Sunday, February 19, 2023

Members of Amidaji: Myokaku Fernando Andaluz (Mexico)

 My Spritual Journey so far

By Shaku Myokaku Fernando Andaluz

Namo Amida Butsu 

First things first, I recognize that I am no extraordinary person nor am I capable of attaining Buddhahood by myself, much less within this lifetime.

After trial and error, despite my best efforts and the best of spiritual guidance within the Triple Jewel, I failed miserably on achieving the slightest amount of peace of mind, enhanced mindfulness, awareness and settlement of any spiritual achievement whatsoever.

In short, my story is that of failure upon the path of self-empowerment and finally end up surrendering to the Other Power, that is, the power of Amida Butsu.

I was born and raised in a mixed family, a devoted but faithful and moderate Roman Catholic mother and a liberal Jewish father. My first experience with the “powers to be” was during my early childhood when at my elementary school, run by nuns, a missionary who had been to Africa came over to talk about his journey and the love of Jesus Christ for all mankind. Right away, I felt a lot of respect for this monk and started asking him questions openly about the inequities and the hardships he encountered upon those starving children whom he was committed to help. Quickly the questions and dialogue escalated to the point where I subconsciously, and truly meaning no ill will, began to question the contradiction between God and Jesus Christ loving everyone and being merciful towards all mankind. Soon after the confrontation came towards the narrative of a loving all-powerful all-knowing and all-merciful God and his son, letting innocent children to starve and endure the horrors and nightmares of war, poverty and colonialism.

A couple of days later, unbeknownst to my parents, the head of the school, the superior nun, brought me to a private meeting with other nuns from other orders and a dude who seem to be the one truly in charge. With a very sinister but friendly vibe, he asked if I understood the meaning of the phrase “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil”. I answered that I did, just like the common folk would understand it, which means don’t speak evil things, don’t seek to look, pay attention, engage or watch evil things and don’t listen, pay attention or indulge in hearing evil things. His answer was that such understanding was a misconception, the real meaning of such phrase is to keep your mouth shut when something evil happened, to pretend you didn’t listen anything when something evil happened and to pretend that you didn’t see anything if something evil happened. He later on told me that they had great hopes on me and I had the potential to become a great leader if I followed the rules and paid attention.

The moment I felt something wrong was going on, I basically declined the offer and a couple of weeks later I became the target of intense bulling and a systematic harassment all the way from your classic bully to the authorities at the school.

During that time, my father, unbeknownst to my mother, began to teach and read to me the Babylonic Talmud, discuss the works and treaties of Maimonides in order to begin the journey to become a man according to Judaism. He also incorporated me to activities such as Judo and basic maintenance at a commercial building that belonged to him. The time came to do my “secret” Bar mitzva and everything went according to tradition, again unbeknownst to my mother and sister. The whole thing was going so well indeed that my father, in hopes to procure better future for me, managed to contact an albeit and they agreed to train me in order to properly convert me to Judaism with the intent of train me to later become a Rabbi for the liberal Jewish branch. The whole thing went south when we began to study certain key aspects of Judaism that involve several wrong views about several things. This led me to once again, decline the offer and walk away.

After some decision making, I began to choose the stuff that I considered to be good and discard the things that I felt wrong. My father grew resentful and began distancing from me, which led me to grow resentful and feeling abandoned. This also permeated deep into my subconscious and began to pile up along the rest of these feelings, views and perceptions about a distant, tyrannical, hypocritical, racist and narcissistic all-mighty creator and ruler figure.

I ended up in a group of AA known as the 4th and 5th step, trying to find a way to deal with my neurosis and conflicting feelings, I discovered the value of catharsis and an honest retrospect. Yet I felt stuck and trapped, making matters worse, I was forced to study a career that I didn’t like much less the way it was imposed to me by my parents which kept threatening me with the premise of being kicked out of the house and be left by my own means if didn’t become an engineer.

During this time, Jujitsu and Krav Maga helped me to channel the anger and frustration so I became more and more immersed in tournaments and visits to other dojos. It was during one of these visits that I was recruited by a field operator who was part of a security initiative nationwide back in the day. During that time, feeling trapped and anguished, a dear friend of mine from high school, who was attending to the same university and was studying the same career, invited me to an introductory course about Tibetan Buddhism.

Right from the beginning I knew this was it, everything made sense, the Four Noble Truths, the concept of Buddhahood, Samsara and emptiness. This institution, which I hold dear to my heart until this day as part of my entry point to the Buddha Dharma, was a very well crafted, precise and mindful hybrid between the Kagyu, Nygma and Gelugpa Tibetan schools and lineages of the teachings of the Buddha. Several guests, retreats and conferences were given over the time, it was during one of these conferences where I got the mental imbuing of “Sunyata” or voidness, difficult to express what it is.

Also, during one of these retreats I was aspiring to enter into the first jhana, rather what I found during a meditation about impermanence, based on the walk-through visualization of a sudden death under pathetic circumstances, was the reality about the miserable condition of our so-called personalities and how futile is our existence. This led me into a state of total disrespect for myself and others, while feeling a terrible pain on how useless were our attempts to break away from samsara.

I begged Avalokiteshvara for help over this very threatening existential crisis, and a couple of months later, the 14th Dalai Lama (Kun Dun) came to visit Mexico where he gave the Avalokiteshvara empowerment to the audience. Having the opportunity to be at that time amongst the audience, and not being able to remember anything from the empowerment ceremony, felt like a gift received with folded eyes only to lose the gift at the confusion of the party.

Taking refuge in the Triple Jewel and receiving the empowerment of Avalokiteshvara basically within months of joining the sangha, gave me a false sense of achievement and the wrong feeling that something big was about to happen, perhaps becoming an arhat or a Boddhisattva within this lifetime after a couple of years of practice. Knowing that mental imbution is possible in order to achieve the realization of certain teachings, I made my mind to travel to Europe at a certain institute where the practitioner who shared the realization of Sunyata resided.

Since back in the day, I had no money or means, nor would my parents support me in any ways, I got hired by a merchant boat as part of the maintenance crew. Once in Europe, a former instructor from my unit, offered me a contract as part of his PMC filial company.

It was during this contract, where I had a close encounter with death and the surreal of being in the middle of a low and middle intensity armed conflict. It was shocking and surreal to find myself at the mercy of some warlord about to chop my hand with a machete just because I was providing security to the truck that was delivering food and medicine to one of the villages this thug and his mates were harassing and targeting. I don’t regret calling for air support, nor do I regret spending all of the money I earned upon that contract in procuring such air support, I know I gave that village and myself the chance to live another day. I’ve never killed anyone in my life, I was specific upon the parameters and non-lethal use of force upon the air strike.

That being said, there are some people who I can’t feel empathy or compassion for, I’m not a Buddha yet, but I trust that once I become a Buddha, thanks to the Power of Amida Butsu, the hatred and thirst for justice that burns  inside me will turn into compassion, patience and skillful means to make these people surrender to the Triple Jewel and change their ways.

Back in Europe I was totally disconnected with reality, I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that, on one hand I saw people living their lives carelessly, in dreamlike conditions, while on the other hand, I just witnessed the worse of humankind and the worst of European and western colonialism less than an hour ago.

I just wanted to go home, I felt a great disconnection with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Coming back to my country, tragedy began to struck, my mom lost our house, she felt severely ill and witchcraft was being done to my family and I. After my mom lost our house, my father believed that I was in cahoots with her and decided to abandon us, cartels wanted to take away his businesses and properties and finally came back to us just to be killed a month later.

Ironically, right before my trip to Europe, I began to feel a strong curiosity about Ksitigarbha and the Bardo Todol. I began to do a thoroughly research on what to tell someone when they asked me what to do in case they die, how to avoid Mara and his traps, how to avoid the fraudulent trials by lord Yama and how to keep an emotional balance in order to avoid falling into the lower realms.

I remember rehearsing such conversation and telling this imaginary audience how to appeal and ask assistance from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in order to assure a favorable rebirth or being taken into a Pure Land. I remember placing special emphasis in using the image and help from Amitabha as a last resource, the red Buddha who had power over sentient beings and could ultimately procure them a favorable rebirth in His Pure Land.

The last deep and honest conversation I had my father, was about exactly the Bardo Todol, the moment he explained to me that his life was in danger I went through the whole walkthrough about the Bardo Todol and what to do, including the “Amitabha last resort”.

In retrospect, I’m thankful that Amitabha and Ksitigarbha gave me the chance to at least explain these things to him before he died at the hands of these cartels.

About seven months later I was kidnapped and held captive for a couple of hours losing all of my money to pay the ransom and getting my freedom back. This is when reality became a living nightmare, I lost all faith in the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Still, I kept praying to Ksitigarbha for the safeguard and wellbeing of my father, crying every night and trying to figure out what did I miss or what could I have done in order to exfiltrate my family and keep them safe. All of my training, skills and willing to adapt, improvise and succeed failed miserably. I couldn’t protect my family, I couldn’t save my father, I felt guilty for being the one who survived. To my eyes, it would have been better if it was me instead of him, at least the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas could grant me a temporary settlement to procure the continuity of my practice and I could oversee the safeguard of my family due to the transfer of merits.

I had help from friends and family back then to get back on my feet and Ițm truly thankful and grateful to all of them. I will assign them and my parents the utmost priority unless told by Amida otherwise as He knows better what to do once I become a Buddha in Sukhavati.

After two years of somewhat having stability, my mother and I decided to move to the US in order to move away from the violence in Mexico. It was in the US where I found a Pure Land temple and I truly began to understand to concept of who Amitabha is and what exactly His Pure Land is.

Despite what the head of the temple instructed me, about Amitabha being real but Sukhavati being more like an aspiration to a mental state of wellbeing and non-suffering, I knew that Amitabha was really an approachable Buddha and Sukhavati was real.

After all, as an engineer, I knew that certain alloys, technologies and systems of systems are far beyond our current reach but such things can definitely be done by an Enlightened being. It was my initial curiosity about artificial intelligence and neural networks what spark my interest and made me give my friend a chance back in the day when he first invited me to join him at the Buddha Dharma course.

So, I decided to believe that Amitabha was real and so was Sukhavati, I just needed to have the certainty of getting a fail-safe mechanism so I could guarantee my assured admittance despite the potential obstacles given by my defects, habits and lack of spiritual growth.

I was about to put my theory to the test when tragedy struck again. This time my mother and my sister kicked my former wife and me out of the house that they bought in part with my money and left me without any real chances of having a future. Entering into this level of stress, poverty and desperation completely blocked my path towards not just Enlightenment but the chance to see if Amitabha had a way to assure my entrance into Sukhavati.

With the firm belief that only through a deep focused and continuous mental state of mindfulness and aperture to the whole Amida subject, my wife and I opted for the easy path of chanting and repeating mantras in order to purify some bad karma and hopefully gain the favor of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to achieve better circumstances in life and thus, procure a safe and favorable environment to try the whole Amida theory. That never happened, despite having a good job at an engineering firm, I began having panic attacks and I lost my job whilst acquiring a heavy medical debt due to the panic attacks.

I also had to let go of other jobs because I started having these severe panic attacks while driving on the highway, I didn’t want to die and much less to cause a major accident and have other people killed. Everything went to hell and out of desperation came back to Mexico, I still wasn’t able to keep a job and ended up in poverty again, my wife began to stress due to our conditions and something had to be done.

My mother came back from the US and decided to give me a second chance and move in with her but only if I left my wife go. My wife and I decided that it was for the best, she went back to the US with money that my mother lend me for her ticket and we would reunite once I manage to make money and get back on my feet again. I was hopeful that my mother would finally help me to get started with either a small business or to have enough means to get a decent job, but that never happened.

Despite my best efforts about convincing my mother to lend me some money, trying to find investors or trying to find a well-paid job, I finally gave up and started to let go of everything.

My wife ended up having an affair and we decided to get divorced while leaving in relatively good terms. Time passed by and I couldn’t find a solution to my living situation.  Finally, I realized that my mother had sold the house she and my sister bought back in the US and took a hefty loan to buy a piece of land while spending all of our money in such real estate investment. The loan started charging interest rates upon her pension and she lost everything overnight. Not having access to her pensions and without any source of income she began to panic and rather than calling of the purchase of the real state lot, she kept clinging to it until her last breath.

My mother died out of a diabetic coma and left me with debts and without the means to at least pay for her funeral. None of her family members came to her funeral, except for her younger brother. My sister only gave a fraction to cover the funerary expenses and asked me to never contact her again.

On the other hand, she did relinquish and forfeit her rights to my mother`s will and belongings, but she wouldn’t help me to get the trial started in order to get the inheritance back.

Still, I kept praying to Tara to take my mother with her and keep her safe, not letting her fall into the hell realms, pretas or animals, knowing how much she enjoyed bashing and slandering the Triple Jewel.

Despite of my anger and strong resentment against her and what she did, my main concern was about her borderline consciousness being stuck upon the wrong views about this benevolent god. In her own words, she would never give me access to my money unless I have proven to her that I had indeed found the “light of God” and I will make good use of that money, in accordance and adherence to God’s guidelines and guidance.

Finally, Tara somewhat let me know that she was taking care of my mom but this situation would require me to intercede for her and my father over several trials that both will face during their processing and they will be moved from different Buddha lands to another until I would become a Buddha and take them in myself. To me, this was good enough, I managed to buy my parents some precious time to see if in the meanwhile they would change their attitude towards the Triple Jewel and perhaps adhere to some kind of deal offered by the Triple Jewel.

Once the priority of taking care of my mother and her not falling into the lower realms, it was time to face the nightmare I was left upon. A neighbor came later on and cut me a bad deal where he would give less than a third of the value of the real state lot in exchange for covering the expenses of the trial. I ended up, broken going through another nightmare because of the trial, I had to back to the city where my father was killed and deal with everything at once, alone again.

Only when I ran out of money and in deep desperation, I remembered the idea of Amida and I gave it a try.

A couple of weeks later, I found Jodo Shinshu and Amidaji. Turns out, my theories about Amida being an approachable Buddha and guaranteeing the admittance to Sukhavati were true. So here we are, entrust to Amida Butsu, say His Name with a trusting heart and wish to be reborn in Sukhavati. Amida Butsu will do the rest.

I repent and vow to the Buddhas of the three times and the ten directions, I regret causing any harm to any sentient being in this life and since the beginingless time. I want to go home, to Sukhavati, repair the harm I’ve caused and help to save as many sentient beings as possible thanks to the power of Amida Butsu.

I don’t know if I’m going to make it past this year, or if I will end mentally ill and homeless, but at least I know that Amida Butsu will come and take me to Sukhavati at the end of this current rebirth, and the nightmare will be finally over.

Thank you Josho Adrian Cirlea for finding and fighting to get the true Amida Dharma and make it accessible to the common folk again.

 Namo Amida Butsu 

 

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