愛別離苦の解決：Solution to Separation Suffering

諸苦の解決　５

愛別離苦の解決

草刈正雄は米空軍兵の父ロバート・トーラーと母スエ子との間に生まれ母からは朝鮮で戦死したと聞かされていましたが実は2023年まで父は生きており、その家族を尋ねるファミリー・ヒストリーを見ました。(NHK1, 9/20/26, 23:50-, 8/14/23）

東京からノースカロライナのグリーンズボローまで約三千里そこの縁者達に迎えられ一員となり亡父の墓を訪ねました。生別の「母を尋ねて三千里」は生別離苦の苦難の旅と母の生きる力を戻す物語でありその当時の状況を写していたのでした。

ブッダは誕生間も無く母を失い道元も幼少に母を失い、リンカーンやガンジーも母や父・妻を亡くし、ミケランジェロは母を幼少に亡くし、最愛の子イエスを十字架上に酷刑を受けて亡くした母マリアの悲嘆の彫像ピエタで愛別離苦に刻みました。

「人々の涙は大海となった」とブッダは言いましたが、天災・人災でどれ程多くの人々が無惨に命を断たれたでしょうか？　戦争では何十百千万が殺傷され家族・氏族・部族・種族が殲滅され奴隷となり苦しみ放射能は何世代にも渡って続きます。

仏教にはパターチャーラが夫、二人の息子、両親、兄弟を災害で次々と亡くす人生の苦の現実を伝え、キサー・ゴータミーは我子の死体をブッダに示し生かす薬を懇願しましたが、死者を出した事の無い家から芥子を貰って来る様に言われました。

ゴータミーは家々を周ったが芥子を得ることは出来ず、死が誰もが受け入れなければならない真実である事を知りました。彼女もパターチャーラも死は誰にもあることを知り涅槃・覚醒の道に進み苦しむ者皆への慈悲・知恵を得る様になりました。

愛別離苦は誰にも訪れます。しかし業三毒貪瞋痴・金物力による不慮の別離・死は避けなければなりません。法三学戒定慧・命心和によって家族・親族・先祖・縁者・社会・環境の恩に報い真善美聖の世界を作る事こそその苦の解決です。

普遍法縁起は一切が相依・相対で孤立・絶対は無く、特に人間は社会的動物であり仁・愛・慈・悲に依らなければ平等・平和・自由・自治は崩壊し個人・社会・環境諸共に破局に向かいます。耐えられない悲苦を限り無い慈悲奉仕に変えましょう！

Solution to Separation Suffering

Masao Kusakari was born to Robert Tolar, a U.S. Air Force serviceman, and his Japanese mother, Sueko. His mother had told him that his father had been killed in the Korean War, but in fact his father had lived for many more years. I watched an episode of Family History in which Kusakari searched for his father’s family. (NHK General TV, Sept. 20, 2026, 11:50 p.m., special followup part of the part on Aug. 14, 2023.)

From Tokyo to Greensboro, North Carolina, is approximately three thousand ri (4km). There Kusakari was welcomed by his American relatives as one of the family, and he visited his late father’s grave. From the Apennines to the Andes, known in Japan as Three Thousand Ri in Search of Mother, tells of the hardships of separation while still living and of a son’s journey that restores his mother’s will to live. The story reflected the social circumstances of its time.

The Buddha lost his mother soon after birth, and Dōgen also lost his mother in childhood. Lincoln and Gandhi experienced the deaths of beloved family members—mother, father, or wife. Michelangelo lost his mother as a young child and later carved the Pietà, the grieving Virgin Mary holding her beloved son Jesus, who had died after the agony of crucifixion—an enduring image of the suffering of separation from those we love.

The Buddha said, in effect, that the tears we have shed through the long course of saṃsāra are greater than the waters of the great oceans. How many people have had their lives cruelly cut short by natural and human-made disasters? In wars, countless millions have been killed or wounded; families, clans, tribes, and peoples have been devastated, enslaved, and made to suffer, while the effects of wars and radioactive contamination can persist across generations.

Buddhism preserves the story of Paṭācārā, who lost her husband, two sons, parents, and brother in a succession of calamities, vividly revealing the reality of life’s suffering. Kisā Gotamī, grieving over the death of her child, brought the child’s body to the Buddha and begged him for medicine that would restore the child to life. The Buddha told her to bring him mustard seeds from a household in which no one had ever died.

Gotamī went from house to house, but she could find no such household. She came to understand that death is a truth that everyone must eventually accept. Both she and Paṭācārā came to see that death comes to everyone. They entered the path of Nirvāṇa and awakening, transforming their suffering into wisdom and compassion for all who suffer.

Separation from those we love comes to everyone. Yet unnecessary unnatural separation and death caused by the karmic Triple Poisons—greed, hatred, and delusion, and the pursuit of money, matter, and might—must be prevented. The solution to this suffering lies in practicing the Dharmic Triple Learning—ethical conduct, samadhi (synthesis), and wisdom—and cultivating life, heart, and harmony, thereby repaying our indebtedness to family, relatives, ancestors, all those with whom we are connected, society, and the environment, and creating a world of truth, goodness, beauty, and holiness.

The universal Dharma of Dependent Co-origination reveals that everything is mutually related and relative: nothing exists in isolation or as an absolute. Human beings, in particular, are social beings. Without humanity, love, friendship, and compassion, equality, peace, freedom, and autonomy deteriorate, endangering individuals, society, and the environment together.

Let us transform unbearable sorrow and suffering into unbound sympathy and service!