Showers of Blessings

 Well, obviously it doesn't seem that way a lot of the time. And looking across our world, hearing the news most days, having trust and faith that a "shower of blessings" is always around us is something to be laughed at and ridiculed. Yet I have trust that it is so, the culmination of my life and thoughts up until this point.

I'm non-theist, no belief in transcendent Beings, either He or She, and prefer the words "Reality-as-is". Reality as infinite compassion, infinite wisdom, infinite potential. Always unfolding.

Often - I seem to observe - belief in a Him up there simply leads to subtle (and not so subtle..... ) forms of manipulation, leads also to bargains being struck. This does not have to be so - theists should perhaps pay heed to one of the great Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, who said this of true obedience and prayer:-

In true obedience there should be no ‘I want this or that to happen’ or ‘I want this or that thing’ but only a pure going out of what is our own. And therefore in the very best kind of prayer that we can pray there should be no ‘give me this particular virtue or way of devotion’ or ‘yes, Lord, give me yourself or eternal life’, but rather ‘Lord, give me only what you will and do, Lord, only what you will and in the way that you will’. This kind of prayer is as far above the former as heaven is above earth. And when we have prayed in this way, then we have prayed well, having gone out of ourselves and entered God in true obedience. But just as true obedience should have no ‘I want this’, neither should it ever hear ‘I don’t want’, for ‘I don’t want’ is pure poison for all true obedience.

Eckhart is speaking of "selflessness", and in the non-theistic Faith of Buddhism, the word pointing to this is anatta, or not-self (which has nothing whatsoever to do with any denial of a "soul" or any of the rest of the nonsense that can be read in certain quarters)

But getting back to showers of blessings, any effort to manipulate the myriad dharmas of Reality-as-is is simply superstition or magic – it has no truth. Compassion is poured down (or up, or across) irrespective of the machinations of the practitioner, and also whether we know it is so or not. Yet if we play our part, in receiving, in turning to the light, we reflect and magnify the effect for the benefit of others, and this is only likely to happen when we have "escaped from our addiction to self – self-worth, self-esteem, self-assertion, self-entitlement and all other forms of trying to rearrange the universe so that we ourselves are the centre around which it revolves" (a quote from a Dharma book)

From the Lotus Sutra "The Parable of the Dharma Rain":-

I bring fullness and satisfaction to the world,
like rain that spreads its moisture everywhere.
Eminent and lowly, superior and inferior,
observers of precepts, violators of precepts,
those fully endowed with proper demeanor,
those not fully endowed,
those of correct views, of erroneous views,
of keen capacity, of dull capacity -
I cause the Dharma rain to rain on all equally,
never lax or neglectful.
When all the various living beings
hear my Law,
they receive it according to their power,
dwelling in their different environments.....
......The Law of the Buddhas
is constantly of a single flavour,
causing the many worlds
to attain full satisfaction everywhere;
by practicing gradually and stage by stage,
all beings can gain the fruits of the way.