Listening to myself, In Terms of Shin Buddhism

In this chapter, I would like to focus on listening to myself because, in “Cultivating Wholeness”, as the counselor, you must know yourself and learn to listen with your whole self. However, I would like to emphasize if it is truly possible to understand my whole self or not. Unfortunately, I don’t think so. At least, for me, I cannot understand myself because of my ego or ignorance.

In terms of Shin Buddhism, Buddhism consists of listening to Dharma. It stands for “listening to diverse aspects of myself”, which means that we listen to ourselves through the Dharma. I couldn’t know where I should go unless not knowing myself. If I didn’t know where I should go, I couldn’t know where I should go. That’s why we have to listen to the Dharma to not get lost the life. Buddha’s Vow or Buddha’s view tells us the reality of my life so that it is impossible to realize my true aspects of myself unless Buddha’s teaching because of our ego or ignorance.

Here is an example. According to Sachiya Hiro who is a Japanese religious scholar and a popular contemporary writer of Buddhism, an airplane flies having “two eyes”: “Inside Out” and “Outside In”. Inside Out is one eye that aviators see an outside from an inside, which means that they fly the airplane seeing from a cockpit to the sky. During taking off and landing, they confirm signal for departure and approach angle for landing by their viewpoints. This is “Inside Out”. But the airplane cannot fly by only Inside Out because aviators need another eye that someone sees the airplane for aviators. It is called “Outside In”. When the airplane goes into clouds, Inside Out’s eye cannot recognize where they are flying; moreover, even though the airplane goes out in the sky above clouds, they don’t know where they are. At that time, they must have the airplane seen and told by the eye of “Outside In”. In short, the airplane flies having two visual points. We are same as the airplane because we pilot our bodies (= the body of an aircraft) all through life using the eye of “Inside Out”. And although we operate our bodies seeing directions or positions, we sometimes cannot see the directions or positions and get lost. Even if our bodies are fine, we would get lost our lives. If it was sunny, we could expect what is going on while seeing around, but we are definitely going to encounter rainy and cloudy days. At that time, we need the eye of “Outside In”, which is that we have our bodies seen from outside.
In the case of the airplane, “Outside In” consists of two parts: a control tower and GPS. The control tower is the name of the airport building from which the air traffic control unit controls the movement of aircraft on and around the airport. It tells us the directions and position. Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It represents that “Outside In” which is the control tower and GPS tells us the direction and position. What is the control tower for us? It can be referred to as teacher, family and friends. What is GPS for us? In my understanding, it stands for Buddha. The idea of Buddha as GPS can be considered because Buddha tells us our positions, which is our reality of our lives.

Therefore, listening to the Dharma represents that we receive “the eye”, the eye of “Outside In”. It is the one of crucial meaning of listening to the Dharma. It is listening to my whole self. Knowing myself means receiving Buddha’s teaching; moreover, we operate our bodies while consulting with Buddha.