was waiting. Just then, the acolyte, who was cleaning, opened the door of the shrine where Shinran’s image was placed. There, in the hand of the image, was the single flower which the beggar had given the mysterious cleric the night before!

 

Thus, while the rector and his self-righteous congregation were celebrating the feast of Thanksgiving and Gratitude, Shinran, who was the very object of their thanksgiving, was off celebrating with a beggar beneath a bridge.

 

It is not enough to just sit around saying how grateful we are! we must, as Rennyo has said, express our gratitude in our every action, in our every deed.

A Sanskrit poet said, a thousand years ago:

They furnish shade to others

while standing in the sun themselves;

The fruit they bear is for other’s sake;

Thus, good men are like trees.

 

We should be trying to make trees of ourselves, giving our shade and our fruit freely to others, but we are too often like the cactus plant, covering ourselves so much with needles that no one can approach us with safety, not even our children or our parents. We stand hoarding all the water that comes near us, so that all around us in our lives is a vast desert, barren sand.

 

Like the cactus, we can stand in a barren life, alone, useless, menacing; or, we can stand great and strong, stretching out and up, useful, fruitful, like a tree.

 

This is the choice which Buddhism offers mankind. This is the message which Shinran hands down to us, a message from the times of Shakyamuni Buddha.

 

Whenever we talk about Buddhism, we have a tendency to think of its profound teachings, its long lists of principles, like the Noble Eight fold Path, the ten Paramitas, the fifty-odd stages of the path, the hundred and eight passions and virtues, the thousands names of the Buddhas...

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