The way of praying in the cosmic current

Hakuin, one of the greatest Japanese Zen masters, met an old lady who belonged to the devotional school.  There’s a Buddha in the Western Heaven and if you pray to him regularly you will be born in the Western Heaven and from there it will be very easy to attain nirvana by the grace of this great Buddha. Hakuin was walking along and he passed this old lady and he said, “Well, Grannie, off to the Western Paradise, are you? The Buddha is there waiting for you, isn’t he, I suppose?”  And she went, [shaking head in negation]. He said, “What? Buddha’s not in his Western Paradise? Where is he then?” She went on, [pointing to her heart?]. He turned round and he bowed. He said, “You’re a real Pure-Lander – the Buddha’s Pure Land in the West – you’re a real denizen, you’re a real inhabitant of the Pure Land”.

In the Yoga prayers to God to change this or do that are not encouraged at all. If people practise yoga seriously they are not encouraged to do this. One idealistic schoolmaster had been working very hard in a small village school and he wanted a bigger one because more children were coming to the school and he asked the (spiritual) teacher, “Can I pray to God to have a bigger school so that I could take in all these?” and the teacher said, [‘No’]. “Isn’t there some way?” The teacher said, “There is a way of praying to God for these things but it’s rather difficult”. “Tell me what it is? How do I pray to God for this bigger school?” The teacher said, “When praying, you mustn’t be conscious of the prayer, and you’ve got to not be aware of it and, furthermore, it’s got to be uttered by a mouth through which you have never spoken ill of anybody”.

He said, “Well, how can I pray, if I’m not conscious of it? Anyway, I’m afraid, in my life, I’ve said some…”  So he went back and although he didn’t pray for this [larger school], he prayed to God, but not for anything [specific]. Then, quite suddenly, the wife of the Minister was held up and had to stop in the village for a little bit.  She saw the school and asked [about it] and thought, ‘Oh, well, he’s attracting [people to the school].’ She heard how hard he worked and [that he was] attracting people and some of the village people said, “What a wonderful …”  So she went back and she saw her husband and she said, “You know…” and, sure enough, then the school was made much larger.  Then the man went to his teacher. He said, “Well, I didn’t pray for it, I couldn’t do the prayer.” The teacher said, “Yes, you did. You were unconscious of the prayer. The prayer was being made by the parents of the children and it was being made by mouths through which you had never sinned, because it was made by their mouths, and you have never sinned through their mouths.”

Well, this is a story – there’s a hint of the yogic prayer. It’s a prayer to God, in a way, but it isn’t a prayer, and, to that extent, it’s more like the Zen. They treat these things sometimes [in this way].  These electric lightbulbs – this is a yogic concept, too, among the modern teachers – there’s electricity. If you think the bulb is giving the light, it’s true in a way, but it’s not true. In the same way, through inspiration, through meditation, the Zen meditation and inspiration, although the man seems to be giving out these creative masterpieces or these strokes of inspiration in daily life, it’s not the man, it’s this current acting through the man.

They lay a lot of importance on the sitting still. Zen is, or is said to be, and it’s possibly true, an approximation to the Chinese Chan which is an approximation to the Sanskrit Dhyana. Dhyana is one of the technical words of Yoga and it means meditation. It means the state in which the thoughts, the successive thoughts, as Patanjali says, ‘are similar’. There’s a stream of thought and it’s all similar. The thoughts are all the same. So, it’s a state of one-pointedness.

Now, they lay quite a lot of stress on the physical help in producing this. They recommend learning – for people who are under 30, or for children, especially – to learn to sit on the ground and sit in a balanced position. It can be acquired by most people, if they want to acquire it, unless they’ve got a physical defect. It has, undoubtedly, an effect. That posture has an effect on the mind.  As a matter of fact, there’s a fairly big, and very successful, hospital, for mentally disturbed patients in Tokyo.  I’ve been there and talked to the director and there’s two things he told me that he relies on. They cultivate roses and all the patients have to take part in the cultivation of the roses in the garden. They are shown what to do. The other thing is, to practise sitting. He said, “A lot of them, once they’ve got past the discomfort of the first week or so, like it.” He said, “I don’t ask them to meditate, but they like sitting there, in this posture, and it calms the mind. They, themselves, find, that it calms the mind.” Then he said to me, “And, you know, it’s very useful for the nurses, they know just where the patients are and they are being no trouble at all and that’s good for the hospital.” That’s the second point about the Zen. Then they say to try to find – for lay people – to try to find a significance in life.

One of the richest men in Japan, Konosuke Masushita, built up Masushita Electric and he’s written several little books. He left school at 13, so, he can actually think, and they’re full of original thoughts. One of the things he said to his staff – I read the presidential speeches by the presidents of the biggest companies – one of the things he said one year, was, “You’re getting quite a big bonus at the end of this year. You all think – and a lot of you are a little bit in debt, you’re overdrawn, you’ve got this and this – you think that this bonus is going to make you happy. But it will make you happy just for three or four weeks. And then you’ll extend your aspirations and expectations to include this bonus. So, you’ll still be just as short of money as you are now, and it won’t make you happy. What will make you happy is working hard, in our factories, to make cheap, reliable, well-designed, electrical goods, for the Japanese housewife. That’s what will make you happy.”

© Trevor Leggett

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Yoga, Zen and Peace

Part 2: Ethics and the Cosmic Self

Part 3: Desires beyond our needs are ghosts

Part 4: Gifts, sacrifice and austerity

Part 5: The merchant’s way

Part 6: The job of the King

Part 7: Seeking for realisation in Yoga and Zen

Part 8: The way of praying the cosmic current

Part 9: Melting Ice

Part 10: No distinction