Citation

Kiyozawa, Manshi. “Spiritual Awareness.” December Fan: The Buddhist Essays of Manshi Kiyozawa, translated by Nobuo Haneda, Shinshu Center of America, 2014.

Quotes

• species:
• themes:

Collations

• It's important to establish our lives on perfectly firm ground.
• Gaining that perfectly firm ground happens only through an encounter with the Infinite.
• Spiritual awareness is the process of establishing a life's permanent ground through encounter with the Infinite and inner development.
• As we deepen spiritual awareness, we become more capable of helping others do the same without distress.
• We need to establish spiritual awareness within ourselves before we can help others.
• A life of spiritual awareness is a life of absolute freedom.
• Absolute freedom means we recognize that all suffering is self-inflicted and we can always liberate ourselves from it consciously.
• Absolute freedom can be compatible with absolute submission by freely modifying our attitude in any given situation to harmonize with the freedom of others.

My thoughts

But why is there a need to establish a perfectly firm ground for our lives?

But absolute freedom can only be compatible with absolute submission if everyone is doing the same thing.

To say that all suffering is caused not by events around me or the actions of others but by my interpretations of those events seems contradictory to the pursuit of justice. However, this seems congruent with amoralism.

Manshi Kiyozawa's idea of the compatibility of absolute freedom with absolute submission is very interesting. When I adjust to accommodate someone's freedom, I'm doing so freely by choice—doing so is love but also freedom because I'm not bind by a strict moral guideline.

Prompts