Bodhisattva

BODHISATTVA

For Kenji, religion was simple. It was love. It was the vow to help all beings – the bodhisattva vow. What more of love did Kenji learn when he lost the one he loved most? His sister Toshiko – who died when she was only twenty-four years old. 

In a poem written on the day she died, he describes the last hours of her life. Burning with fever, she asks him for snow, bids him fill two chipped ceramic bowls with snow. Brother and sister grew up with these bowls and now Toshiko will eat from them for the last time. In another poem, he brings her a pine branch and she presses it to her cheek, so deeply does she yearn for the woods.

A year later, he is still composing elegies. In one, he describes a journey by train. The train squeaks and he falls asleep. Toshiko burns with fever, thinking of birds and the woods. At the end of the journey, he wonders where she is. 

There are myriad Buddha worlds, but they cannot be seen by the unenlightened. Are they out there? In other galaxies? In the vastness of space? Are the spirits of the dead there? Is Toshiko there? 

This feeling that Toshiko is hidden somewhere beyond his reach is a theme in Kenji’s writing. Toshiko is both there and not there. This is the paradox of death: The deceased is both ever present and gone forever.

Kenji was devastated by the loss of Toshiko. But he was a devotee of the Lotus Sutra. He knew that he could not only love one person. He had to love all people, all living things, as he loved Toshiko.  For love is not merely emotion. Love is action. It is what one does. It is one’s work in the world. 

Kenji devoted his life to helping others. He offered himself up for every man, woman, and child. Every horse and pig and cow. Every crow. Every pine tree. Everyone. Everywhere. He would sacrifice himself for all beings. He would give up his own happiness for theirs.

He said it again and again. And he did not just say it. He lived it. He lived it with the humility of a saint, calling himself an asura. Did not Saint Francis call himself the greatest of sinners?

Perhaps Kenji was a bodhisattva, suffering in the world for the sake of all beings.