THE  NATURE OF THINGS

From Dr. Usui’s lecture from “Enlightenment Teachings”

“…Our mind has allowed us to determine the outward nature of things and to impose a label. I hope all of you have gained this facility because if any of you have difficulty recognizing a rock and its difference between a brandy snifter or an inflamed pancreatic duct, then I am sure that person is gong to have a great deal of trouble in the remainder of his life.

Now what am I talking about? What point am I making?  Knowing the true nature of a thing as I said at the beginning is a function of the Buddha Mind. Now none of us, and that also includes myself, although I believe I am somewhat ahead of you, do not fully comprehend the true nature of this rock, in its history, composition, and why it was located on Hokkaido when I found it.  But I do know it is a rock. 

I do know that this brandy snifter was made from glass and somewhere in England.  I know it came by ship and was in possession of the British Consul General who presented it to me as a gift one of a set of four.  I know it is a brandy snifter, although it has been used for other things in the past, such as  temporary home for my Siamese fighting fish, while I was cleaning the large glass punch bowl which was his permanent home until one morning assisted by my cat it passed to its future incarnation.  I will say that unfortunately the large punch bowl was broken which almost led to your revered teacher and his beloved cat passing to our next incarnation at the hands of my wife who truly had an unwholesome attachment to the punch bowl.  Only my promise to replace it saved our lives.  At that particular moment my wife was totally impervious to my argument about impermanence; but the point I am making is this: Hopefully at a glance any of you can determine the difference, and easily identify a rock, a punch bowl, a fighting fish, an irate spouse, or your revered teacher, whether alive or not.

And of course we mustn't forget the cat.  I must say that the fish put up a good fight but size and sharp white teeth were its bane.  But you see, gentlemen, that already our own natural mind that we possess is able to distinguish an immense number of different objects and to a certain degree understand their true nature.  This is proof that within us is one of the major facilities of the Buddha Mind.

Now I am not going to stop here.  This was the point, but it goes on.  By contemplating a rock, a very simple and readily available item, and examining its origins and true nature, I learn a great deal and I hone the ability of my mind in that way, and you will find that applying this sharpens the  intellect but also the understanding.

Now let us take the incident of the punch bowl, the fish, and a very angry wife and a somewhat annoyed servant whom I have not as yet mentioned, and the cat.  Now from observation we notice that it is the nature of a cat to eat fish, although it is not necessarily the nature of a fish to serve as catfood. Nor is it the nature of a punch bowl to serve as a home for a fish.  Yet I had arranged a circumstance that led to this unfortunate occurrence.  I had taken the punch bowl, filled it with water and installed the soon to be unfortunate fish in the punch bowl, then realizing that the cat might be attracted, instructed my wife and servants to leave the shoji screen closed. The cat, unfortunately for the fish and for me, was more intelligent than all of us, for it had learned to open a shoji screen.  The cat  had seen the fish and apparently had a distinct attraction to the fish.  The cat bided its time, waiting till a glorious spring day when my wife and the servants all decided to stroll to the market together.

At last the hunter was alone with its prey.  The cat opened the shoji, leapt upon my writing table and after a number of futile attempts to catch the fish within the bowl, decided it would be easier to catch the fish if it were outside the bowl, whereupon it proceeded to knock the bowl from the table, leapt to the floor and retrieved the fish from the remains of the punch bowl.  After examining the cat and noticing a few small bites upon its lips, the hunter was able to subdue and devour its prey.  When the wife and servants returned home, a very satisfied cat was sitting upon my writing table cleaning itself, digesting my fish, contemplating the remains of the punch bowl, very satisfied in its own arrogant little way with itself and its surroundings.

This was abruptly ended when an irate servant whacked it with a broom and chased it out of the house and then proceeded to clean up the remains of the punch bowl, the water on my silk Chinese rug, and the few small fish parts that the cat had chosen not to eat for one reason or another. 

This of course if is an amusing story about a cat and a fish and demonstrates my lack of understanding about the nature and determination and facility at opening shoji doors that the nature of my cat displayed.  It also taught me the nature of an expensive crystal punch bowl and that the nature of a punch bowl is to hold punch, not beloved pet fish.  As my wife repeatedly told me for a number of days to impress this point upon me.  I also discovered the nature of punch bowls and that they are all not the same. 

I ventured to Tokyo the next week and found my wife a lovely punch bowl in all appearances, at least to me, it was the same.  On returning home my wife pointed out to me that the etched design of intertwining vines on the punch bowl was different than the ones on the eight matching cups, whereupon this necessitated another trip to Tokyo to find the right bowl, accompanied by one of the cups and dire admonitions as to what would happen to an old doctor if he accidentally broke the cup. 

So you see this little event meant a great illumination to me.  Here are the things I learned from this: cats are evil little plotting carnivores who can open shoji screens. Although not by nature food for cats, Siamese fighting fish admirably fulfils that purpose as well.  Punch bowls can be broken although they look very sturdy.  Do not place your fish in a punch bowl when you share your habitation with a cat.  Although in general appearance punch bowls are similar but they are not all the same.  A broken punch bowl can change a placid well tempered wife into a screaming harpy in a matter of seconds.  Servants do not like to clean silk rugs.  And more particularly, they do not like to be supervised by elderly doctors giving instructions while they are performing the operation.

So thus, I received another lesson in the nature of punch bowls, fish, cats, wives and servants within Samsara.  But most seriously each object which I have mentioned is infinite in nature and each could serve as an object for contemplation, just as well as a rock, a haemorrhoid, or a punch bowl.

I find my daily experiences an infinite panorama and I find daily hundreds of occasions and hundreds of objects to contemplate.  I do not have to seek a monastery on the mountains, a temple on the plane, or a cave in the far Himalayas to facilitate my contemplation.  While serving my fellow beings I can carry on my contemplation and move forward to understanding the true nature of the things. 

This my beloved students is what I am encouraging you to do, for in analysing and contemplating both the objects which we encounter daily and the situations we find ourselves in, especially the situations, and analysing them in the same way that you would contemplate a rock, a cat, a punch bowl, or a wife, not to mention a fighting fish or household servant, one can learn from which causative actions the situation has arisen; one can look at causative factors and then, guided by the great compassionate mind of enlightenment, act in a beneficial way to accomplish an enlightened outcome.

This is Buddha activity directly manifesting in Samsara, and this Buddha activity is inseparable from the activity that any Buddha initiates, therefore, when we do this we are acting as a Buddha, and by acting as a Buddha, are training ourselves, and thus moving forward to our ultimate goal.”