August 2007
INVISIBLE GUIDANCE
By Rev. Yushi Mukojima
Once again, I have come to realize how quickly the years pass. It has now been seven years since I
left Japan to share the Buddha Dharma, the first two years in Brazil and then five years in the
United States.
I have had many wonderful experiences and learned many important things through my ministry
work. Of course, I have had a lot of pleasant experiences with Dharma friends, but I have had even
more sad experiences. One of the saddest is a funeral service.
There is no funeral service which is not sad. When I was in Brazil, we had a funeral service almost
every day. At the Sao Paulo Betsuin, I conducted funerals as often as three times a day and
memorial services up to eight times a day. Can you believe it? Sao Paulo Betsuin has over 5,000
members, so there were funerals almost every day and memorial services about 20 times every
Sunday. So I was really busy with these services. I used to be hoarse from Sutra chanting.
Anyway, I have conducted over 150 funerals. There was not a single funeral service at which I
wasn’t sad. There were sad services for people who died of disease, were killed in a car accident or
by a robber, committed suicide, and so on.
Even now I remember clearly the funeral for a baby named Nana who passed away at only two
months of age. I’ll always remember standing behind her mother who was crying as she gazed at
her baby’s face in the casket.
Nana had a physical problem at birth, so the doctor told her parents that she would not live very
long. However, her mother was not able to accept this severe reality because she loved her baby so
much. I didn’t know how to express my sympathy to her.
The baby never went home to her family, but died in the hospital, so the parents wanted to give
their baby a good funeral. I really understood their feelings. Only the closest relatives were informed
of the funeral, and everyone seemed to take the loss of the baby as their own loss.
At the funeral, there were no telegrams or eulogy. Instead, a loving letter which the mother had
written to her baby was read. Her husband read this letter for she was not able to read it herself. I
was moved to tears when I heard what she had written to her baby.
You were born into this world as our baby. However, you did nothing but cry and never smiled
back at us. You seemed to give us only suffering and sadness.
But you, who didn’t know that you hadn’t long to live, moved your hands and legs and desperately
tried to live every day. We soon began to feel moved by your existence. I have lived for dozens of
years, but I am wondering to myself, “Have I lived my life as fully as you did?” I am reflecting upon all
I have received in my life.
You might not have given us joy. But we learned many things from you more important than joy.
We are really grateful that you were born to us. Thank you very much, Nana, for having been born
as my baby.
After the cremation, the parents accepted their baby’s small container of ashes. The mother
expressed her thanks to me by saying, “Thank you very much, Sensei. I was able to pull myself
together at last.”
A funeral service is nothing but a ceremony. However, I will never forget that day during which all
of us shared our grief and learned something important. It was one of the most precious
experiences that I have ever had.
When we are faced with the death of someone close to us, what will we feel, and what will we
learn?
Babies cannot talk and can’t share the Dharma with us. However, Nana’s mother learned what life
is and what we live for from her baby’s death. If we see a baby struggling to live such a limited life,
we will truly realize that we also are living a limited life. If we can understand this truth, we will be
able to know that the baby was a Buddha who was born into this world from the Pure Land to teach
us this important lesson. Even if we share the same experience, we each will learn different things
from it.
When we put our hands together before Amida Buddha, Buddha will never talk to us. However, the
voice of Buddha calling from the Pure Land is assuredly sent to us. Whoever listens to it receives
the voice in his or her mind.
Amida Buddha established a Primal Vow that he will surely save all of us and he always embraces
us with his great compassion. Our founder, Shinran Shonin said, “When I considered deeply the
compassionate vow of Amida Buddha, established through five kalpas of profound thought, I
realized that it was entirely for the sake of myself, Shinran, alone! Then I am filled with such
gratitude for the Primal Vow, in which Amida resolved to save me, though I am burdened with such
heavy karma.”
It is most important for us to taste Buddha’s compassion as Shinran Shonin had. We should realize
that the Buddha’s Primal Vow for all people is the Vow for each one of us alone. When we sincerely
put our faith in Buddha’s great vow and receive his compassion without question, we will be able to
rejoice in our hearts.
I sincerely hope that each of us will be grateful to the Buddha who leads us to the way of the truth
and gives us the precious opportunity to learn many important things about life at each funeral
service we attend.
In Gassho,
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