We are all provided with what I call the “mommy mind” which is in us as far back as our memory goes.
Remember your mother bore you in her womb. It was in her womb that you met with your body of flesh. In your childhood, your mother was the closest thing to you.
As a child, remember when you hurt yourself? While you are crying mommy hugs you, then looks at your knee. She assures you that everything is alright even though you are releasing a flood of tears. Next, mommy says to you let’s have some ice-cream. You forget about your skinned knee. Ice-cream sounds better!
Welcome to the mommy mind which over the first part of your adult years will be a significant part of your life.
The mommy mind, like your mother, is mainly concerned with nurturing your temporal body. Put another way, the mommy mind cares for your temporal body and also encourages its growth and development.
As you grow up and get older, the mommy mind sees to your physical comfort and may even spoil you. The mommy mind is always trying to keep you happy. Any stress or anxiety you feel within yourself calls up the mommy mind to take care of the problem in the way your mommy did when you were a child, for example, feeding you comfort food.
But what about the daddy mind?
This is a tough question to answer. I will have to go with my own memory at this point. My daddy was like a phenomenon of nature when he entered the front door after work. He was powerful and fearless (he used to be a professional boxer, even sparred with Jack Dempsey). When he looked at you, he was really scanning your brain to see if you were growing up, or just staying stuck as a little boy with a mommy mind. Later on in life as I grew to manhood my daddy mind finally kicked in. I knew that life could easily become brutal and that one day I would die. With this mind I learned to endure discomfort and physical pain. It is with the daddy mind that I discovered Buddhism and went against the stream to try and see what the Buddha saw under the Bodhi tree.
As I look around at this generation I see the mommy mind as the dominant mind which seems to be at war with the daddy mind. An understanding of how the two minds are coordinate has been all but ignored in favor of antagonism between the two minds. This is the real tragedy.
Still, the mommy mind has to eventually give way to the practicality of the daddy mind because children grow up, always getting closer to the unpleasant side of reality. And also, they begin to see life’s vicissitudes; that their bodies are fragile if not protected in the right way—and friends and family members die. But wrongly they use the mommy mind to cope with life forsaking the daddy mind. These are the same people who expect Buddhism to help them when their lives start to fall apart; wanting Buddhism to be their crutch when, truth be told, they don’t need a crutch. What they need is more daddy mind which looks into the future; which tries to avoid behavior that eventually turns out to be a disaster.
adasatala; lovely
nembutsu, Jodo Shu Buddhism,https://www.wikihow.com/Recite-the-Nembutsu, The ancient practice of Nembutsu involves mindfulness of Amida Buddha, and the recitation of the sacred name, Namu Amida Butsu, which means “I follow/return back to Amida Buddha.”, A pure land is the celestial realm or pure abode of a buddha or bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. The term "pure land" is particular to East Asian Buddhism (Chinese: 淨土; pinyin: Jìngtǔ) and related traditions; in Sanskrit the equivalent concept is called a "buddha-field" (Sanskrit buddhakṣetra). The various traditions that focus on pure lands have been given the nomenclature Pure Land Buddhism. Pure lands are also evident in the literature and traditions of Taoism and Bon.
http://bschawaii.org/shindharmanet/studies/understanding-nembutsu/.
like 'om namah shivaya'. the roots in hinduism, et al. nembutsu reminds me of my visit to monsefu, peru, and the curious similarities of the words.
Posted by: smith | July 31, 2018 at 01:27 PM
My dead father was a degenerate gambler and a terrorizing drunkard. But he was also quite quick witted and charming, which he passed on to me.
After his death, when I would dream of him, I would scold him and tell him about Buddhism. However, a few years later, after travelling to my mother-land to do meditation at my grandmother's grave and also at the site where I lost my leg in the war, I met him in a dream while staying there and he was quite happy and relieved.
As for my sick and old mother, this last year she's been doing so much better and is almost off of all of her meds. She does her nembutsu every day and is always very excited when I go on retreat, and always asks me about Buddhism and meditation.
Sometimes I spontaneously enter into a most vivid visualization during meditation where I am in her womb again as a fetus radiating loving kindness in form of golden rays of light.
Transferring merit, ha! Like it was ever ours to keep. And why keep something that's of infinite nature? It will only get spolied and go to waste.
Posted by: Adasatala | July 30, 2018 at 06:10 PM