I think that everyone has asked God and Buddha a favor...
By the way, have you actually seen God and Buddha?
Some people who have special ability seem to be able to see them. But we can’t usually see them. There are pictures of them but what’s the truth?
In Japan we usually think of shrines as a place where the gods live…Everyone in Japan must have visited a shrine at least once, I guess. A shrine is a place to enshrine a God. So I think you’ve seen the goshintai (object of worship) in a shrine, and in most of the cases, the goshintai is actually a mirror (鏡 kagami). What do you think about why it’s a mirror? There was an explanation in a book as below.
When writing the goshintai (object of worship) in Hiragana, it’s “か が み (mirror)”. When taking the middle letter with voiced sound mark away, it turns into “かみ (God)”.
We reflect ourselves on the goshintai (mirror). Because it’s a mirror, you can see yourself very well in it. When you see the offensive or lacking part of yourself, you can correct it. So it may be said that you can get rid of your ego… There is a God inside you and when the ego is taken away, you can become a God…
Next is about 仏様hotoke-sama (Buddha), we often use the word of 仏様hotoke-sama for died people in Japan. Also we use it for any person of integrity, too. What is the origin of it…?
It’s … to understand things (understanding = untangling: hodokeru) => “hotokeru”. We call those people who understand everything “hotoke-sama”. Untangling the string and straighten it and being careful not to get it tangled again (not to make a mistake again)...
God and Buddha represent someone who understands about themselves well and knows everything.
A long time ago, I met a doctor and he told me a story. He was a doctor but had no choice to suffer from a serious bowel’s problem (diarrhea). So he needed to go to toilet many times a day, even when he was on his way to work. One day when he was driving his car to his work, he became not able to hold it anymore. At that time he found a gravesite. He quickly stopped his car and rushed into the grave. He finally did it while saying sorry for hotoke-san (dead people in the graves). But when he finished, he found he had no toilet paper to wipe his bottom, also there was no paper around the gravesite. So a haiku passage came to him.
“墓の中、仏ばかりで紙（神）はなし” (In the grave, there are only hotoke but no god) No god (kami), no paper (kami).
Did you get it?
