People Can Change, and That Means Changing Ourselves
A short bus ride from Oji Station stands Darumaji Temple. According to the Nihon Shoki, in the twenty-first year of Empress Suiko's reign, when Prince Shotoku was passing through Kataoka, a starving traveler lay collapsed by the roadside. The prince gave him food and drink, then took off his own robe and gently laid it over him.
The next day, the traveler died. Deeply saddened, the prince had a grave built for him there. Yet some time later, when the grave was opened, the body was gone, and on top of the coffin only the robe the prince had given him remained, neatly folded. Later generations told that this traveler had been none other than Bodhidharma in another form. In the Kamakura period, a temple was built on top of the ancient burial mound said to be his grave, and a statue of Bodhidharma was enshrined there. This is said to be how the temple began. The current main hall was completed in 2004, and inside it, statues of Prince Shotoku and Bodhidharma are enshrined together.
Bodhidharma was a monk who traveled from India to China and is regarded as the founder of Zen. Legend says that at Shaolin Temple on Mount Song, he sat in silence facing a wall for nine years, and the phrase 'nine years facing the wall' comes from this. In autumn, the temple grounds are hushed. Inside the main hall, his statue still sits quietly.
Some people say, 'People cannot change.'
But is that truly so?
Could it be that, without realizing it, they are trying to change others, and because they cannot, they take that as proof and say, 'People cannot change'?
In other words, the axis of change lies in others.
Of course, we cannot change other people, but 'people can change.'
However, that means changing ourselves.
Just think about it.
We cannot change other people, and even if, by some slim chance, we managed to change one person, there are 8 billion people in the world besides you, so it is impossible to go on changing others forever.
But there is just one person you can change.
That person is yourself.
And if you can change that self, your world will change completely.
After my visit, I look back across the temple grounds. The main hall, standing on top of the ancient mound, says nothing. One man, some 1,400 years ago, laid his own robe over a stranger by the roadside at Kataoka; the other, legend says, spent nine years simply facing a wall. Today, the statues of the two are still enshrined quietly in the same hall.