The Maida Center retreats are usually held at one of the student dormitories on the University of California Berkeley campus. Lodging at the dormitory is very affordable although it means sharing a bathroom and being among much younger people (who are taking summer courses in computer, English as a second language, and such). The retreat lectures start on Friday evening and continue through Sunday morning, but there are plenty of break times for refreshments and chatting with other attendees. Saturday evening entertainment is usually a live jazz performance by attendees and Sunday lunch is a barbecue party at the Haneda's home. Besides listening to Dr. Haneda's lectures, the retreat is also an opportunity to meet some wonderful people in a wide age range (20s to 80s) from various temples on the West Coast and from Chicago. Not surprisingly, many of them are earnest seekers who recently suffered a personal setback such as the loss of a spouse or parent, or in the case of one youngish man, a debilitating stroke.
The theme for the 2002 Maida Center retreat was, "The Parable of the Two Rivers and the White Path," a story frequently heard at Jodo Shinshu temples about a traveler walking down a narrow path between a river of raging fire and a river of surging water. For this retreat, Dr. Haneda presented the parable in detail with commentaries by Shinran Shonin and Shuichi Maida. His aim was for us to see the parable as a description of the spiritual journey that transcends both the secular and the religious worlds, the journey experienced by Shakyamuni Buddha and the great masters throughout Buddhist history.
What does it mean to transcend the secular world and then transcend the religious world? In the life of Shakyamuni, although he literally left his palace home and renounced the world, it was not simply this act of renunciation, but his attitude of renunciation which was essential and which signified the beginning of his spiritual journey. Similarly, the traveler in the Whit Path parable is being chased by bandits and beasts in the same way that Shakyamuni is running from his own fear of old age, sickness and death. This is what Shakyamuni called "samsara" (transmigration) to describe the vicious circles that make us feel trapped in our lives. We run from our frustrations and disappointments, and chase after some glittering goal only to find more frustration and disappointment, like a hamster on a running wheel. To get out of the cycle, one has to find the straight line, the path that takes us to true fulfillment.
However, the path that we perceive as the religious way leading us out of the traps of secular life can easily take us to a spiritual dead-end. This is the phase where we characterize the troubles of the secular world as external to the self, which we consider good and worthy, and just a "few improvements" away from the ideal state of purity. Unfortunately, this is where many people identify themselves as "religious," whether the label be Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or Humanist etc. For six years, Shakyamuni struggled in this phase, studying under the leading gurus of his day and performing ethical and ascetic practices in order to purify himself.
Then, like the traveler in the parable, Shakyamuni came to the crisis of the "Three Certain Deaths." Going back to the secular world would surely mean dying in fear and regret. He couldn’t continue his ascetic practices which were literally killing his body while not bringing an iota of mental peace. To go on by himself meant facing the most destructive monsters of all – the violent flames of anger and rabid waves of lust in his own heart. But as the parable points out, only in forging ahead to confront the ugliness of our own self does the true path of transcendence appear. Of course, the path is extremely narrow (the Chinese text reads "four or five sun" which comes out to 4.8 to 6 inches), and the flames and waves alternately encroach upon it.
The traveler then hears a voice from behind exhorting him to go forward. To the parable's author, Shan-tao of the T'ang dynasty in China, the voice from behind is Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha. But in general, the voice for Shakyamuni and for all of us represents the actual teachers who inspire us by their example, whether we encountered them in person or through texts. Dr. Haneda stressed the importance of this "external" voice which penetrates our hard shell of ego. Only after hearing the teachings do we begin to notice the "internal" voice. In the parable, this is the voice of Amida calling from ahead of us, but Dr. Haneda says it actually comes from deep within us. This voice says, "Come immediately!," which Dr. Haneda interprets as, "Come just as you are, not as you imagine you should be."
As the traveler goes forth, the beasts and bandits try to talk him into turning back, "That way won’t work – you've got to return to us. We only want to help you." Dr. Haneda said that those are the voices of popular "-isms," i.e., religions based on ego-enhancement. In fact, in the illustration of the parable in our handout materials, one of the three priestly-looking men calling to the traveler is dressed as a Buddhist monk. To walk the white path seems at first like a lonely endeavor, but with the two voices, the external teacher and the internal aspiration, the traveler eventually reaches the land where all who surround him are friends.
The paradox in the spiritual journey is that it is only after we give up trying to change our inconsistent, foolish nature into something pure and good that the path can take over and slowly but surely transform our lives. Although Shinran confesses to being thoroughly evil, acting continuously out of greed and anger, he feels joyfully relieved that those blind passions no longer have a hold on him. Dr. Haneda likened this to a person caught up in fear of the blurry ghosts in the darkened sky, then when the sun begins to peek through, he sees that the ghostly figures were only clouds. What happens on the path is a fundamental change in our outlook, even if our outward behavior is far from perfect. A poor person complaining about not having money only makes himself and others miserable, but a person who accepts his poverty actually goes on to find a richness in life beyond the mere accumulation of money. It is at this point of totally giving up on the idealized self that birth in the Pure Land occurs.
In my presentation, I discussed how Shan-tao’s parable was part of his commentary on the Contemplation Sutra. I focused on Rev. Gyoko Saito’s article "San Gan Tennyu" (Three Vow-Phases), which amplified the white path parable through the story of Helen Keller. Helen had to get out of her isolated animal-like state (secular world), but her life would be a living death if she became only the well-behaved doll her parents wanted (religious world). Only through the courageous efforts of her sign-language teacher, Miss Sullivan, was her innermost aspiration awakened, and Helen Keller was born into the rich, fulfilling life that inspired people throughout the world. Rev. Saito’s article shows how crucial the teacher (the historical tradition, the teachings passed on to us through words) is to the spiritual journey. And for those of us at the Maida Center summer retreat, how fortunate we were to encounter that precious transmission.