Dharma Message from Rev. Gerald Sakamoto

Gratefully reprinted from The Dharma, October 2007
The official newsletter of San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin

“ Depths of Blindness ”

 

Throughout our lives we are constantly faced with choices. Some are trivial. Some profound. Usually the choices we make are short-lived and flow by us as a series of events that fill our day. When we wake up. What to eat. What to wear. Get gas, get gas later. Even when we’re operating on autopilot we’re making decisions. Some decisions we regret: mismatched socks. Should have paid more attention. Sometimes we make decisions that return to us many years later and we are either happy we made that choice or uncomfortable remembering. The happy choices we’ve made are well and good; it’s the choices we’ve made that are uncomfortable that need more careful consideration.

The first of the Four Noble Truths is Dukha, life is characterized by difficulties. We often think of difficulties as immediate effects resulting from causes we experience in this moment. I touch something hot I feel pain. Make a wrong turn down a one way street. Actually happened the other day, at Reed and Third, what a surprise. I was able to turn into a driveway and avoid the traffic racing at me. Had the outcome been otherwise, big difficulties. However, the difficulties that the Buddhadharma speaks of are much more deeply rooted than the immediate consequence of our actions. This is simply cause and effect, karma.

When we make decisions there is effort on our part. Our choice is an expression of our own desires. This is the root of dukha so difficult to remove. If dukha were a matter of adjusting our daily behavior it would be possible to change and resolve our difficulties. Don’t drive, can’t turn down a one-way street. Buy the same color socks, no mismatch. These actions would resolve particular problems but other problems would arise. If I don’t drive how will I get anywhere? What’s a VTA schedule? Should I buy all blue or all brown socks? Should I change my wardrobe to match my socks?

Like so many other choices that arise from our desires, preferences for socks and driving are of little consequence. However, desires can express themselves in ways that can have tremendous consequences. The desire to hold on to one’s possessions or to accumulate more possessions. The desire to hold on to a point of view regardless of the facts before you. We manipulate our world to satisfy our desires. People, objects, views are all subject to our manipulations.

The most profound expression of our desires, the cause of difficulties that the Dharma speaks to, arises without our awareness. We see it in others. We say they are greedy or filled with hate or unaware. Yet we cannot see these characteristics in ourselves. We are blind to our own desires. Like an iceberg we see only the most obvious, but are unable to fathom what lies beneath the surface. It is this that the Dharma draws our attention to. Not the manipulations that we are engaged in, but the root cause that determines our choices.

Scientists tell us that no memory is an accurate record of what actually happened. We embellish or simplify events often leaving out or adding to our memories. When we remember something we are uncomfortable with, a decision or a choice we’ve made, the memory is of something that has already occurred. We are remembering something with some emotional distance yet close enough to still affect us. We may no longer be embroiled in the circumstances of the moment, free in part, to look for the cause of our discomfort. If the Four Noble Truths is correct then the cause of our discomfort lies in our own desires.

Examining memories is not the only way to see how much our desires influence our choices. But memories are more approachable; after all these are events that have already occurred. The more adept we become at recognizing the influence of our desires, the more we realize how powerful and unexpected these desires can be. Through examining a personal event the truth of the Dharma becomes personal. Not an example that someone has described but an event from our life.

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