To See
Beings with extremely heavy karmic evil should only utter the Buddha's Name.I, too, am embraced.
Though I cannot see the Light of Compassion because my eyes are obstructed by blind passions,
It continues to always shine upon me untiringly.
–Shinran’s Shoshin Ge
A few weeks ago I lost a contact lens. I was at an out-of-town conference and also forgot to bring my glasses. I was in a quandary—how could I drive home with only one good eye?
This experience made me think. Often, I have said, “Buddhism is a way for us to see things as they are.” But what does it really mean, “to see things as they are?”
The laws of physics and human anatomy say that light rays are inverted when they pass through the lenses of our eyes. Our brains interpret those rays of light, flipflopping them so that we “see” the image right-side up.
This past week, I was sick in bed so I caught up on TV shows that I haven’t had a chance to see. Last night I watched an episode of one of my favorite shows, Bones. It is about a forensic anthropologist of the Jeffersonian Institute who helps solves crimes for the FBI. The main character is very much rationally intelligent. Yet at times she is also emotionally and psychologically naïve, especially in social situations.
She uses objective logic and reason in her quest to find evidence or truth. In this episode she was talking with a night watchman for the museum. He told her of a lecture of an experiment where people were given glasses. These glasses would take those rays of light and invert the images before reaching the lenses of the eyes. Essentially these glasses made people see everything upside down. It took just 3 days for the brain to adjust and correct the image so that it would be right-side up again. Then the subjects were asked to take off the glasses. At first, everything appeared upside down again, but after another 3 days, the brain corrected the image to “normal” again.
So again, what does it mean to see things as they really are?
We are all familiar with optical illusions. These are clever drawings where one line or arc appears to be larger than the other. Due to the angles or placement, the brain misinterprets what it sees and thinks one is larger than the other but the reality is they are the same size.
In the early 1990s, very colorful posters that at first glance, appeared to be random composition colors and squiggly lines, became very popular. During that time, my sister was visiting, and we passed a shop with one of these posters in the front window. My sister told me to come with her to look at the poster. After a while she asked, “Can you see it?”
I stood there for a couple of seconds looking at it and said “See what?”
“Can't you see the airplane?”
“Well, where am I supposed to look?”
“At the poster! It’s right there in 3D.” And she starts laughing at me. I thought she was joking, but my sister insisted that it wasn’t a joke. All I had to do was relax my eyes.
“How do relax your eyes?” I asked.
For more than 10 minutes, I kept trying with all my might to relax my eyes. But I still couldn’t see the plane.
It is amazing how these images are created. It is a blend of artistry, graphics, and computer technology. On the surface, what looks like squiggly lines and splashes of random color contains a hidden image. But what I think about is how much we rely on our sense of sight. “Seeing is believing.” We have to see it with our own eyes to believe if it is true.
Buddhism is not about believing. Buddhism is based upon wisdom, knowing, and experience. It is difficult for us to believe that Amida Buddha is a being with all mighty powers that will save all sentient beings because we don’t see Amida walking around helping people. And that is the way it should be. But we must also understand that what we see and what is true may be entirely different.
Years ago, my son and his best friend were at our house for a play day. They must have been about 4 years old. They both were running around the house as boys do. At the time, my son was in his wrestling phase—he liked to wrestle with his friends and me.
My wife and I were “keeping an eye” on them. All of a sudden, Linda saw our son grab his friend and they both fell to the floor hard. The friend began to cry. Linda instantly and instinctively scolded my son for tackling and hurting his friend and he began to cry too.
But I saw something entirely different. Just before the two crashed to the floor, I saw the friend running toward my son. But before he got to him, his friend tripped. My son instinctively reached out to try and catch his friend from falling, but as he did so, he too lost his balance and fell on top of him. Of course, Linda being a good mother apologized after I told her what I saw, but it is easy to see how often and how easily we can be mistaken.
It is taught that the path toward enlightenment begins with the first step of having Right or Correct View. Dogen, the great Zen Buddhist thinker summarized Buddhism in the following way:
To seek the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to have things as they are, prevail in you.
To have things as they are prevail in you,
is to let go of self-centered attachments to your own body and mind,
as well as the body and mind of others.
Shinran summarized as follows:
I, too, am embraced.
Though I cannot see the Light of Compassion because my eyes are obstructed by blind passions,
It continues to always shine upon me untiringly.
We “see” things from an individual perspective, meaning that we interpret things according to what is convenient for us. That is not to say it is wrong. This is just saying how we operate.
This is what Shinran meant by saying that his eyes are obstructed by blind passions. Unlike Dogen, Shinran discovered that it was impossible to give up his self-centered attachments. Therefore, his perspective of things may very well be quite different from another. This is not to say that everything that we see is wrong or mistaken, rather this is truly showing us that we must respect all points of view.
“To see things just as they are,” means that we must always be cautious of seeing things from our ego-centered perspective.
Is there a possibility that we may be mistaken? Is it a possibility that I may not be seeing the whole picture? For Shinran, the answer is a definite yes. And because of that, he was open to listening, learning and sharing with others.
Again, I don’t think that Shinran is trying to destroy anyone’s self esteem, but his understanding is toward acceptance through honest self-reflection. Because he was able to see things just as they are, he recognized the many contribu-tions that he received in his life to help him live.
In this way, the essence of Buddhism “to see things as they really are” is so that we can become (as one Jodo Shinshu author writes) true individuals who are strong in crisis, humble in success, tender in our feelings, and grateful at all times.
Namo Amida Butsu,
Rev. Dean