Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
TRUE HEART RISING: Jesus & Ikkyu, Scrooge & Tiny Tim

TRUE HEART RISING: Jesus & Ikkyu, Scrooge & Tiny Tim

Last updated on: October 25, 2021 at 9:00 am by James Ford

TRUE HEART RISING: Jesus & Ikkyu, Scrooge & Tiny Tim 2021-10-25T09:00:15-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

TRUE HEART RISING

Jesus & Ikkyu, Scrooge & Tiny Tim

Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer

Joseph Priestley Zen Sangha and Empty Moon Zen

I was preparing a dharma talk the other day that touched upon the Zen priest and poet Ikkyu Sojun, that antinomian character who, were he Chinese, might well have been referred to as a kind of Daoist Zannie, but who seems, frankly, too serious for that. No, his hanging out in brothels and taverns feels more like Jesus keeping company with tax collectors and prostitutes. There, I said it. Ikkyu and Jesus in the same sentence.

Sarah Messer’s translation of his poetry, rather than relying on footnotes to orient us to the world of a fifteenth century Japanese priest, pairs each poem with exerpts of texts that are picked up in the individual poem with citations to those in later notes. I love the following short paragraphs, but the lack of a citation throws the question of authorship back on Messer. Still it goes:

Buddha’s great disciple Ananda accomplished the wisdom of an arhat, someone who has left the red dust of samsara behind, who is free of desire and hatred.

But a bodhisattva attains Manjushri’s Great Wisdom and finally Buddhahood only by never abandoning the sorrows of samsara. Never abandoning the sorrows of samsara, what a lovely phrase! What a perfect description of Ikkyu, priest, hermit, barfly, poet, lover, and bodhisattva.

And Ikkyu’s poem? it goes:

An arhat emerges from dust and thus pushes Buddhahood away.
When I enter a brothel, I display Great Wisdom.
I laugh deeply at Manjushri reciting the Lankavatara Sutra.
He has lost the whole business of his youthful furyu.

But today, let’s consider another of our great Bodhisattvas, a bodhisattva no doubt familiar to Ikkyu, no stranger to compassion, let’s consider Avalokitesvara, Guanyin, about Kanzeon, the bodhisattva of compassion.

Each evening during sesshin many years ago, the tanto (our retreat leader) would stand in the doorway, look around the sangha, give us all final instructions for the night and bid us all “Goodnight Bodhisattvas”. Who would have guessed that I was a bodhisattva, that we were all bodhisattvas. But what else could we be? We were all there charged with bringing each other to awakening. Nightly, we vowed to wake all the beings. This was a revelation. Bodhisattvas, wise beings who remain behind in this world of samsara, this world of dew, even though they could leave it behind, beings who have vowed to bring all other beings to enlightenment. That person sitting across from me on the cushion for the past week, he was a bodhisattva. that person sitting beside me day in and day out, who had been there each morning at five, she was a bodhisattva. You, Me. All of us, bodhisattvas; all of us, Buddhas.

We look to bodhisattvas as the great exemplars of the mahayana tradition. A bodhisattva refers to anyone who has generated bodhicitta, the spontaneous wish and the compassionate mind to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings who, yet, chooses to remain behind until all beings can attain Buddhahood. Not just for my benefit, but for all of us. Pledging not simply to save Fred Rogers, Dorothy Day and Jimmy Carter, but also that jerk who cheats on his school taxes, who swears at the homeless, who would put the widow and orphan out on the street. All of them, Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim, all of them to be saved. Me, you, the worst of me, the best of you. all of them. This is the Bodhisattva vow.

I knew a teacher once who asked as a thought experiment, that we go through an entire day seeing everyone we met as being someone who was put there solely to bring us to enlightenment. Our spouse, bringing us a cup of coffee in the morning; our child, refusing to move quickly enough as we try to get him ready for school; the neighbor pretending not to see as his dog shits on our lawn; the nurse who goes out of her way to make my wife’s treatmet a little more tolerable. The nurse, the traffic cop, our spouse, our children, the cat yowling for food, the crow on the fence out back, each there to open our eyes to our own true nature, each remaining behind for us. Kindnesses we see only in retrospect. All bodhisattvas.

Tori Zenji spoke of this in his Bodhisattva’s Vow when he wrote:

“How can we be ungrateful to anyone or anything?
Even though someone may be a fool, we can be compassionate.
If someone turns against us, speaking ill of us and treating us bitterly,

It’s best to bow down:

This is the Buddha appearing to us,
Finding ways to free us from our own attachments—

the very ones that have made us suffer, again and again and again. “

And just as we all are bodhisattvas, there are specfic, named and beloved examples: Manjushri, the bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom, the bodhisattva you find in Zendos brandishing his sword cutting through delusion; Kṣitigarbha, the bodhisattva of hell beings (I love the notion that the being in charge of hell has vowed to not attain Buddhahood until all the hells are empty), as Jizo, you may know him as the protector of children and the unborn; Samatabhadra (the bodhisattva of great activity, of meditation and practice who sits with us there on the cushion as we struggle with cramped legs and trying, if not to awaken then at least not to nod off); and, of course, Avalokiteshvara (the bodhisattva of great compassion, dearing the cries of the world, or at least, my muttered complaints)……. all these bodhisattvas , named and unnamed,all dedicated to bringing all beings to awakening.

As Buddhism traveled it absorbed religions, gods and goddesses and turned them to its own ends. Avalokiteshvara, male in India, was absorbed by the female goddess Quanyin in China, becoming Kannon or Kanzeon in Japan an interesting example of gender fluidity, a bodhisattva both awake and woke. The name Avalokishvara can be translated as the one who hears the cries of the world. Guanyin is often depicted as having a thousand hands and eyes, hands and eyes she needs to respond to all of the cries of the world and so we find in case 89 of the Blue Cliff Record, Yunyan asking Daowu,

“How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use all those hands and eyes?” Daowu answered, “It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.” Yunyan replied “I understand.” “How do you understand it?” said Daowu. “All over the body are hands and eyes.” returned Yunyan. Daowu said, “That is very well-expressed, but it is only eight-tenths of the answer.” “How would you say it, Elder Brother?” Yunyan asked. “Throughout the body are hands and eyes.” Daowu said.“

We see Avalokitesvara in two of our sutras – as the speaker in the Heart Sutra – the only sutra I know of not spoken by the Buddha –

and in the ten verse Kannon sutra, the Enmei Juku Kannongyo, a particular favorite of Hakuin Zenji and chanted in both Rinzai and Soto temples. Kaz Tanahashi has written that this sutra came to the defeated Chinese general Wang Xuanmo in a dream some time around the year 450 CE. The legend is that chanting it saved him from execution.

Ten simple lines:

Kanzeon!
Namu Butsu
yo Butsu u in
yo Butsu u en
buppo so en
jo raku ga jo
cho nen Kanzeon
bo nen Kanzeon
nen nen ju shin ki
nen nen fu ri shin.

An invocation to Kannon, to Avalokiteshvara who through her, through his compassion, brings us to awaking “Absorbing world sounds awakens a Buddha right here! This Buddha,

the source of compassion.” Kannon hears our cries and reaches out with hands that, moving so fast they are perceived as a thousand hands. “This Buddha”, this Kanzeon, “receives only compassion. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha— just compassion.”

“In the light recall this……in the dark, recall this……” and, as we reach behind our heads groping for a pillow, there in the night, there in the dark, “moment after moment we all rejoice, there in that moment, all of us manifesting as “Buddha, Dharma, Sangha”! In this moment, and in this moment, and in this moment “the true heart arises.”

This is all there is. Just this!

Take care, bodhisattvas!

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 24, 2021

Recalling the Archangel Raphael & Happy Meetings

Next Post

October 26, 2021 Ida B Wells: American Hero

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian hymn is often called the most popular in history and was written by John Newton?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Amazing Grace How Great Thou Art Silent Night Onward Christian Soldiers