"HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT SPECIAL. THERE ARE NO SPECIAL THINGS."
(Quote by Genshin Fujinami Ajari)
When asked what he had learned after completing a very gruelling Kaihogyo (thousand day pilgrimage), Fujinami Ajari made the above statement. It is the kind of statement one may not have expected. No flash of enlightenment. No visions of Buddha's in the Pure Land. Just a simple statement. But Wait! Aren't our things special? Isn't my home special? Isn't my family special? And of course...Aren't I special? The anticipated answer would most likely be YES. However, we view things, people, feelings as special because this is the way in which we choose to relate to them or ourselves. We apply 'special' labels. We create a separation between what we think is special to what we think is not. Once this process of balancing one thing against another begins, problems are sure to follow because of the value we now add to whatever we feel deserves the 'special' label.
More often than not, when we say something or someone is not special we are most likely masking what we truly feel. When Fujinami Ajari says it...he means it.
This is the result of overcoming the self.
When self is overcome, the world can be seen for what it truly is which is devoid of its own nature. All the things, people, events we crave have no foundation of their own. They are the results of causes and their effects. For example, pop stars are not born pop stars but are the result of a process. The more popular they become, the more distant they become. The more distant they become, the more attractive they become. We make them 'special'. Of course there is nothing wrong with having our special things and so forth provided we keep in mind the label we apply is only provisional. A way of sifting or grading something which has no substance of its own and is impermanent. When viewed from this position, life begins to take on a very different perspective as our cravings and wants also begin to disappear. This is because we have created a false sense of value, we have also created the feelings or emotions that drive them.
Our views of Self and Other fuelled by our own perceptions of them, lie at the heart of most, if not all, the problems we face in our world or experience today.
Nothing exists on its own. Everything impacts on and inter reacts with other things.
The Tendai philosophy towards the world is that it and everything in it is an integrated whole. Integrated because of cause and effect, but more so due to the emptiness or foundationless nature of things including ourselves and it is this which makes us, anything, not special.
We are as we are as such. It is as it is as such.
Knowing this is not enough. It needs to be Realized and Experienced and this too is a process. It is a process of stripping back layers as one would an onion and this is where practices such as the Kaihogyo and meditations play an important role in spiritual progress and development. Only when we truly experience this One-ness, this total inter-connectedness, can we true love and compassion blossom as a lotus from the murky depths.
In "Believing in Mind" Seng Ts-an wrote:
"When the deep mystery of one suchness is fathomed,
All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements.
When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness,
We return to the origin and remain where we have ever been."
This stanza encapsulates Fujinami Ajari's statement. It reminds us that no matter how or what we think of or view ourselves, others and objects we are, without exception, All in One. One in All and we have never been disconnected.
Gassho
(Reverend Jiryo Moxon)
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"There are no special things"
