“Crab buffet!”
Just hearing those words makes your mood shoot up, right?
But when you actually go—well, it can be tougher than you think. The shells are absurdly hard, your hands get sticky, and after all the effort you open one and think, “Wait—this is all the meat?” You find yourself more tired than satisfied, and can’t help but laugh at the whole scene.
That actually reminds me of how people live. We say, “I want to be happy!” and we try hard, but things don’t always go the way we expect. You crack open your shell with great effort, only to find the result smaller than you hoped. It happens with studying, love, work—pretty much everything.
And crabs walk sideways. We too think, “I’ll live straight and true,” but end up drifting sideways. We say, “I’ll start working hard from tomorrow!” only to do the same thing again the next day. Before we know it, we’re experts at sideways walking—that’s what a bonpu (an ordinary, bewildered person) is like.
So does that mean sideways-walking, clumsy bonpu are hopeless? Jōdo Shinshū shines a light right there.
Saved as you are. Amida Buddha’s vow is not for perfect, straight-walking people, but for those of us who can only walk sideways. He embraces us just as we are—shells on, sideways and all. That’s why you can say “Namu Amida Butsu” with a sense of relief.
Come to think of it, even at a crab buffet—though you may only get a little meat—you can still think, “Well, it was fun anyway.” Maybe our lives are like that too: full of missteps, but somehow received whole by the Buddha.
Sideways walking, shells on. —That’s okay.
Namu Amida Butsu.
日本語版note：カニ食べ放題となまんだぶ
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