Editor's Note - This is an excerpt from the December 2003 issue of the Buddhist Wheel

In a month, the year will come to a close. I’m wondering what all of you experienced this past year. I know that each of you must have sacrificed for others, and in making those sacrifices, we may have felt sorry for ourselves or superior to others. Buddhism teaches that at times like these, we need to reflect upon ourselves. We need to look at our generosity through Amida’s eyes because looking at personal behavior only through our own eye can result in the belief that I suffered in order to be good to you.

While technology has made life more convenient, it hasn’t helped us retain a religious mind. Technology has created in us a desire for instant gratification and pleasure. We begin to treat things as having no lasting value so that what is good today is often abandoned tomorrow. Sadly, this attitude has even led to our treating people as things. When someone is of use to us, he/she is a friend, but when people do not suit our selfish purpose, they are abandoned. This practice leads to a life of self-centeredness and eventually to a life filled with unbuddhistic thoughts, inevitably a life of selfishness and loneliness.

Buddhism can help us deal with this tendency to treat people as things and to be so down on life. To live a Buddhist life means living with negai, the true ideal as man. Within this true ideal lies the religious mind in the depths of our hearts. Living with a true ideal leads to treating people as persons of worth, to see through our negative thoughts, and to feel a part of humanity. I think of living the true religious mind as having an instinct like fear, love or anger. This instinct, the religious Buddhist mind, helps us know that what is in the other person’s mind is important. The life of the other person is also part of the religious mind; therefore, it too is important.

This importance of the life of others and their part of the religious mind was forcefully impressed in my heart by a poem written by Misuzu Kaneko, which exemplifies the oneness of life. Her poem captures the joy of the fishermen who are celebrating a large catch of sardines. They have pulled thousands of sardines onto the beach. The sardines will fill baskets and baskets for the market. They are dancing excitedly, shouting, “How lucky we are! How delicious the fish will taste. How happy will be our wives and children!’ Taking the fishermen’s viewpoint, we can wish them, “Have a nice dinner.”

But the sardines are flipping their last and gasping their life away. They are dying on the beach. Their relatives in the sea are confused. Why are the fishermen so happily dancing on the beach while our relatives struggle for life and we sadly prepare for their funeral? The poet, Kaneko, sees both the happy fishermen and the confused relatives of the dying sardines. She cannot help but wonder how the sardines feel. She understands the joy and happiness of the fishermen, yet she feels a deep pain in her heart for the fish. She relates to the fishermen. She also relates to the dying sardines and their grieving relatives. The poet empathizes with all parties in this drama.

This is what a religious mind is all about, a Buddhist mind of oneness. All life has worth. All life is one. Can you feel empathy in your relationships? When you do, feel the Buddha working through you. Empathy will give us feelings of sympathy for others, but more importantly, it will give us the added feeling of closeness to others. Giving us a feeling of closeness to the Buddha, empathy will also help us rid ourselves of egocentrism and thus contribute to world peace. A Buddhist mind is a religious mind. It is a mind of empathy, of seeing you and me as one.

Namu Amida Butsu

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