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"Kami sama, Gomen-ne" Dear God, Pardon Me

One day my little four-year-old niece came to visit me. Since there were only boys in my family, the visit of this little girl was like a ray of sunshine, or the opening of a flower. The public gardens are nearby, so I brought her there, and when the time came to return home I took her by the hand and showed her how to cross the park, in which there is a small temple in honor of the Jizo Buddha, protector of children and the poor. My niece noticed it and led me there saying, "Let's go and pray." Since the door was closed, I thought we would pass by, but to my shame, the little girl opened it herself and began to pray fervently. I prayed too, and then asked her, "What did you say?" "I said, Kami sama, pardon me; I have nothing to offer.' " I was moved to the depths, since all I think of saying to God is, "Give me this; do that...." Happily, I did not tell this child to ask God to make her good, or other such things. If I had been that clumsy I would never have felt the purity of that innocent heart. I just squeezed her little hand.

Ikuko Matsumoto

"Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 18:3). A story like this should awaken the hearts of adults who no longer know the meaning of pure prayer. "Pardon me, I have nothing to offer." As St. John of the Cross says, this awareness of our nothingness ( nada), of our poverty, at the very moment we come empty-handed before God who is all (todo), is possible only if we take time out for reflection during the day. The fact is that we are so swamped by our many activities we consider useful to others that we rarely recognize our own neediness and the vanity of life. "Men," said the Little Prince in Saint-Exupery's story, "set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for. Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round."(37) For people like that, life is a hell. In The Failed Man, Osamu Dazai notes, "I can no longer be happy or unhappy. Nothing lasts. There is only hell for me here below. Nothing lasts. This is the only truth in human affairs." To interrupt life's current by prayer leads to the experience of this reality and to the recognition that our true worth does not lie in what we do. As Kamo no Chômei writes, "The river keeps flowing, but the water is never the same."(38) This is also the biblical theme: "All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades" (Is 40:6 7).

You turn us back to dust,

and say, Turn back, you mortals.'

For a thousand years in your sight

are like yesterday when it is past,

or like a watch in the night.

You sweep them away; they are like a dream,

like grass that is renewed in the morning;

in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

in the evening it fades and withers. (Ps 90:3 5)

Are we perhaps "superfluous?" What is our real worth? We must not be afraid to look into our own depths and face our own wretchedness. We can only accept ourselves as what we really are: nothing. The glory of the resurrection cannot be reached without the suffering of having been rejected. In this painful realization we find our salvation. The basic characteristic of the "prayer that cuts" or interrupts our activity is to make us aware of our human nothingness and of the stupidity of putting our confidence in our own actions. Our "hopeless misery" then hopes in God alone. This is the only way to true contemplation, to that meeting with God that scatters the shadows of our death.

The prayer that cuts us off from our activity finally cuts us off from ourselves in the realization that all we can do is worth nothing. What is the use of practicing zazen? What is the good of saying the rosary? We would be tempted to answer, "None," and at that moment we might see from within that prayer is not a human work, but essentially God's work. We cannot approach God by our own strength, let alone reach God. The only thing we can do is "wait for God." A "waiting heart" is the real gift of God, and God draws near the soul who in its poverty forgets all else and waits for God alone. "For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Ps 51:16 17). Neither the prayer of the Pharisee nor a life of perfect observance of the law glorifies God. The tax collector who, far from the altar, dares not even raise his eyes to heaven and strikes his breast saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner," knows God as God really is: just and kind (cf. Lk 18:9 14). If, then, we know how to take the time for solitude and silence, we will remain anchored in the humble awareness of our own sinfulness.

In the quiet of the night

I looked into my heart

And all illusions vanished.

Truth alone remained.

In this self-awareness

I know for certain

That illusion cannot be avoided

And I am filled with compunction.(39)

Thus the prayer of quiet is not something to which one raises oneself. Quite on the contrary, it is the prayer in which, full of sorrow for our own sinfulness, we ask pardon for our sins and beg God's mercy for all that is "unredeemed" within us.

We remain stripped of all pretension in an attitude that becomes, by means of the "prayer that cuts" or interrupts, a prayer that is uninterrupted.