Prayer for Love and Mercy

 Even so, I think I'm a fool. I feel like Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are wooing me all the time. "I will save you" is the same as saying  "I like you" "I love you". It's the same as Buddha wooing us sentient beings. In other words, Buddha is wooing me. Or rather, Buddha is wooing me (myself as a woman). I'm a man, but when Buddha is wooing me, it seems better to become a woman. After all, it makes more sense for the man to woo and the woman to be wooed. And every day, he spends thousands and thousands of words wooing me. Wherever I open the Buddhist scriptures, gentle words of love flow out. Where on earth are they coming from (of course from the Buddhist scriptures), even Hikaru Genji couldn't. The Buddha seems to really like to woo, and is a master at it, so in the end, I finally gave in and said,  "Do whatever you want."  "Yes, I understand. If you're happy with me, please do as you like. Take me and run away. Hell or pa...

 I think it's about time to return to the topic of my faith. As I read the Buddhist scriptures, I think I got to the point where I could only read  "I will save you."  The "I" could be a Buddha or a Bodhisattva, but in any case, it seems like he just wants to save me. Of course, the Buddhist scriptures were not written for me alone, but for everyone, so "I will save you" means "I will save all living beings," but since I read them alone, I personally read them as "I will save you." It doesn't matter whether that "I" is a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. Just knowing that there is someone who cares about me so much makes it worth being born into this world. The confession of love  "I will save you"  continues on and on. The Buddhist scriptures are already huge, so I haven't read them all, but every day, every day, around the clock, the confession of love  "I will save you"  continues. The confession of l...

As I was writing the real climax, I suddenly found myself on the side of the bad guys, and the plot turned into one in which the protagonist is saved by unconditional love. I didn't mean to be like that, but I ended up writing "following the guidance of love and mercy." "I wonder if there's something you're ashamed of." I think that's exactly right. After all, Iblis (the devil) lives in my heart too. Looking at it this way, I think I need Shinran's "Akunin Shoki-setsu" (theory of the evil person as the correct vessel). This theory is still controversial, but people who criticize it say it as if they are good people. If Christ said to them, "Let those who have never sinned cast stones," I guess they'd be the type to throw a stone at a woman. Oh, how scary, how scary. In this way, I ended up unintentionally proving to myself that I could only be saved by Shinran's "Akunin Shoki-setsu." But I wonder if this was ...

Well, the downfall of the arrogant has been repeated many times throughout history, but I think it is not the end, and there must be a great climax after that, so I will try to write about it. "The greatest attack to defeat evil is 'unconditional love'. This is what the devil is weakest at, and when you do this, he is really troubled, overwhelmed, and can no longer be the devil." I think I wrote this before. However, in history, when evil has been defeated, it is often by force such as violence, and it does not seem to have been defeated by "unconditional love". When defeating evil by force, you see the enemy as evil and kill the enemy. However, when defeating evil with "unconditional love", you do not kill the enemy, but turn the enemy into an ally and let the enemy live. This is the amazing thing about defeating evil with love. Since it is God who gave us life, he must have the ability to save all life. "Love your enemies." That's w...

I've said recently that the devil, that is, the great villain Iblis, has gone a bit too far, but actually I'm not that hopeless. Even if evil seems to flourish in a short-sighted way, it is only a temporary prosperity. If you look at history, there is no example of the arrogant  that has not been destroyed. This is true of arrogant empires and arrogant people in power. It is no exaggeration to say that history is the history of the downfall of the arrogant. And when those arrogant people are destroyed, the way they are destroyed is just... Iblis is truly a great villain. The way he was beaten and defeated, who temporarily flourished and was destroyed at the height of his arrogance, is just the way he is "a great villain". Iblis has played out his downfall many times on the stage of history in various patterns. And he will continue to show us his magnificent downfall. It seems that God likes to "bring low what is high." I believe that true evil is not someone...

 So what is a devil after all? I think in Islam it was Iblis. He was also one of God's creations, an angel, but he told God that he could turn humans against God, so God said, "Then go ahead and do it," and he entered people's hearts as a devil, I think that's the plot. In Christianity it's Satan, who was also a former angel. This one is a fallen angel. In other words, Iblis entered our hearts as a devil with God's approval. After all, there's no way an angel like him could defeat God. They're on completely different levels. It's not a contest from the start. Iblis must have known that very well. So Iblis "dared to take on the role of the villain."  He took on the role of the most disadvantageous, the most hated, and in the end, always brilliantly defeated by justice, that is, by love. Without him, God's glory would not be highlighted. But Iblis, the villain, has been trying a little too hard lately? It's true that he is a lit...

 Why do demons reside within us? Isn't it so that we can forgive others? When we realize the evil in our hearts, we know that we have no right to judge the sins of others. We are just as guilty because we have the devil in our hearts. How can we ignore that and judge others? "Do not judge others" It reminded me of a story from the Bible. When a woman was found guilty of adultery or something, and people demanded that she be stoned to death, Christ said, "Let anyone among you who is without sin cast a stone," and no one could cast a stone, so the woman was saved. There are no 100% evil people among us, and no 100% good people. There is a good part, or what is called Buddha nature in Buddhism, even among people who are considered evil, and the devil resides among people who are considered good. But where did this devil come from? In the end, it came from God. God is the creator of all things. God must have deliberately and for some reason sent the devil into our h...

 When I think about how much God ,or Buddha, loves us, feelings of gratitude naturally well up within me, and I feel like singing a song praising God ,or Buddha. So here is a hymn I improvised. However, since I'm not a professional singer, I would feel a little embarrassed to let people listen to it as it is, so I asked a Juilliard-trained violinist to play it for me. Guided by love and mercy

If the devil and God (Buddha) exist simultaneously in the hearts of people, I wondered what the devil and God (Buddha) are, and I think they are "selfishness" and "altruism." Everyone has selfishness, right? And at the same time, everyone has altruism. (It seems that altruism is unpopular these days because of the supremacy of money.) By the way, if humans only behave selfishly, they will take other people's things for their own benefit (theft and robbery), deceive others (fraud), and attack and try to eliminate anything that gets in the way of their benefit (violence, murder, war), and everyone except themselves will become enemies, and the world will become a hellish place with constant conflict. In other words, even if you gain benefits in the short term, if the whole society is in chaos, you will eventually be unable to protect your own interests and lose your own interests. So what if a human behaved altruistically? At first, it would seem like a loss for t...

 It's a contradiction to confess that I have a devil in my heart, but then say that there is a god (Buddha) in every person's heart. Yes. Humans are contradictory beings. The devil and god exist in the heart of each person at the same time. So there is no one who is 100% evil, and no one who is 100% good. No matter how good a person may seem, there is always a devil in their heart. And when that dark side is exposed and a scoop is made, any person is instantly made out to be the bad guy. Weekly magazines often expose scandals about celebrities, don't they? And they turn out to be hypocrites and really terrible people. That's the storyline most of the time, and we, the general public, feel better after watching it. But, if that happened to yourself, I don't think there is a single person in this world who could hold out. At least, I wouldn't last more than three minutes. If you hit it, there's always dust... That's just how humans are. The scariest people...