Rev. Danny Fisher

I spent this past Fourth of July weekend in Granville, OH, with some dear friends at our undergraduate alma mater Denison University. I had an absolutely wonderful and incredibly relaxing time with my old pals, and now find myself back in Los Angeles genuinely rejuvenated.

Though the spirit of the weekend was certainly light-hearted and warm, two moments of an entirely different tone altogether stand out in my mind today.

The first came while we were all walking through the campus together on the Fourth. At one point, we found ourselves strolling through the cemetary on campus and someone noticed this headstone:

Luckily, my friend Dave, a longtime professor at Denison, was there to clarify its meaning. As it turns out, when the Life Sciences building on campus was being renovated some years ago, “embryonic and human tissue samples” were found among some of the materials that were being discarded. The decision was made to inter the samples at the cemetary rather than have them incinerated.

Seeing the headstone with the marker “Unknown Infants” over remains that have been clinically described as “embryonic and human tissue samples” certainly got me thinking about certain aspects of the abortion debate as well as the one about stem cell research. I can definitely get lost in thought about such things: medical ethics, rhetoric, and so on. But, as we made our way slowly out of the cemetary, my thoughts turned instead toward Jizo Bodhisattva, who is often described as being (among other things) the patron saint of “children who are caught between the worlds of life and death.” Remembering his mantra, I whispered it quietly to myself: “Om ha-ha-ha vismaye svâhâ.”

Not much longer after that, we were all walking in downtown Granville when an older man called to my friend Spencer and I to help him move a large rock out of the mulch in his garden. “I need to move it so that I can put something else there,” he said. We moved it, and then he went up to his porch for that something: a statue of Guan Yin. I couldn’t help but think that it was a funny coincidence that I should be randomly asked to help with a chore like this. Once the statue was in place, I quietly dedicated the merit and snapped a picture. A moment later, Spencer and I had caught up with the others and our Fourth of July festivities continued.

By this merit, may all obtain omniscience
May it defeat the enemy, wrongdoing
From the stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death
From the ocean of samsara, may I free all beings