Editor's Note - This is an excerpt from the November 2006 issue of the Buddhist Wheel

A young person was asked by his parents to share his Halloween candy with his younger brother who was too ill to go trick-or-treating on Halloween.

Though he agreed, he secretly checked his bounty before sharing it.  He had not intended to be greedy, but he found himself stashing his favorite candies under his own mattress. Whatever the case, he felt he deserved the treats he worked so hard to get. The rest he declared openly, and Mom divided the candies between the two boys.

When he went to bed he would choose and eat a few pieces from under his mattress and counted what he had left before going to sleep. He calculated by week’s end he would have finished his much-deserved stash. By the week’s end however, he was besieged by ants in his bed. Not wanting to tell his parents about them, he suffered quietly, wiping away the ants before eating his remaining cache.

By the end of his eating spree, he had two toothaches and had to go to the dentist. Though no one knew of his unhappy experience, he learned a bittersweet lesson. By next Halloween, after the two brothers went out trick-or-treating, this young boy was only too happy to share his bounty with family and friends.

Does the above story apply to each of us in some way? Though this account is speaking to the experience of one boy, each of us can learn about ourselves as he did when he suffered the consequence of his unwillingness to share. In spiritual terms, the Buddha-dharma, a channel of compassion or expression of nembutsu or Namoamidabutsu guides us to live with awareness and reflection in our thoughts, words and deeds.

As we close the month of October, “Amida’s Golden Chain of Love” has been a significant theme for each of us to meditate on and apply in living expression of the call and  embrace of compassion operating in our every day living.

Though we aspire to “…think pure and beautiful thoughts, to say pure and beautiful words, and do pure and beautiful deeds…”, there are moments when our behavior is less than “beautiful”. Instead of thinking we have failed however, we should realize that more often than not, human deeds are temporary and based on some underlying  desire for self-benefit. Our spiritual founder, Shinran Shonin did not say that we should not try to be good persons,  but that we should try to understand the limit of the good that we do because it is tainted by some underlying and natural human desire to see oneself as a source of wisdom and goodness.

To come to this point however—to awaken to this truth, is not a benefit we achieve ourselves; actually, it is the natural power of compassion always operating in the world of delusion, not because Shinran, Shan-tao, or Sakyamuni Buddha said so, but because it is a natural expression of the Buddha-dharma, or life itself.

When we say, “I am a link in Amida Buddha’s golden chain of love”, we are reminded that every part of life is touched by immeasurable light and life (expressed as Amida’s Primal Vow). Though there are moments when we ourselves want to be excluded from this “golden chain of love that stretches around the world” because its seems convenient for us, please reconsider and be thankful for the ever continuous life lessons awakening all things – human and otherwise – the Buddha-dharma expresses the wondrous light  always shining in the darkness of our night.

Namo Amida Butsu.

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