Buddhist Chant - Shingon

In'yo-do

In'yo-do is the way of shadow sunshine. We live in a world that ebbs and flows like this. To ebb and flow in this world exactly with it, exactly as it is; this is in'yo-do.

Meiso = Meditation?

Kiko always begins and ends with Meiso. We translate Meiso as Meditation, but Meiso is so much more.

Meiso is made up of 3 kanji (Chinese Characters from the Han Dynasty [used by the Japanese]).

Me = the eyes
i = (this is a bit harder to translate, but it relates to a long story that deals with the Roku Dai or 6 elements I wrote about elsewhere in the blog)
so = the mind or our thoughts.

Meiso then is the natural position of our eyes and thoughts fitting precisely with the 6 elements of the world.

So, though we practice this as sitting still, sitting immovable, in meditation; meiso is just a skillful means for living naturally in the natural world.

In yo - Shadow Sunshine

The very center is stable, it doesn't move. But all else around it is subject to in yo (shadow sunshine); all else moves with the movement of shadow & sunshine. All else changes.

When we match the natural movement of shadow sunshine in our lives, our lives move smoothly and naturally too. Sometimes not seeming to move at all. We move without moving. This is sometimes fairly straight, and sometimes meandering this way or that; sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. But in either case we let it flow. Sometimes standing still, sometimes running with the wind.

The very center of the tornado that is our lives, this eye of the hurricane is calm, serene, tranquil... as long as we move within the eye. As long as we move naturally from our center.

The center connects us to the rest of the world in a natural way.

In Kiko we call this center kikai, or the ocean of breath. The center sometimes called tanden is the elixir field where everything comes together, where transformation takes place.

Sit in the center, move from the center in the world and the world moves with us, or do we move with it? The difference... the separation between them disappears...

The best teacher is viewed from behind. Leaving something to the imagination. Leaving something unseen, something hidden, hard to grasp, something to search for.

...Nothing is quite graspable, since all is constantly changing...

In In'yodo all opposites create an inseparable whole. Both nature and our humanness show in everything we touch. Perfection and imperfection live side by side in our lives, infused within eachother.

In this Eastern tradition the balance is almost never 50/50. Not really black and white but infiinite shades of grey tend to paint our reality. More often than not, the shadows are enhanced by the light, and the light by the shadow.

The middle may not be in the middle. 60/40 tends to be the natural balance before man interfers, or more accurately not quite 60/40 but almost... just a bit off (or is that less accurate? Certainly it's more vague). This vagueness is one characteristic of In'yodo as well. Mystery in the shadow.