Don't Judge, be Quiet, Observe

I'm looking out yet another window. This one is in my room in one of the two nun's dormitories at the Pure Land Learning College, in Toowoomba, Australia. Across the road is a church with an attached school. It's Sunday morning and young children are in the playground. Over a dozen of them are holding what might be a marquee cover. It is multicolored and about twenty yards long. I can't see how wide. There is a slight breeze with periodic gusts of wind.

The children are raising their arms and lowering them so the marquee cover is rising and falling, and billowing as it catches the wind. I can hear the children laughing as they play. A children's game I think and return to working on my computer.

I look up a few more times and then notice there's a pattern to the movement. It's more than just letting the cover catch the wind and playing with it. On more careful observation and trying not to jump to another hasty conclusion, I realize the children are all moving their arms in unison. There must be someone telling them when to raise or lower their arms and when to let the cover settle down on the ground and then make it rise again.

And I realize this is no mere game. This is a lesson in teamwork because the children all have to work together to get the cover to catch the wind and billow. It is a lesson in patience because they have to wait for the wind to calm down. It is a lesson in diligence because they have to keep practicing to learn how to work with the constantly changing wind.

So my initial hasty, dismissive conclusion about what was happening outside my window was all wrong.

I only realized what was really happening when my mind was quiet, when I wasn't making judgments, when I was carefully observing what was happening, and when I allowed the truth to come bubbling up from inside me.

Love

With their true sincerity, purity, equality,

Ultimate wisdom and compassion,

Saints and gods of all religions

Benefit all people in acting as

Leaders by guiding,

Parents by nurturing and

Teachers by educating.

Saints and gods teach all people

The relationships between

Humans,

Humans and nature, and

Humans and spirits of Heaven and Earth;

To change from bad to good,

Deluded to awakened,

Ordinary to sage;

To have kind hearts and thoughts, and do kind deeds;

To differentiate neither by nationality, belief or race,

Nor between self and others.

Coexist harmoniously,

Regard each other with equality and respect, and

Love one another.

Work together,

Care for each other and accord with all,

Unceasingly and forever.

Through true honesty, deeply believe that

All sentient-beings are one with the

Same true nature, wisdom and virtue.

One who achieves these teachings is a saint.

A manifestation of a

PerfectlyEnlightened Being of Infinite Life and Light.

~ Venerable Master Chin Kung ~

It's all About Choice

I'm in the midst of several translations projects, all of which have the same deadline—yesterday. (See, a monastics life is not that different from those of laypeople!) So this entry will be short and simple.

For those who have been reading the blog, you know I am having vocal cord problems. The pain is pretty much gone but I have to be very careful of what I eat: no fried, salty, acidic, or spicy foods. My voice is getting better, but I still cannot lecture or talk for long. I also have a thyroid problem, which is easily controlled by thyroid medicine. But I should not eat rice other than basmati and shouldn't eat soy products because they inhibit the thyroid medicine and that causes other problems. So I shouldn't eat regular rice, soy products, or fried, spicy, acidic, or salty foods. This is a bit of a problem because I live in a community and there's a fair amount of those foods at mealtimes. I also have a few other medical-type problems.

Then this morning I managed to pinch that pesky nerve in my back that occasionally gives me trouble, and I don't have any of my heat packs here. Plus it's a rainy, chilly day. So my back and leg hurt. And I'm walking quite slowly. I prefer to think of it as "dignified," although the occasional wince does seem to diminish my dignified conceit.

So I'm tired from having my thyroid medicine partially negated, I have a circulation problem that requires one treatment that is the direct opposite of the treatment for what causes the vocal cord scaring, my arm hurts from spending much more time on the computer since I can't talk much, I can't figure out what to eat, and I'm in pain. And I have to chuckle about it. (Must be those Jewish genes.;-))

And Buddhism.

I could complain, but frankly after I pinched that nerve, I figured I had nothing to complain about. It's karma. Or karmic creditors. Or just plain aging as the Buddha said when he spoke of the eight sufferings we undergo. Or a combination of everything. But whatever the causes, they could have hit me all at once with one ailment. But I'm lucky. I've got a bunch of minor ailments on a list that does seem determined to grow longer.

But so far, I'm choosing not to be frustrated or angry or depressed. I choose to try to understand and look for something to be grateful for. And I am very grateful that my difficulties seem to be spread around so that there isn't that one debilitating illness or injury that would be serious. And I know that if I do not become frustrated or angry or depressed, I'll be able to pay off the karmic debts that have contributed to my problems.

So, I consider myself to be very fortunate.

And that means that I'm still smiling.

And practicing my dignified walk.

How Does One Adjust One’s Mindset?

Even if we suffer many wrongs in this world, we should maintain a calm mind and accord with conditions. Why? Because whatever we encounter daily in this lifetime, whether favorable or unfavorable, is destined and brought about by our deeds from past lifetimes.

It is clearly stated in the sutras that there are two kinds of karmic retributions for all beings. The first kind is leading karma, which leads us to be born in a certain path [e.g., as a human or animal]. The second kind is fruition karma, the karmic force from our good and bad deeds done in past lifetimes that brings about all that we undergo in this lifetime, whether we are rich or poor and have a high or low social status.

Now that we understand that what we undergo in this lifetime is the karmic retribution of our deeds done in past lifetimes, how could we not endure and accept it? While we are enduring the karmic retributions, we should not be attached to favorable conditions or become angry with those that are adverse. This way, we will be able to eliminate our negative karmas.

We should know that we must eliminate the negative karma created in past lifetimes; otherwise we cannot transcend the Three Realms. Although learning and practicing the Buddha-name chanting method allows us to attain rebirth in the Western Pure Land while bringing along our residual karma, we still hope to bring along as little residual karma as possible. Therefore, when we encounter adverse conditions, we have a good opportunity to eliminate our negative karma. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. The harder things are to tolerate and the more we are able to tolerate them, the more negative karma we will be able to eliminate, and faster too.

No matter what humiliation or torment we undergo, this will eliminate our negative karma. When we encounter this situation, we should let go of everything and all thoughts, and instead, single-mindedly chant “Amituofo” and seek rebirth in the Western Pure Land.

~ Ven. Master Chin Kung

Some Things are Meant to be

The following is a story in the news I have been following.

In the beginning, there was a boy, a girl and an apple.

He was a teenager in a death camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. She was a bit younger, living free in the village, her family posing as Christians. Their eyes met through a barbed-wire fence and she wondered what she could do for this handsome young man.

She was carrying apples, and decided to throw one over the fence. He caught it and ran away toward the barracks. And so it began.

As they tell it, they returned the following day and she tossed an apple again. And each day after that, for months, the routine continued. She threw, he caught, and both scurried away.

They never knew one another's name, never uttered a single word, so fearful they'd be spotted by a guard. Until one day he came to the fence and told her he wouldn't be back.

"I won't see you anymore," she said. "Right, right. Don't come around anymore," he answered.

And so their brief and innocent tryst came to an end. Or so they thought.

Forced into a ghetto
Before he was shipped off to a death camp, before the girl with the apples appeared, Herman Rosenblat's life had already changed forever.

His family had been forced from their home into a ghetto. His father fell ill with typhus. They smuggled a doctor in, but there was little he could do to help. The man knew what was coming. He summoned his youngest son. "If you ever get out of this war," Rosenblat remembers him saying, "don't carry a grudge in your heart and tolerate everybody."

Two days later, the father was dead. Herman was just 12.

The family was moved again, this time to a ghetto where he shared a single room with his mother, three brothers, uncle, aunt and four cousins. He and his brothers got working papers and he got a factory job painting stretchers for the Germans.

Eventually, the ghetto was dissolved. As the Poles were ushered out, two lines formed. In one, those with working papers, including Rosenblat and his brothers. In the other, everyone else, including the boys' mother.

Rosenblat went over to his mother. "I want to be with you," he cried. She spoke harshly to him and one of his brothers pulled him away. His heart was broken.

"I was destroyed," Rosenblat remembers. It was the last time he would ever see her.

Reunited in New York
It was in Schlieben, Germany, that Rosenblat and the girl he later called his angel would meet. Roma Radziki worked on a nearby farm and the boy caught her eye. And bringing him food — apples, mostly, but bread, too — became part of her routine.

"Every day," she says, "every day I went."

Rosenblat says he would secretly eat the apples and never mentioned a word of it to anyone else for fear word would spread and he'd be punished or even killed. When Rosenblat learned he would be moved again — this time to Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic — he told the girl he would not return.

Not long after, the Russians rolled in on a tank and liberated Rosenblat's camp. The war was over. She went to nursing school in Israel. He went to London and learned to be an electrician.

Their daily ritual faded from their minds.

"I forgot," she says.

"I forgot about her, too," he recalls.

Rosenblat eventually moved to New York. He was running a television repair shop when a friend phoned him one Sunday afternoon and said he wanted to fix him up with a girl. Rosenblat was unenthusiastic: He didn't like blind dates, he told his friend. He didn't know what she would look like. But finally, he relented.

It went well enough. She was Polish and easygoing. Conversation flowed, and eventually talk turned to their wartime experiences. Rosenblat recited the litany of camps he had been in, and Radziki's ears perked up. She had been in Schlieben, too, hiding from the Nazis.

She spoke of a boy she would visit, of the apples she would bring, how he was sent away.

And then, the words that would change their lives forever: "That was me," he said.

Rosenblat knew he could never leave this woman again. He proposed marriage that very night. She thought he was crazy. Two months later she said yes.

In 1958, they were married at a synagogue in the Bronx — a world away from their sorrows, more than a decade after they had thought they were separated forever.

Story inspires book ‘Angel Girl’
It all seems too remarkable to be believed. Rosenblat insists it is all true.

Even after their engagement, the couple kept the story mostly to themselves, telling only those closest to them. Herman says it's because they met at a point in his life he'd rather forget. But eventually, he said, he felt the need to share it with others.

Now, the Rosenblats' story has inspired a children's book, "Angel Girl." And eventually, there are plans to turn it into a film, "The Flower of the Fence." Herman expects to publish his memoirs next year.

Michael Berenbaum, a distinguished Holocaust scholar who has authored a dozen books, has read Rosenblatt's memoir and sees no reason to question it.

"I wasn't born then so I can't say I was an eyewitness. But it's credible," Berenbaum said. "Crazier things have happened."

Herman is now 79, and Roma is three years his junior; they celebrated their 50th anniversary this summer. He often tells their story to Jewish and other groups.

He believes the lesson is the very one his father imparted.

"Not to hate and to love — that's what I am lecturing about," he said. "Not to hold a grudge and to tolerate everybody, to love people, to be tolerant of people, no matter who they are or what they are."

The anger of the death camps, Herman says, has gone away. He forgave. And his life has been filled with love.

Do you believe the account? Or feel it is a fabrication from the minds of two people who tried to find the good in a horrific memory? Either way it is an amazing story.

It is amazing that karma can pull us so strongly and that those who are destined to come together will—regardless of the odds—do so.

It is also amazing, and inspiring, that lessons of love and letting go of hate, of tolerance and not holding a grudge could arise from so much suffering and loss. Amazing and inspiring that a father's last words to his son were of loving all people regardless of who they are, that a mother's parting actions were to save her son's life. And that a young girl would repeatedly risk her life to toss apples to a hungry boy behind a high wire fence.

Tolerance and love, karma and destiny.

Amazing.