View.

This week's five minute Friday prompt is VIEW. Take a look at Lisa-Jo Baker's blog for details, do your own five minutes, post it and leave a comment so I can go take a look at yours.



" ...the journey from Kamakura to Kyoto takes twelve days. If you travel for eleven but stop with only one day remaining, how can you admire the moon over the capital?" - Nichiren Shonin from The Writings of Nichiren Shonin

In Nichiren Buddhism there is a concept known as Ichinen Sanzen, meaning that each moment of each day contains three thousand possibilities, containing each of the ten worlds. or ten lifestates (These are Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Humanity, Heaven, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva and Buddhahood).

Coco choosing her view
from the apricot tree

Our view of our lives is coloured by which ever world/lifestate we are standing in at any given moment. Each world is interlinked and exists within the other. We can be in a state of anger, yet we can also find Buddhahood in there. And Hunger, and Learning and Bodhisattva and all the rest. We could be in a state of Heaven (also known as Rapture) and still experience the lifestate of Hell simultaneously.

The good news is that we can shift our lifestate. We can choose how we view each moment of each day.

Richard Causton, in his book, Buddha in Daily Life, tells a story of how he and a friend are driving together on a gray, cloudy day. Richard thinks the landscape and the sky is beautfiul, his friend thinks it's depressing and terrible. Why? They are looking at the same scenery. How should it be different?

It's not the view that changes, it's the viewer. And the viewer changes according to the lifestate we choose to view things from. And the keyword here is CHOOSE. You choose your view.