The Wandering Man: Onegaishimasu

by Jim Dittmann
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Mark UttechBy: Tamon Mark Uttech

Onegaishimasu,

How are you? The pronunciation of onegaishimasu  is: on- a-guy-she-mush. It is usually said with a short bow from the waist, or a slight nod of the head. So now you know. It translates as: “Please, to share…”

Thanks for writing. I think it is common to wonder how someone who is incarcerated can be lax; isn’t time all they have? But, no. Someone who is incarcerated remains human. 

I hope that answer is not too simple.

When I first went back to school, I took a course in “Contemporary American Society.”  It was a class of American problems. In that very first class, the professor taught:

“The only thing one needs to have a problem is another one.” He also told us that it was not easy to get an ‘A’ in his class. “Maybe in the whole class, 2 people will get an  ‘A’ ,” he said.

Long story short, I got one. It’s a good memory, a very good experience. We can never foretell what sort of experience we will have whenever we try to do, be, or learn something.

Speaking of Buddhist sutras, the zen master Taisen Deshimaru Roshi once taught that there are more than 80,000 sutras and a person who attempts to read them all may well end up complicated and crazy. 

I guess that may not be much different than a person who attempts to digest the entire Bible. When I was in the Jefferson County Jail, the library was pitiful, the Bible was the only spiritual book available; it was then that I noticed Ecclesiastes is probably the most Buddhist book there.

“There is nothing new under the sun…”
Religious life is reflection.

In our younger time, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” (Janis Joplin)

And in our most recent time, “They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, no, no, no” (Amy Winehouse)

Now Whitney Houston has been found in a bathtub, just like Jim Morrison so many years ago.

You can try and go back
to where you once were
but it won’t be Spring until after Winter.

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