I’ve been listening to the news from America and I watched a man being interviewed and he was talking about the scene which, I am sure, many of you have seen a film-clip of, where a black man is lying on the ground with his hands handcuffed behind his back, and a police-officer kneels on his neck and kills him. And as he does this, there’s other police-officers standing around, whose job is to protect that man on the ground; and they just stand there and watch.

Now, in a previous podcast I talked about the Buddhist concept of rūpa. Rūpa is whatever image or presentation has some power over your mind. Now, as the man describes the scene, tears come to his eyes. You can hear the catch in his voice, the emotion is welling up. This is the response to rūpa: the scene he is describing, is the rūpa and the reaction he is having, in Buddhism is called vedanāVedanā is the response to rūpa. It’s the second of what we call the skandhas. First skandhas is rūpa, the second skandha is vedanā. Vedanā comes from perceiving rūpa.

I got a kind of double- rūpa while I’m watching because, on the one hand, as the man describes the scene, the scene comes to my mind and it brings a vedanā reaction in me, too. But also, the man describing it is a rūpa for me. So, I’m kind of doubly moved and hit from two different directions; and the feelings come up in me.

Now, the word veda, which is part of vedanā, means knowledge. So, the reaction the man is having is a knowledge of a certain sort. In fact, the man says, and this is very moving, the man says: “I have seen too many funerals,” he says. What he means is, when he sees the scene, he is not just reacting to one man being killed, he is reacting to years and years and years of cruelty and oppression. All the things he himself has suffered and that he has seen other people suffer. He has seen too many black men die unnecessarily. In the background of the vedanā reaction is a whole history of things.

You might think that only the present moment is real, but when you reflect on this example, it’s not true. The past is real, too; and it’s the past that shapes how we see and react to the present. Past – present – and future are all important realities that shape our lives.

You might also think that some of the purpose of Buddhist practice is to get beyond having vedanā. So, no matter what comes up, whether you see this or you see that or you see the other, you still remain “cool, calm and collected”. But I think, if you reflect on an example of this kind, if you don’t have a reaction to something like this, something is wrong! It’s not that you should wipe out all reactions, it’s not that you should be able to watch a child being abused and not feel anything - that is not the objective of Buddhist practice – certainly not from a Pureland Buddhist point of view. 

From a Pureland Buddhist point of view, what should happen is that we reflect upon this and the vedanā should deepen. The knowledge should deepen. We should see the folly of the human condition. We should see how greed, hate and delusion pervade the whole human condition. It’s in the other person, it’s in the scene, it’s in ourselves, it’s deep in us; and when we see that deeply and when we see the folly of it, then we call out for help, we call to Buddha, “We need some of your wisdom to rectify this world,” and that’s Namo Amida Bu. That’s I call out to the Buddha – Namo Amida Bu.

Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much

Dharmavidya
David

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