Quest haiku

 seeking dazzling light

you press on hungry footsteps

a cop's blinding torch

Experience of Yoshiko Robinson, November 2020

Photo by Brendan Harris
BrendanHarris.net

As you know, on May 3, 1951, Toda-Sensei was inaugurated as second Soka Gakkai president. In those days, Soka Gakkai had around 3,00 members. Toda-Sensei made a great determination - to convert 750,000 households before his passing. With his determination and the youthful efforts of Ikeda-Sensei, Soka humanism spread into every corner of Japan. It even reached the most tiny village in the most isolated corner and my dear father joined around 1956.

My father introduced the rest of our family. I was three years old.

You would like my dad. He was a rebel and a creative type. He argued with the leaders. He really liked to drink. He sang and told us folk-tales. He also argued with the local priests. My dad told me, “Yo-chan, have unlimited dreams. The bigger dreams, the better. Do not let your future be decided by this island country’s mentality.”

I read Ikeda Sensei’s encouragement for youth to go abroad and work for kosen-rufu.

My mom said, “I trust you, Yo-chan.”

And so, in 1974, aged twenty-one, I moved to Canada alone. I had two vows. First I wanted to help spread Nichiren Buddhism and so contribute to Canadian society. Second, I was determined to someday build a harmonious family.

Actually, I was quite naive. I had no idea what I was getting into.

Two years later my heart broke. My dear father passed away. Too young. Too early. He never came to Canada. He never saw the family I built.

I decided to start my harmonious family with Keith. It was not easy. He was sick, weak, and could not keep a job. But he loved Ikeda-Sensei and our movement and we shared a mission.

Keith also was naive. We were not prepared for a family or life or what the future held.

Fortunately I stumbled into my profession - dental lab technician. The job is very difficult and I had no training, no credentials, and no experience. I stuck to it for over thirty years. 

Erica came and then Andrea. We did activities every night with the girls. We bought an old,  falling apart house in West Hillhurst - less than 600 square feet for four people and a cat. For meetings we carried the furniture out onto the front lawn. People sat on the floor. 

When we were not having meetings in our home we travelled around Canada and the western U.S. for activities. We took the girls everywhere.. Of course they made lots of noise and interrupted meetings.

Keith lost many jobs and went to the hospital many times. In fact, he had eleven major surgeries.

It felt like every trouble a woman could have, I had.

I had a full time job that was quite stressful and the girls were first in daycare, then school. Eventually we bought a larger house so we could hold larger meetings. In fact, before the Community Centre was built, our house was used as the Calgary Activity Centre. We were able to welcome so many different people into our home. Wonderful, fascinating people; and some who were not so wonderful.

In 1981 me, Keith and  twenty two month old Erica travelled to Toronto. We wanted to help welcome Ikeda-sensei on his second visit to Canada. Actually none of us attended the big meeting with Sensei. Keith was working behind the scenes and mothers with small children waited in another room. Then, someone told us to go to a hallway. After the meeting Sensei came into the hallway. For an instant he caught my eye, then he put his hand on Erica’s head and other children and chanted three times for each child. I will never forget that moment.

To be able to witness his behaviour up close remains a high point of my life. I will never forget his eyes for that brief second, nor him encouraging Erica. Makes me cry to remember.

I went through poverty, sickness, relationship problems. For many years, some leaders here in Calgary worked hard but sadly their efforts were primarily for their own self-interest. Although they did much good, in the end they could not get past their own egos and undermined Sensei’s efforts, creating confusion and disunity. Many times I wondered what to do. I felt like the Gohonzon and my daimoku were my only comrades. Eventually they left our precious organization.

No matter how poor we were, we wholeheartedly contributed financially to our movement. No matter what difficulties we faced, we tried our best to participate in activities and support our wonderful mentor.

And I won.

Now we are facing this world-wide pandemic and isolation. Looking to the next ten years I will face new challenges. I want to tell people how great is this practice.

presented at Sunrise District General Meeting 22 November 2020 Yoshiko

The shadow people

Buddhist cosmology describes a huge variety of hells with excruciating details about the suffering of the occupants. These hells differ from the Abrahamic concept of Hell in a couple of ways. The occupants of Buddhist hells are not condemned by divine judgement, rather by the effects of their own life’s actions. Their damnation is not eternal, although it could last for extraordinary long periods - millions of aeons, in some cases.

Among the many hells described in the sutras is one particularly obscure. Perhaps fittingly, even most Buddhists have not heard of the lokāntarikā - the in-between-spaces-hells. Lokāntarikā (लोकान्तरिका) refers to the “intermediate spaces between two worlds”, according to the 2nd century C.E. teacher Nagarjuna. They are described like this: “in the intermediate spaces between worlds (lokāntarikā) where there is no sun, beings live and die entirely in shadows. These are the intermediate spaces between the universes of four continents. Grouped into three, these universes, circular in form, touch one another by their outer walls (cakravāla), like three coins brought together. Thus between them they demarcate a surface in the form of a triangle with three arched sides. These lokāntarikās, infinite in number like the universes that demarcate them, are forever plunged in deep darkness to the point that their inhabitants cannot even distinguish their own limbs.”

The cosmology posits that universes are circular, or spherical. At the points where universes meet, spaces are formed in-between. Spaces of total darkness and total isolation. Inhabitants of those spaces are in such darkness they can not even see their own limbs; they are so isolated as to not even be aware of anyone outside their individual in-between hell. Neither the light of the sun nor the moon can reach them. They are utterly alone. Utterly forgotten.

In the seventh chapter of the Lotus Sutra something happens: “The dark and secluded places within those lands, where the light of the sun and the moon is never able to penetrate, were all brightly illuminated and the living beings were all able to see one another, and they all exclaimed, saying, ‘How is it that living beings have suddenly come into existence in this place?’”

The inhabitants of the lokāntarikā can see themselves for the first time and they can see others. They are no longer alone. They know themselves.

Even the mention in the Lotus Sutra is brief, without the usual verses of praise and repetition and elaboration. It is possible that once illuminated, these beings must now find their own way to liberation.

It is not hard to see parallels with people in our time, in our societies of lokāntarikā. People are wrapped in the solitude and darkness of alienation and addiction. Many can no longer even see themselves; their identities - sexual, familial, cultural, ontological - have been stripped. Some exist only in the in-between cracks and fissures of our societies, trapped in misery and loneliness, unaware, even of their own plight and how it is shared by others. They can not see their own sublime dignity. They can not see that others share their fate.

Will the illumination of the Lotus Sutra shine into these forgotten corners and reveal the majesty of their lives and community? Will they, as the suffering have always done, find the inner strength and community to liberate themselves?

In The Opening of the Eyes, Nichiren wrote about strange Bodhisattvas who voluntarily enter hell to save the condemned: “they will deliberately create the appropriate karma in hopes that they too may fall into hell and share in and take their suffering upon themselves. Thus suffering is a joy to them. It is the same with me.” Ikeda-Sensei often says, one who lights a path for others, illuminates their own way. 

What can we do to reach out to others, and simultaneously reduce our own isolation? What small flickering lights can we bring into the many in-between-spaces of our worlds? 

Afghan tribal rugs

The shepherd seeks paradise and guards against the evil eye. 

The sheep seek rich graze and protection from wolves. 

The two knives of the sheers cut in precise division. They know nothing of indecision.

The thread seeks only to connect, without regard for resentments.

The needle guides. Oblivious to all opinion and regret, it detests my tedious distinctions.

The loom cradles a universe in balance - longitudinal warp and latitude woof.

Month after month the weavers hook, tie knots, and comb. Click, click.

The knots gather, firmly rejecting insularity.

Colored woof and white warp embrace, forming lanolin-soaked immutable pigments.

Sublime gift from pomegranate, orange, henna. 

Beauty and harmony reach across politics, oceans, and generations to uplift me. Divinity mirrors at my feet. Mandalas enshrined on my floor. 

 

Wait with me

 

wait with me

like the snail inside the lettuce, 

like the water for the boil,

like the patient for the doctor,

and the one left behind,

wait with me.

For the light will surely change if you

wait with me

like the upbeat to this song,

I'll show you how.

 

wait with me

like the cake inside the oven,

like the paper for the ink,

like patience for their virtues,

wait with me

For the moon will surely rise

like the upbeat to this song

I'll show you how

like the trigger for the finger,

and secrets for their shaming,

like Ruth with her Naomi,

like the best yet to come

wait with me

Are you waiting for a call?

Wait with me.

Like the wine inside the barrel,

like the mirror for the razer,

like the masked executioner,

like the dream awaits the dawn,

wait with me

For the play will soon be starting

and my seat is crying empty

and the line will soon be ending

like dal segno and this finé

If you can wait with me

I'll show you how

after-death in three verses

what are you doing today?

maybe send some flowers

We've silence round the kitchen table

and coffee's getting cold.

Memories are slippery

what are you doing today?

the snowdrops are blooming

We're gathering round the kitchen table

and coffee cups are raised.

Memories of lost laughter

what are you doing today?

Guess I'll shovel the neighbor's walk

We're together round the kitchen table

more coffee's being poured,

Memories making us laugh

Experience District AGM 22 October, 2020

Thank you very much, Celine, for this opportunity to share my experience and joy of faith.  I also want to express my deepest appreciation for everyone’s prayers and daimoku throughout my ordeal. I felt your beautiful support and I wholeheartedly and openly and enthusiastically received it.

Sensei often says, “The mystic law is perfect. All we have to do is tell others and create unity.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, I did an amazingly stupid thing. On March 11, the day before WHO declared the pandemic, Yoshiko and I flew to Spain, at the time the worst hit country. That was not my stupidist: I also convinced a elderly, frail, friend from Melbourne, who does not travel well,  to join us in Spain. And Andrea left for London a few days before. She also was to meet us. Oy.

As we landed in Barcelona my smart phone filled with messages cancelling all our travel and business plans and meetings. We went directly into total lock-down in a tiny Catalan village. The next day Andrea messaged me, “Trudeau says come home.”

But we could not come home until we made sure our Australian friend was safe and on her way. We could not leave her stranded.

A few days later we managed to put her on a plane. Now, how to get ourselves home? Westjet booked us on a flight from Paris for March 20. But how could we get to Paris? By that time Spain's borders were closed. All buses, trains, planes, even boats, out of Spain were cancelled. The only way we could think of  was to keep our rental car and drive one way. We did not know what would happen at the border, if we would be allowed into France. No one could tell us. The Canadian Consulates in Madrid and Paris did not know. I contacted a friend who works at the French foreign ministry. Even he did not know. I read on the Internet that to go anywhere in France, even pick up groceries, people had to have special documents. We had no documents, special or normal. Just two Canadians driving a Spanish car through the shutdown.

We could not think of any other way to get home and we did not want to stay locked in the village. So Yoshiko drove to Paris. It took two days and nights. Even though we could not stop anywhere, it was a wonderful drive, a memorable road trip. Finally we came home on Westjet’s second to last flight out.

At home we have four small businesses. Of course, all our business was cancelled. But we were home and dry. So we were happy.  I was fine staying home and baking bread. I thought, “Toda-sensei attained enlightenment alone in a prison cell. My situation is pretty darn good.”

But as a disciple of Ikeda-sensei, I could not remain content. After all, the whole world is on fire, just as the Lotus Sutra states. How can I be content among so much suffering? I tried to find some way to help others.

I have Crohn’s disease. In July I started getting very sick. I had three distinct symptoms, none of which were like Crohn’s. Nor like Covid. Towards the end of July I went into the Foothills Hospital. My kidneys were failing. At the hospital, they drained over 1600 MLs of urine out of my bladder. They told me a normal bladder is full at 500 MLs. My urine was backing up into my kidneys, destroying them and killing me. I was very sick. I stayed at the Foothills almost two weeks. They stabilized me, made sure I didn’t die. But they did not know what was wrong.

Now the Foothills Medical Centre is one of the world’s largest teaching hospitals. They have everything there - the world's first and most powerful movable MRI machine, the world’s leader in robotic surgery. Everything. The best.

Except they do not have a urology department. In fact, they do not have a urologist. Hundreds of doctors. Dozens of specialties. Not one urologist. When they have a patient like me, which I’m told is common, all they can do is phone the Urology Institute at the Rockyview Hospital and talk to whomever is the urologist on call.

So after 13 days, they sent me home with my kidneys stabilized, symptoms under control, and tubes coming out of places you don’t want tubes coming out.

I waited to get an appointment with a specialist.  Home care nurses came to see me and to care for the tubes.

Yoshiko and I read the gosho together about Nichiren alone at Mt Minobu. Nichiren wrote:

There is not a single dwelling other than mine in the area. My only visitors, infrequent as they are, are the monkeys that come swinging through the treetops. And to my regret, even they do not stay for long, but scurry back to where they came from.

Like all of us, Nichiren was in isolation. 

Finally I saw a urologist at the Rockyview. He was young and smart and caring and listened to my story in great detail. He used a machine to look inside me.

Surgery was scheduled for October 2, exactly sixty years to the day after Sensei took the first steps for world-wide kosen rufu.

At 6 am on October 2 I chanted with other members including Celine and Erica. Then after Yoshiko woke up we did gongyo and chanted together.

We were waiting to go to the Rockyview, so we did gongyo again, why not, and chanted some more.

Then I did what any reasonable person would. I wrote a poem. I called my poem Surgery Morning Haiku. It goes like this:

Gold leaves in a pile

The surgeon's knife is waiting

This installment ends.

At the Rockyview. I met with the anesthesiologist. He said, we can go one of two ways - we can put you out completely or we can do an epidural, a spinal block. I said, let’s do an epidural. I’ve had good luck with those before. But I have one condition, I said. You have to keep me awake. I want to be awake for everything. He said he would try but the meds are very powerful; if I keep you awake you will feel quite wonky. 

They took away my glasses so I was disoriented. They took me into the operating room.  The urologist was there, completely cloaked, and lots of people in full PPE and incredibly high tech stuff. Robotic surgical machines and electronic screens and shiny equipment. It was like a scene from a science fiction movie. They were preparing for me, moving together smoothly. I wasn't moving at all. 

The urologist said, now you are going to feel wonky. Like Morpheus said to Nero.

I started feeling really disoriented, really wonky. It was like a scene where the hero is abducted by aliens and they take him somewhere and probe him and do horrible things to him. Maybe they take something from him, or maybe they implant something in him. Maybe both.

But I was determined to be present and stay awake. I said to myself, “My name is Keith Robinson. I am a Bodhisattva of the earth. I was born in Vancouver, BC. My name is Keith Robinson. I am a disciple of Ikeda-sensei. I am married to Yoshiko and have two daughters. My name is…” Over and over. I stayed awake and present for the entire operation. I interacted appropriately with the doctors and nurses. They were working very hard but took time to explain everything, answer my questions.

The aliens were transformed. They became beautiful Buddhas helping me and transforming me and healing me.

It was remarkable.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. I am determined to do my best for the next ten years to contribute to the happiness of others and the development of our movement.

Waiting for a doctor

After surgery - Five Guys

Surgery morning haiku

Gold leaves in a pile

The surgeon's knife is waiting

This installment ends.

Living my own life

 Living my own life

Standing on the bow of the Queen of Surrey,

Inhaling the shifting grays, blues, and greens of the early fall on Horseshoe Bay,

Sea, sky, mountains, islands, and forest arise.

Struck by the scene, struck by the seam - this my life.

Been treading water

waiting for the epilogue

waiting for the start

waiting opening night

 

Decades treading water

waiting for the lifting fog

waiting for the rent-to-own

waiting for the cure

Exhausting treading water

waiting for the mystery solved

waiting for the big day

waiting for the muse

someone, someone please press start

Standing on the ferry's bow,

This breath belongs to me. 

Not by fluke, not by con, not by deal. It is mine.

Many hands lifted me; many backs I'd climbed, many fields played in my favour. 

But one instant is mine. This lifetime mine.

This visage from the ferry, I now know, is my own.

My victories, my joys, my gasp of wonder. Perhaps always, but struck this moment.

Not in spite of my messes but from choices made and steps taken.

Oh yes, regrets as well. I retain them too. Oh, yes.

Utterly unexpected - this moment on water that belongs.

Found objects: Persistence, obsolescence, creation

Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson: The Last Waves. Vancouver Art Gallery September 2017

Found objects: 

Persistence, obsolescence, creation

dice in a test tube

cork in a test tube

ants in a test tube

insert tubes in her lips

insert words in her lips

insert springs in her hips

hidden cookies in a mailbox

hidden risks in a letter

hidden cracks in your mirror

c'mon, c'mon, c'mon

you don't believe we're on the eve of construction?

rolling dice in an inner tube

stuffed in an inner tube

growing plants in an inner tube

There's stuff in your hair

and stuff on your shoes

dangling from your IV pole,

make it your muse.

c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, all together, big finish:
Don't believe we're on the eve of destruction

a bottle of wine and the Black Madonna

Garnatxa is the Catalan for Garnacha/Grenache. We visited the producer, Pares Balta, a few years back. We were guests of their Calgary importers. Their most common wine in our market is called 'B'. It is inexpensive and reasonably tasty. The packaging, to me, looks cheap. They have a few other higher end wines in our market but I didn't know them well. Pares Balta works with organics and biodynamics, so that held interest.


We visited Pares Balta with the nice (and very affluent) Catalan couple whose house we were staying in. I had contacted them about a house swap. They said, just come and stay with us. Oh yes.

We were met at the winery by a young female staff member. Instead of taking us on the typical winery tour, she piled the four of us into her jeep and drove us away from the winery into the mountains. Deep into the mountains. After a number of kilometers there was a small vineyard. She broke open a bottle of an incredible white of an indigenous variatal grown in that vineyard. There is nothing like tasting a wine in the very spot that the grapes grew. The young lady was on the winemaking team, post grad oenology student, and crackerjack, really smart. There is absolutely nothing better than drinking a wine from the single spot on the planet where the grapes were grown, listening and learning from the person who made it.

Then she piled us back in the jeep and drove us deeper into the mountains. In fact it was a national forest, without paved roads. Every few bumpy kilometers she would stop and show us postage stamp sized vineyards that belonged to them. She explained they had a special license to farm these certain spots in the forest.

Les Valls-Les Torres vineyard

How in the world do you farm, economically in such remote places? They have absolutely zero
economies of scale. Just getting crews in and out must be nuts and labour costs in Catalonia are 

not low.

Up up we bumped along. She showed us a gash in the side of the road. The exposed soil was an
incredible red. She explained that this was the soil the ancient Iberians used for clay. They made pottery
and such. They also made pottery for wine, she said. This was total news to me. We were taught the
Romans “brought civilization and the vine" to the Iberian peninsula.

Pares Balta had found remnants of the pottery and amphora. They thought, if this soil was good
enough to grow our grapes and good enough to make amphora for the ancients, maybe it will do for us. They started using the same soil to make amphora and eggs for fermentation and storage of 21st century wines.

We have found wineries here and there starting to use amphora and eggs. They usually truck the huge, fragile pots at great cost and care from Georgia, where they are made. I don't know any other producer who makes their own from their own soil.

By this time I am getting it - these people are serious, but maybe, ever so slightly crazy.

Our story is far from over.

Isn't this the prettiest dirt? 

Deeper we go, bumping along, until even the jeep can't go any further. So, as my mom would say,
we rode shank's mare. We walked to a spot in the mountains where archaeologists from a university
had a dig. It was an ancient kiln, or rather the remains in the ground of a kiln. She explained how it
worked, or how they think it worked, and how the ancients used the kiln to make the amphora to
make their wine. In school and books we were taught wine would not come to this land for hundreds
of years. Together with civilization. And Romans.

Kiln school for Keith

Modern Amphora. Pares Balta winery, from the soils of the mountains of the Penedes, Catalonia

Ancient Iberian pottery, Pares Balta Winery

Geeky side note: How do archaeologists know an ancient culture made wine, rather than the
pots being for some other use? Two ways - wine grape seeds have a particular pointy end.
Other grape seeds are oval. And they find tartaric acid, which is left behind after wine is
made. Tartaric acid is almost exclusively from wine making. If you have ever seen what appears to be
pieces of glass inside a wine bottle, it is harmless tartaric acid (tartrites).

I looked around at nothing but trees and rocks and mountains and tried to figure out what those people
were doing in such a remote spot and what kind of community could live there that the kiln could support.

Through a break in the trees, far up above we could see a structure, the top of a tower. She said it was a
hermitage. Wanna see? Oh yes. So she found the path with the jeep and uppity up we went. At the top
was a sanctuary and chapel. It was amazing and the view of Catalonia was breathtaking.

Something else. Years ago I studied about the Black Madonna. All over the Catholic world are icons of Mary with a black face. Her features are not black african. Nor are they darkened from age. They are either carved in ebony or the original paints were black pigments. Sometimes the baby Jesus in her lap is also black.

The Dalai Llama said he thinks there might be a connection between her and the Buddha Tara, the only
female Buddha in traditional Buddhism.

(In the form of Buddhism I practice, we are all female Buddhas and we are all male Buddhas.)

Depictions of Buddha Tara show her sitting in an unusual lotus position. Only one leg is crossed. The
other leg extends forward as she is always ready to jump into the world to save the suffering.

So the Black Madonna has held a fascination with me for years.

But I had never seen her.

In a corner of the chapel was enshrined a Black Madonna. Or maybe it was a copy of a Black Madonna.

The sole monk said that during the Spanish Civil war, many republicans hid from the fascists in these
mountains. The republicans thought that if they were caught, yes they would be tortured and killed, and
also the fascists would take the Black Madonna. So they hid her and replaced it with a copy. Hid her well and never put her back. Maybe.

(Photos courtesy of Yoshiko)

Santa Maria de Foix, Patroness of the Penedès
Photo from Catalan Tourism and Culture

Black Tara
Picture from chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com

Lean Forward

Into emptiness
Into the nameless
Forward to the purple ocean, to the borders of space
Go forward to your home

Standing at a precipice before the purple sea,
Lean forward.
Lean forward towards that darkness
Lean forward to the slippery rocks, 
to the silver fat fish, to the scurrilous tidepool rodents.

Sitting on a precipice before the full sea
and under the endless purple sky,
Lean up to the clockwork heavens
to the hexagon of Saturn, the sacred transformational geometry of both sky and self.

With you between sky and sea:
Mermen, sirens, descendants of Abraham sailing for Australia on a dilapidated ship.

Not a fevered vision

no wistful ideals

the hollow platitudes spent; Now, lean forward. 

Photo by Jamie Fenn on Unsplash

Embrace the uncertainty
Of the axe-king dealing tarot.
Each step out the front door, a commitment. Each step an act of trust.

Lean into fragility
Discard your beliefs,
They are constructs held in place by brittle brown firmament-thin fascia reflecting in a drop of dew

Lean forward to the alien,
A family fleeing to Egypt
wearing the veils you stole

Lean down to the earth:
The carrots bring messages from the subsoil.
Witness the singular wonder of a moist grain of rice.

Do not return

Do not anticipate outcomes - energy, creativity, the void

Just lean forward and forward.

Lean forward one final time
your day when all debt, 
all betrayal, resentments, grudges vanish playing taps into the darkness
and find your creation, your renewal