Friday, November 21, 2008

A great man Kūkai who wrote a “moving” letter



Kūkai was called 眞魚 (mao) during his childhood. It means “true fish”. Kūkai had descended from the World of Gods of planet Venus. At the time of his descent, I sense that the 龍宮神界 (the World of the Sea God’s Palace) was intervening as an Ubusuna-kami (regional god) to guide his soul into this realm of reality. And that is why he was named Mao in his childhood. When your soul is blessed and protected by the World of the Sea God’s Palace, it is said that you will have great success in this World of Reality. The spiritual source of wealth and abundance in this World of Reality derives from the ocean. Therefore, my first impression of Kūkai was “the vastness of the ocean.” Ku of Kūkai (空海) means “sky”, so it could also be the sea of clouds in the sky. This interpretation would be spiritually correct.

As I was thinking about this, a vision came into my mind. At the temple in the back of Mt Kōya, there is a stone monument in the back garden. The stone has an imprint of Kūkai’s own handwriting. It has just one letter 空 (kū) which means sky, air, empty or nothing. This handwriting is very unique. It is slanted and it looks like a steam that is disappearing into the open air. The bottom half of the letter looks like it dissipates. The letter is alive. Kūkai’s handwriting is usually a block style in solid square letters. So this was very unusual and gave me a strong impression. When he was born, the God Spirits of the Ccean was interfering with him, but as he became an adult he was more connected to the sun, Amaterasu-ohomikami, and the mountains on earth, Kunitokotachi-no-Ookami. He was as free as the vast sea of clouds.

Eventually, everyone of us will dissipate like the clouds in the sky. We are now standing in between the earth and the sky. If we are going to evaporate one day anyways, we might as well really try to “live” this precious moment.

Ikashite-itadaite Arigato-gozaimasu

Thank you for letting us live

No comments: