Aspiring to become a great bodhisattva

Wishing to see what reality is

Being a branch leader practising with many companions, I earnestly wish to achieve my role as a bodhisattva. However I often complain that the Spiritual World doesn’t  respond to my demands. Not long ago, I sincerely wished and asked to be able to see what was necessary for my own transformation and progress. Then something really difficult happened in my life, something which upset me a lot but helped me see that I had to turn away from all the things that made me feel secure, happy to live in my own quiet little world..

An important step…

I then caught a glimpse of the next step necessary to my evolution. You are a branch leader, I told myself, you sincerely wish that Reiyukai would develop but you are still very much attached to your own world and you lack docility towards the Spiritual World. Even if I really aspire to be connected to this world, I very often react to the events of my life by refusing what doesn’t fit in with my ideas. I want to be the one who chooses the programme and yet I’ve come to perceive that I definitely am not the one who does so: the programme is given to me  because I am  determined to work for the transmission of the Teachings and because I  have this role to play. What is offered to me is what I have to live to go beyond my limits and to become a great bodhisattva.

…towards liberation

I can feel I’m still a novice bodhisattva; a real bodhisattva is receptive, upright and gentle. He goes forward and accepts what is sent to him by his practice without clinging to his ideas and life ideals, the way my companions and I too frequently do.I can now better grasp my conceptions and conditionings, those I have inherited, maybe those I made up in previous lives as well as in this one. I feel that my practice should now consist in accepting what I am given to live. While I was reading Maitreya’s Sutra this morning, I was struck by the sentence: «They will hasten to enter the path leading to liberation» . We are candidates to liberation and I really want to be free and no longer want to pretend! Maybe I will have to go through difficult circumstances. Maybe not. Anyway I must accept what I will be offered to live with courage and boldness.

Becoming a leading elder

Likewise I encourage you not to remain attached to what you already know, prisoners of your fears. Becoming a great bodhisattva like those mentioned in the Lotus sutra as well as creating Reiyukai in France will require listening to the Spiritual World. This is the practice my elder experiments but which I often feel  myself  incapable of doing. An image comes to my mind:our practice elders are like lead climbers who open up the path both literally and figuratively. As for me, I would  rather  climb to the top of the Himalaya mountain but in a helicopter, without too much suffering! A lead climber should look for the appropriate passages, however I think my research as a leader is too superficial, which I am  really sorry for and ask my companions to forgive. But today, in front of all of you and of the Spiritual World I solemnly determine myself to get this project started.

Claudette