I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of the spring 2019! I was talking to people after Sunday service, and the topic of conversation was Karma. I recall a Dharma message by Dr. Taitetsu Unno, in which he told a story of an encounter with the famous Zen master, Dr. D.T. Suzuki. When Dr. Unno was a 21 year old at the University California, Berkeley, he had the opportunity to hear the famous Zen teacher D. T. Suzuki give a talk. Afterward Dr. Suzuki invited anyone who wished to ask questions to join him in another room for a discussion. After some hesitation, Dr. Unno asked, “What is Karma?” Suzuki roshi was 80 at the time, looked at him and said, “The elbow does not bend outward…This is what karma is explaining.” He and other students all said thank you…but had no idea what he was talking about. At first Rev. Unno remembered that he had little satisfaction with this very brief answer. However, the more thought he gave it, the more its mean-ing became clear to him.

After Unno sensei graduated from the UC Berkeley, he moved to Japan to study Buddhism, partly because his father was a Shin Buddhist minister who encouraged him to explore Shin Buddhism, but also in some way to find an answer to this riddle of the elbow. Then he began thinking about it as a meta-phor for ‘karmic limitation’. “We all have karmic limitations. You cannot force something natural to be otherwise.” We have freedom to move, yes, but only in certain ways – the elbow bends, but only in one direction. It is a koan, a Zen question, dealing with freedom and limitation. While we generally define freedom as being able to do whatever we want, in Zen that is not real freedom. Real freedom means living within the limitations on our experience of freedom, such as living and dying.

After talking on the subject with different teachers and scholars, reading different works, he realized that the Shin Buddhist path is also dealing with the question of limitations and freedom. Each tradition has its own language for this. In the Shin tradition we speak of our karmic limitations referring to ordinary beings as, “foolish beings”- bombu in Japanese. Understanding that I am a foolish being, which is knowing that the elbow only bends one way, opens the door to the freedom to express my true self, with all my limitations. This is how our freedom as a human being is to be realized. Within that framework, we have the freedom of the elbow that bends inward. “The elbow does not bend outward’ is also the answer to the Nembutsu,” he said. “Only when we appreciate the fact that we have limitations can we be free. It is in the knowledge that in and through our limitations we are able to find true happiness.”
Namo Amida Butsu, Tatsuya Aoki

Just Right

You, as you are, you are just right

Your face, body, name, surname,

For you, they are just right.

Whether poor or rich

Your parents, your children

your daughter-in law, your grandchildren

They are, all for you, just right.

Happiness, unhappiness, joy and even sorrow

For you, they are just right.

The life that you have tread, walked,

is neither good nor bad For you, it is just right

. Whether you go to hell or to the Pure Land

Wherever you go is just right

. Nothing to boast about, nothing to feel bad about,

Nothing above, nothing below.

Even the day and month that you die,

Even they are just right.

Life in which you walk together with Amida

There’s no way that it can’t be just right

. When you receive your life as just right

Then a deep and profound faith begins to open up.

Just Right

(Goromatsu Mayekawa, translated by Rev. Taitetsu Unno)