Ultimate Value of Human Life
by Rev. Koju Fujieda, Ryokeiji, Izumoji-ha, Echizen, Japan
(April 1, 2007)
The Kikyoge or Gatha of
Three Venerations starts with “Human life is the most difficult to receive.
Yet we are actually endowed with it. Dharma is the most difficult to hear.
Yet we are actually led to hear it.” This phrase is profoundly suggestive of
the ultimate value of human life.
First, let’s consider
the wonders of human life in three aspects; its history, function, and
support.
Of the Forty-eight
Original Vows of Amida Buddha, the fifth is the vow to bring humans and
devas in His land to remember their former lives. This could be currently
interpreted as a reference to the history of individual human life.
According to today’s life scientists, a life cell was born on the earth
about three and a half billion years ago after the earth’s birth four and a
half billion years ago. The universe was started fourteen billion years ago.
(Well, let us have a wide span of time sense here.) The cell started to
divide and eventually the evolution of life developed into more and more
species. How many species of life do you think exist on the earth now? Dr.
Keiko Nakamura reveals that there are about thirty million species
recognized at present and the human race is one of them. Then roughly it
follows that to be born among the human race took thirty million turns in
the long way of evolution or it was one-over-thirty-million chance to come
to the gate of the human race.
However, you could not
appear in this world yet; you had to compete with 299,999,999 other sperms
from your father to get into the single ovum from your mother faster than
others. Here was another narrow selection (one over three hundred million)
to obtain an individual life as a human.
Arithmetically the
probability of each human to be born into this world in the history of life
on the earth was thus one over thirty million times three hundred million,
that is, one over nine quadrillion (or gazillion). What an astronomically
rare chance! And you did receive it! You may take it for granted that you
are living today, but your life has such a wondrously long and difficult
history of selections.
These are scientific
observations in the realm of knowledge, which is not enough in Buddhism, the
world of wisdom. What insight into life you get from such knowledge and how
you feel about the real value of your life is a matter of wisdom. A famous
novelist in Japan Eiji Yoshikawa, who authored Shinran, once composed a
waka
poem when he had his first child born:
“Hello,
baby,
which ways have you taken
to be born as a child
with me as your dad?”
He did not think he
produced the child nor owned it, but he took the baby as an invaluable human
being who was to complete its precious life in the intimate relationship
with hims as its father. This is a case of wisdom concerning the history of
life.
In the second phase, we
tend to take our physical functions for granted, but how can your heart
continue to beat about two billion times in your life? How is it possible
for a small cut in you finger to be restored to the original state in
several days? We are living as the sixty trillion cells in our body and
three billion bits of DNA information in each cell are working in harmonious
cooperation. Have we ever thanked them for their marvelous functions?
Rev. Toshiko Kawamura
wrote about her mother-in-law, Fude, who was a great Nembutsu woman. “My son
wrote a composition at school; ‘My grandma is a very strange person; when
she takes me to the toilet, she presses her palms together and worships my
poop when it gets out, saying Thank you very much for your work.” Fude was
not a physiologist, but she knew well the wonders of functions within our
bodies, and moreover she had wisdom enough to thank them. Our bodies are not
our own possession, but they are keeping us alive. When we are awakened to
this fact, we cannot help reciting Nembutsu in gratitude for them.
In the third, we may
sometimes complain about the taste of food we eat, but have we ever wondered
what we really eat?
In a kindergarten in
Hiroshima, Japan, the bell rang to notify the time for school lunch. The
teacher said to her kids, “Now, everybody, let’s press our palms together
and say ‘Itadakimasu,’ which literally means ‘I am going to eat with
thanks,’” a widespread Japanese custom. Then, as is usual with kids, one of
them put in a question to her, “Teacher, why do we say ‘Itadakimasu’?” She
was still fresh from college and had never really questioned about the
Japanese tradition, so she was stuck, only saying to herself in her mind,
“You know it is what we should do in Japan, don’t you?” Dismayed, she looked
aside and happened to see a couple of women cooks in white aprons at the
doors of the lunch room. “Well, Taro,” she said with a smile, “ladies over
there cooked our food very kindly, so we must say ‘Itadakimasu.’ OK?” But
Taro was not satisfied. “But, teacher, last week my mom brought here 6,000
yen for the school lunch.” He may have been thinking of the supermarket
where customers pay money for what they have bought without thanking the
store or anybody. The teacher’s face turned red and stared at the boy.
It was then that the
kindergarten master, who had been hearing this dialog behind her, came out
in front and said to Taro, “Good boy, you asked a very good question, but
your mom did not pay any money.” “What? She paid it, I know. I was with
her,” Taro retorted. “No, she didn’t.” “Why, I am not a liar!” Taro was on
the brink of tears. “Well, then, Taro, let me ask. You see a
delicious-looking fish on your plate. How much did your mom pay to the fish
itself?” After a moment of silence, “I don’t know,” Taro said weakly.
“Surely no. You are honest. The fish did not get a penny from her. The money
she brought here all went to the people for their work. But the fish is
giving its precious life to you without any reward. It must be saying, ‘Hey,
Taro, please eat my meat and grow up. It’s OK for me.’
“So we say ‘Itadakimasu,’
thanking the fish for its precious uncompensated life. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do, Master,” Taro nodded with a smile.
What marvelous education
the master conducted! At most schools, the scientific phrase “food chain”
may be taught to explain such a phenomenon as people eating fish, which eat
smaller living things in the sea, but that remains at the level of
knowledge, which will not help people gain wisdom to enrich their life
emotionally, volitionally and spiritually. The idea of ‘Itadakimasu’ comes
from the Buddhist thought that all living things share their precious life
with us and that taking such lives is a sin. Apology and thankfulness for
the lives we have to take to sustain our lives may seem a contradiction, but
both are combined into Nembutsu, the wisdom of Buddhism..
Now it is clear that
human life is what was given, functioning and supported by the other powers
than ourselves. We are surely allowed to live; we are not living on our own,
so we should be thankful for being allowed to live.
However, Rev. Yutai Ikeda
says, “Realization that we are being allowed to live should not be a
conclusion, but a starting point.” Yes, if you are really moved, you will
cry out, you may start to run. If you are really awakened to the realities
of your life, you ought to act or there should be some changes in your
lifestyle. What changes?
Shinran Shonin says in
his Shoshinge hymn,
“Shakyamuni Tathagata
appeared in this world
Solely to teach the ocean-like Primal Vow of Amida;
We, an ocean of beings in an evil age of five defilements,
Should entrust ourselves to the Tathagata’s words of truth.”
The basic change will be
to be awakened to what we were born for. Here is an episode which Rev.
Toshiko Kawamura, introduced above, revealed in her Dharma talk.
.....
In the southern part of
Osaka Prefecture there lives an obstetrician and devout Nembutsu person,
whose name is humbly hidden, but tentatively let’s call him Joji. Joji was
brought up by his father alone and urged to go to Sunday School at the
temple. When he was a sixth grader, however, he sometimes failed to go. When
finally his father knew the fact, he scolded him very severely. Joji made an
excuse saying that he was studying for the entrance examination to the
middle school as his friends did; he did not just play truant, but his
father did not forgive him. In his vexation he started to cry, when his
father spoke in a serious tone; “Listen, Joji! I intended to tell this to
you after you enter the middle school, but this is the time, I think. You
know you have no mother, but do you know how she died?
“When she came to this
house and became pregnant, everybody rejoiced, expecting the first child,
and we held Obi-Iwai or a celebration of pregnancy, even
inviting her obstetric doctor. A couple of weeks later, however, the doctor
called the six of us, your parents and grandparents from two households and
said, ‘I feel very sorry to have to say this to you after your great
celebration, but the pregnant wife is suffering from an acute toxemia. So I
advise you to give up the fetus this time, or I cannot assure of her life.’
“Everybody was shocked
into a long time of silence until your grandma from your mom’s side
whispered, ‘please save my daughter,’ and then all the others nodded. At
that moment, your mom tossed her head decidedly and spoke out, ‘Doctor,
please let my baby come out to this world. I don’t care about my life,
because I was brought up in a Buddhist household, imbued with the idea that
we humans are born in this world to hear the true Dharma, and I attended
Sunday School and Buddhist Youth Association, encountering the Shoshinge
and Tannisho, I am now treading the path to Pure Land in this world,
so I have no apprehension about the future. But if my child in my womb were
sent from the darkness to darkness,he will never meet Buddhism. Please let
this precious human life come into this world to see the light of Amida.
This wish is just what I was born for, Doctor.’
“Bursting into tears, her mother cried,
‘I was wrong. I just wanted to save my own daughter, but she is right.
Please do as she asks.’ All the others simply nodded their heads. ‘As you
all say so, I will do my best to save both lives as far as I can,’ the
doctor said, but when you were born, your mom left this world at the age of
twenty-two.
“Joji, now you know how
you were born and what you were born for, don’t you?”
.....
After this revelation,
Joji was never absent from Sunday School; moreover he took every opportunity
to hear Buddhist teachings and finally became a devout Nembutsu person.
On the other hand, as a
student, Joji decided to become a doctor who can save such afflicted women
as his mother and he finally became the head doctor of an obstetric
hospital.
When Rev. Kawamura met
him some time ago, she found all his family members, including his son and
his wife, were leading very devoted lives as Nembutsu persons.
Now you see how Joji’s
mother’s wish has come true; how one’s own Shinjin does influence
other persons into Shinjin. “Jishin Kyouninnshin” or realizing
shinjin oneself and guiding others to shinjin must certainly be
the ultimate value of human life. In our daily life, that orientation will
be implemented as follows:
Three Principles of
Shin Buddhist Life
1. Worshipping Amida of
infinite light and life,we shall devoutly
entrust ourselves to Him.
2. Awakened deeply to the
truth of His Primal Vow, we shall endeavor to
hear Dharma throughout life.
3. In gratitude for his
salvation and reciting His Name, we shall propagate
the true Dharma in the world.
