Actions speak louder than words, and a person’s conduct and depth of understanding of the Dharma should be self-evident, regardless of their lineage or personal image. Caveat emptor!

³ Of course, one could also just go and live it up for the next 3 months, which in hindsight always looks stupid, especially from the perspective of other people. If you really only have a short time to live, stop being selfish about your own plight and go help make the world a better place with the time and life that you have.

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