[Since December 2018 was the 50th memorial of
Merton’s death, here is an excerpt from December 2015 “Taste of Chicago
Buddhism”]
For a handout at an interfaith dialogue event, I took some Thomas Merton
quotations from this Huffington Post article: "10 Thomas Merton Quotes To Celebrate The
American Monk's Birthday”
And there I
found this passage:
The beginning of love is the will
to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them
to fit our own image.
At first I thought it was a great way to describe “love”
that would relate to the Buddhist concept of compassion. Then it struck me –
the passage is hongan, the innermost aspiration expounded in the Larger Sutra.
In the story Shakyamuni Buddha tells of the seeker
Dharmakara, whose teacher directs him to confront his own heart/mind and
question why he keeps categorizing other beings as “good” versus “bad.” To
overcome his judgmental habit, Dharmakara makes a series of vows, but they can
be distilled into the main, primary – “Primal Vow.” That is the aspiration that
wells up from the depths of his being to embrace all with no exception, to show
utmost respect (Namu) to each and every being beyond any categorization (Amida)
and completely identify with all (Butsu).
[photo of Merton’s grave by Rev. Brandyn Simmons from his blog
“Apophatica”]
Unlike the “love” I spoke about in an early blog post which
indicates the negative notion of possessiveness, the love that Merton describes
is our truest aspiration for Oneness. That love is the opposite of the ego’s
drive to control and hang on to other beings for the benefits we crave. To let
all living beings be “perfectly themselves” is the command of the Buddha in
Shandao’s “two rivers, white path” story to “come immediately, just as you
are.”
The numerous vows of Dharmakara in the Larger Sutra are all
resolutions to stop twisting others into how we think they should be, our ideas
of what pleases us. It may seem most of the time that we lack the will to
really love others, but Shinran documents for us that the heart/mind of
entrusting (shinjin) is a gift that is already given to us. All we need to do
is become aware of it – to hear its calling (nembutsu).
In the news these days, we find plenty of examples of
conflict from humans trying to control other lives and seeing others as
dangerous because they don’t fit our image of goodness. There are no purely
evil people – only people who think they are justified in harming and
destroying others for not fitting into their idea of propriety. The way to take
away that sense of justification is to keep listening to the teachings of
all-embracing Oneness, the teachings that make us see that there is no “they”
as opposed to “we.” To hear the nembutsu is to hear our deepest wish to see our
self and each life as perfect just as we are, inextricably part of one great
flow of life. This is Shinran’s radical solution to the terrorism which we all
are guilty of promoting.
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