Dog Dogma – Sutra Study Class Session 16

At the July 18 session we looked at vows 36-48 (Section 7, pages 27-29) and Akegarasu’s “Indescribable Changes” (page 23-27) in Shout of Buddha.

I didn’t have much to say about that last bunch of vows except to point out that Vow 38 is the “fashion vow” – that makes us aware how judgmental we are about what people are wearing. The vow tells us to see all clothes as “fine robes” regardless of whether there are stains, rips, faded colors etc.

 

The last vow mentions the “three dharma-insights” which the Glossary defines on pages 113-114. What is usually translated in Shin texts as “insight” is actually nin, like in the third paramita nin-niku, “endure abuse.” Here’s a reference:

http://tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Three_Endurances_in_the_Dharma

 

In Shōshinge, Shinran praises Shandao’s commentary on the Contemplation Sutra which says all nembutsu followers can be just like Queen Vaidehi in attaining the three dharma-insights. Considering the story of Queen Vaidehi, she had to endure a lot of suffering to get to those insights, particularly the pain of realizing how one’s own judgments were gravely mistaken.

 

The third of the dharma-insights “insight into the non-origination of all existence” is what Akegarasu illustrates in his poem:

            When the large dog appeared at the entrance to the room

            The cats which were sleeping there

            Jumped up in surprise and escaped,

            By accident knocking over a small table:

            The rice bowl was broken.

            The housewife is putting the two pieces together.

            The dog watches her face as if to say,

            “What has happened?”

The web of causes and conditions is so intricate and stretches over vast periods of time but like the dog we wonder why some event suddenly occurred as if out of nowhere. To me “non-origination” means we can’t claim some direct cause like “The devil made me buy this dress” or “The earthquake came to punish the gays.” There is no creation story in Buddhism because how the present world came into being is beyond our knowledge and comprehension.

 

In the poem, though, the dog doesn’t realize he set in motion the sequence of events leading to the broken rice bowl. Even though in the larger picture there is “non-origination of all existence,” we shouldn’t be like the dog and act like we don’t know how some things got broken in our society. As I’ve seen over and over (such as in Piketty’s book on capital), policies were made in the early 1980s that led to a lot of the problems we now face, but we can confront those policies and hopefully turn some things around.