Sailing west

Two important meetings. One yesterday and one just this morning.
Made me realize, that during the singing of the Nembutsu another choir of little animals around the house were joining us in our singing, there little beings taken up in the same song of life and light; everything sings Nembutsu.

Yesterday a squirrel looked at me.
Twitched his beautiful tail a few times, always somewhat ambiguous this twitching tails of my friends the squirrels: contempt, happiness, annoyance or what?
He kept looking at me, waiting, then he turned upside down and hanging from a thin branch, he went on with what he was doing. Eating nuts out of the container we hang out there for the birds. “Namo Amida Bu mate,” I said to him. He looked me in the eye again, but when I took one step nearer, he fled away in the trees. The nuts, first moving by his sudden flight, were hanging still now in the autumn air.
It was in the absence of my active friend, so present only moments before, that the invitation opened for squirrels and birds alike, to feed to their hearts delight. And I only could mumble in this space, please come and eat our little friends, the pleasure is all ours.
Namo Amida Bu.


This morning’s meeting was with Timmy. He is the robin that is coming from nowhere after a while and sits every time on the same branch, by the porch, looking at me. He is telling me the story of the day. He is a small bird, but small birds can have great stories. It is just that his small feather-body with the red breast he is so proud of, cannot contain the many words we are using to tell the great stories. So he needs not much time to tell me about the whole of life he is part of, this morning. I say, ‘Hi Timmy,’ then he invariably hips two -, or when he is in a exhilarating mood, three times on his branch, looks at me with his little black eyes, and is off to robin business. Namo Amida Bu, I call after him, he did not look back, he never does, but with his little voice he said: ‘Tsjilp.’ That means in Robin language: Namo Amida Bu. And in the widening space between us when he flew away, my heart sang a little bird song:
Namo Amida Bu, everything is Nembutsu.

Some time ago I set off on a journey, elsewhere called Sailing West that is in the direction of the Pureland where Amida resides. This direction or vector one can call the teleological vector. Sometimes visible, sometimes not, but unmistakable there always, as an eternal path cutting through the erratic movements of the mind. Telos can be translated as the destination or goal of the journey and one can read the logos as the logistics of the path leading to it. This vector points to ‘the other shore’ it is the vector of one’s aspiration to accord with the good, the true and the beauty, which exceeding our present state, can heal us and teach us to cope with our desires that orisinating from our innate lack of being, the nagging feeling of an absence. Or the realm of ‘in between,’ the bardo, the sometimes unbearable dualism between this world and the Pureland.

When I first visited the community of Amida Trust in France I met people who uttered every moment without any understandable pattern some Japanese sounding syllables:
Namo Amida Bu. When they where offered a biscuit, opened a door, greeted each other Namo Amida Bu. Although I knew vaguely that there was a sect in Japan in which they thought that enlightenment was to be attained only by calling the name of the Buddha, I could not immediately see the connection thanks to my expectations
Because it was not immediately clear from the book New Buddhism, what kind of practice this community had and I presumed a mixture between Zen and Vipassana meditation, because that were the approaches I had some experience with. I got shock on shock, praying before the meal, devotion, much bowing and singing and the practice of which I secretly hoped they were not doing: the walking meditation with Namo Amida Bu. But they did. Preposterous, strange. I sat before in retreats, hours and days, my legs falling off, my back a piece of wood, before I was granted a snippet of peace in my mind. Easy doing this practice, but does it work?
Could not prevent me to ask what does Namo Amida Bu meant. Asked it David (called him David those days, my tongue came in a knot with his Buddhist name) on a walk the second day, he said: ‘It’s just a slogan.’
Later a very emotional seminar with Sr Modgala, theme: What does Namo Amida Bu mean. Read a poem about it in the poetry section (Not going 1).

And now three years later, a sleepless night again, because I was afraid of having the black nightmares back, that left me for sometime, but suddenly out of the blue returned to me as a malignant sadness that is sleeping in me like a volcano.
(See poetry section. Not going 2)

So this is the simple question to talk about in a while, what does Namo Amida Bu mean?
(If you where to be asked to give a spontaneous and personal answer.)
This is my answer to begin with. I wrote it this night, without references to one of the many books I had beside my bed or the web, just as it came. Can do not much more as a very Bompu for the moment.
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