Prayer for Love and Mercy

 Last time I thought about immigration, and I think it can be categorized into a few patterns. First, there are those who flee for their lives after being persecuted in their home country. These are so-called refugees. Then there are those who reach poverty in their home country and head for a new land. Then there are those who emigrate to wealthier countries, not necessarily because they're struggling, but in search of a better standard of living. There are also those who venture out into the world because their home country isn't enough to allow them to maximize their abilities. Finally, there are those who leave their current homeland simply because they're attracted to new, unknown worlds. I guess you could call it the adventurous type. In reality, it's likely that several of these patterns are mixed together. But life forms migrate first and foremost, searching for their own survival. Then they migrate in order to prosper even more than they are now. And finally, l...

 With the current debate about immigration brewing in America, Japan, and around the world, I couldn't help but think about it. This is a bit of a digression from the religious path I was planning to discuss. (It's hard to go from Christianity to Islam.) What exactly is an immigrant? Aren't we immigrants? Where did we come from? From God. That aside, analysis of mitochondrial DNA suggests that modern humans originated from a single African woman. Mitochondria are inherited only maternal-line, and can be traced back to a single woman. She was called Eve, and she apparently lived in East Africa. In other words, Homo sapiens' roots are in East Africa. From there, humanity spread throughout the world. In other words, everyone except Africans is an immigrant. After all, even those who shout anti-immigration have immigrant roots. So, what's the difference? "We came here earlier." That's it. In other words, they arrived relatively early. Whether someone is an...

 I was thinking about the resurrection of Christ in bed yesterday. What does it mean? Or rather, what does it mean for us? I'll leave the proper interpretation to the church and such, but this is my personal, subjective interpretation: when Christ was crucified, the crowds mocked him, saying things like, "Ask your God to help you" And when Christ died, he cried out to God several times (I think it was three times) "Has God forsaken me?" You'll find out exactly what happened if you open the Bible, but I can't open the scriptures right now because God has sealed them for me. I'm sure that's not the case for you, so I recommend you look them up for yourself, but this scene is quite heavy. I've repeatedly proclaimed my belief in Buddha and God here, but what if I were harmed by someone who doesn't believe in religion or who is hostile to religion, and I couldn't resist and my life was in danger? What would I do if they mocked me and said,...

 Are love and mercy the same? Last time, I thought that love is the desire to love someone so deeply that you feel their happiness as your own and their sadness as your own, and that it aims to unite you with others. But what about mercy? Japanese "慈(Ji)" in "mercy(慈悲)" refers to the desire and action of caring for others and wanting to bring them joy, while the "悲(Hi)" refers to the desire and action of wanting to relieve their sadness. In other words, the other person's joy is your joy, and the other person's sadness is your sadness. That's right. It aims to unite you with others. The love preached in Christianity and the mercy preached in Buddhism have the same goal. To unite us. I've always thought that words like God, Buddha, love, and mercy(compassion) are so troublesome. I wrote about this in an earlier post, but we are really going to keep denying each other, saying this is different or that is different, until we die. And we intend...

 Since last time, I've been thinking about the fact that the Japanese words "ai" (love) and "koi" (romantic love) are both expressed using the same word, "LOVE." What exactly is love?  To love means to love someone so much that you can't help it. If that person is of the opposite sex, it's simply love. But it can also be the same sex, a friend, parent, sibling, son, daughter, or any other human or non-human entity, even a thing or even God. At that moment, the other person's joy feels like your own joy, their sadness feels like your own sadness, your happiness becomes my happiness, and your unhappiness becomes my unhappiness. You and I are one. You are a part of me, and I am a part of you. You and I are inseparable. Bound as one by the bond of fate, forever one. The desire to be inseparable and one with oneself. The most obvious example of this is love, so perhaps in English, both love and romance are simply referred to as LOVE. In love, th...

 I've been serious about this in the last two posts, saying that I shouldn't be distracted by (romantic) love, but there's more to the story. I can't talk about love without writing this. The love I'm talking about here is the love preached in Christianity, But that's completely different from romantic love! You're right. I thought so too. I first wrote this blog in my native Japanese, and then translated it into English using AI (Google Translate). When I read the English translations of my previous posts, I found that both the Japanese words "恋" (koi, meaning romantic love) and "愛 (ai, meaning love)" are translated as "LOVE." Isn't there an English equivalent to the Japanese word "恋(romantic love)"? Are "恋(romantic love)" and "愛(love)" the same? Even in an English-Japanese dictionary, "love" has both meanings: love and romantic love. Even in Japanese, when you say "愛(love),...