Today's morning ritual started with my first lesson about 'The Summary of Faith and Practice'. The Summary is an essential text of the Amida Order. It was raining all day except during this lesson. The sun started to shine through the clouds the minute my lesson started... I wonder if there were some devas listening to the lesson too.
The Summary of Faith and Practice is a beautiful text. The first time I read it the tears welled up in my eyes, especially the sentence “realise that you are a totally foolish being who understands nothing, but who can with complete trust recite Namo Amida Bu” had a strong impact on me.
The Summary is based on 'the One Page Testament' of Honen Shonin, (the 'Ichimai Kishomon') which he dictated on the last day of his life, a short and simple, powerful text in which Honen made an essential selection of the essence of his Buddhist message: Practise Nembutsu. (Dogen, later, also made an essential selection like Honen did, only Dogen choose zazen). We spent more than one hour talking about the title and first sentence of the Summary of Faith and Practice. There is enough material left for a few inspiring breakfasts!
I am afraid that it will take a few weeks before we will reach the last part of the Summary because we shall be travelling again soon. In a couple of days we will travel to Belgium and Holland and so we shall again be spending a lot of hours in the car. As preparation for our travels I cleaned the inside of the car today. While I was doing that David was repairing one of our kitchen cabinets. The mice had eaten two holes in it during our last period away from home. That was the time when they ate all the labels from the tins.
We caught our first mouse today! I found a little mouse in our metal 'mouse catcher'. David took the little creature outside and released him somewhere at the other side of the field. I hope he will not find his way back to soon.
Picture of Ichimai Kishomon
source: Jodo Shu research institute
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