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Shifu Nagaboshi Tomio
The recognition that we experience sufferings of many kinds and levels was the first thing that Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of after his Enlightenment and his teaching was orientated to help us both understand and overcome such sufferings completely.
The Buddha presented a view of life in terms of exclusively personal experiences. He had no recourse to doctrines or states of mind which could not be experienced.
It is within our understanding and approach to our experiences that we create the inner structures and habits that give rise to and perpetuate our sufferings. It is we who create them, we who perpetuate them and we who inherit them.
The first step - the mainspring of all Buddhist training - is to engage in some method or system which enables us to truly see just what and where we are at the present time. From this we can see what we need to do to improve. The most effective way to discover more about our nature is to watch it in action and this is what happens when we practise meditation.
When we practise meditation we allow ourselves to become aware of our inner activities and of the forms and impulses they take within us. If we watch for long enough we will begin to recognise patterns and habits within our thoughts, which orientate us towards certain goals or states. These may not be at all reasonable or even sensible and many of them we will not at first understand at all; we will just experience them.
Sometimes what we discover when we allow ourselves to look more calmly will frighten us, for we will realise that there are powerful and consuming forces moving within us. Sometimes they seem to take us over completely and it may seem very difficult to ever break free of their grasp.
Eventually we may begin to realise that it is our idea of ourselves which is the root of all our problems. The Buddha taught that if we can approach the central idea of 'I' in those experiences and firstly examine that, rather than the details of our problems, we can begin to understand the human situation in its totality. In the course of this we will solve all of our individual problems.
Our practice of meditation helps us to understand more correctly the implications and nature of our experiences and to do this is the foundation of all Buddhist meditation.
Extracted
from the chapter "Solitariness and Suffering", in "Some
Features, Attitudes and Practices in the Shingon-Shu
Kongoraidenha"
©Shifu Nagaboshi Tomio, 1977.