When It Rains It Pours

What a week.

My wife and daughter both tested positive for COVID on Wednesday and had to isolate themselves since then. I took time off from work, bring them food, do the housework, and look after our son, ferry him to various social events and playdates, while also looking after a one year old puppy. Then, the puppy developed conjunctivitis (pink eye) as of yesterday. Further, my old acid reflux problem reared its head recently causing plenty of misery for me.

The week has been a train wreck but we’ve managed. Thankfully my wife and daughter’s both had miles symptoms and will be out of quarantine soon.

Amidst all the chaos, I tried to keep up daily Buddhist practice, with mixed success. This morning I just had only enough time to recite the Three Treasures: namu-ki-e-butsu, namu-ki-e-ho, namu-ki-e-so (praise to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha).

But that’s how it is sometimes.

If you’re a parent, especially a single parent like my mother was, sometimes that’s all you can realistically do. That’s also true if you’re young and just getting on your feet, working a grueling 9-5 job, or you’re caring for ill or elderly family members.

Such people don’t have the time or energy to contemplate Tibetan yidam or participate in a Zen sesshin. How can someone working a demanding warehouse job at Amazon maintain mindfulness when you barely have time for a lunch break? How can a school teacher afford a retreat to Bhutan when they’re scraping money to get adequate school supplies in the classroom?

For most working-class people dealing with stress, financial woes, or parenting, such Buddhist practices are a privilege they can’t afford, but they shouldn’t be excluded either. This was a problem faced centuries ago and continues in the West today.

Instead, when your world is falling apart, or you’re cleaning poop from a baby’s diaper, or trying to mentally shut out the weirdo on public transit, sometimes it’s just enough to say the nembutsu: na-mu-a-mi-da-butsu. Maybe you can’t maintain a Buddhist altar, but it’s just enough to keep a small image in your wallet that you drew or printed out. If you can’t afford good Buddhist books, make your own.

I am not joking or making light of Buddhist practice either. Consider this verse from the second chapter of the Lotus Sutra:

If someone with a confused and distracted mind should take even one flower and offer it to a painted image, in time he would come to see countless Buddhas.

Or if a person should bow or perform obeisance, or should merely press his palms together, or even should raise a single hand, or give no more than a slight nod of the head, and if this were done in offering to an image, then in time he would come to see countless Buddhas.

And if he himself attains the unsurpassed way and spreads salvation abroad to countless multitudes, he will enter the nirvana of no remainder as a fire dies out when the firewood is exhausted.

If persons with confused and distracted minds should enter a memorial tower and once exclaim, “Hail to the Buddha!”

Then all have attained the Buddha way.

Translation by Burton Watson

Or this quote from the Sutra on the Buddha of Immeasurable Life:

“If, sentient beings encounter his [Amida Buddha’s] light, their three defilements are removed; they feel tenderness, joy and pleasure; and good thoughts arise. If sentient beings in the three realms of suffering see his light, they will all be relieved and freed from affliction. At the end of their lives, they all reach emancipation.

Translation by Rev. Hisao Inagaki

Sometimes it’s OK to just recite the nembutsu, or the Three Treasures above. It may not do much to relieve stress, or fix your situation but be assured that every tiny little bit you do to recite the Buddha’s name, or uphold the Five Precepts (or even one of them), anything you do to live an upright, honest life does count for something.

This isn’t empty platitudes either. This is straight from the Lotus Sutra and the Mahayana Buddhist tradition at large. Like contributing to a savings accounts, every little bit you do, however small, is just one step closer to your goal. Every good, wholesome seed you plant will bear fruit someday. Every time you dedicate that good merit towards the benefit of others, it will multiply even further.

No matter how shitty your life is, believe in yourself, believe in the power of the Buddha-Dharma, and trust that even a moment’s recitation or a a single good act can and does make a difference.

Namu Amida Butsu