May 2007 Zushi Retreat
(Commemorating Gautama Buddha's Birth)

Compassion, Friendship and their Practice
A Talk by Professor Yokoyama

"This is my second time to address you here at the Zushi Centre, I have also had the pleasure to talk at the Swami Vivekananda public celebration in Tokyo. My topic today is Compassion and Friendship and their practice, which would seem like a difficult subject. I have studied some Sanskrit and hearing such familiar words as Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti in the earlier Vedic prayers reminded me of the spiritual depth of that language."

Professor Yokoyama went on to say that human beings have within them and before them two noble paths. One is the path of wisdom to understand who and what we are. The other is compassion, which teaches us how to live and follow the Buddha. He advised that we try, as much as possible, to live as a Bodhisattva, meaning that we practice wisdom and compassion.

The professor emphasized that the Buddha found real truth, real wisdom and real compassion and achieved the purest mind. Not only should one worship Shakyamuni (another name for Gautama Buddha) but try to attain that purity of mind in closeness to him. The professor noted that on his way to Zushi that morning he noticed a cloudless, beautiful sky and remembered that the beautiful sky was not really out there but inside him. "Everything we see is inside ourselves," he said.

"The practice of compassion must be understood too," he said. "What is compassion? It is the wish that every sentient being and every living thing be happy; be they scared ones or strong ones; long ones or short ones; great ones, medium ones or very small ones; visible ones or invisible ones; ones who live very far away or ones who live near; ones who are already born and ones yet to be born; every living thing. Compassion is the wish that every living thing be happy."

The professor said there are four truths to live by; one is action as an offering, two is loving others, three is performing actions for the sake of others, and four is combining all these activities as one.  He noted that we are wonderfully blessed with our amazing senses. It is great that we have the ability to see things, to hear things and to touch things. We should live aware of the true purpose and utility of our senses in the pursuit of enlightenment.

The professor then recounted that he had recently heard from another priest that he had come to the determination that the consummate deed or activity of human life is in praying for others. This priest's wife had been suffering from an ailment and he prayed for the alleviation of her pain before Buddha, before Shinto deities, and before Christ, wholeheartedly. He said that in doing so he had come to realize that the ultimate activity of a man is in praying for others.

He then gave three categories of peoples' feelings for others. One is people we dislike, another is people we love or have attachments to or are intimate with, and the third category are those that we are indifferent toﾐthose we neither love nor hate. But in practicing true compassion, we can develop the same quality of warmth towards them all without discrimination. Towards this purpose we must erase this self, this ego.

Finally, in discussing the nature of human beings he said that if one is afraid of something one should identify it and say to oneself a hundred times, 'I am afraid of so and so.' In doing so that fear will go away. If you should hate someone, tell yourself, 'I hate so and so' a hundred times and this hate will dissolve. "If you change yourself, the world will change," he concluded. ･