Dharma Talk by Chris Kakuyo Leibow
Today I want to explore a profound line from the Tan Butsu Ge, a poem found in the preamble of the ancient Buddhist scripture known as the Larger Sutra of Boundless Life. This particular verse speaks of how “the voice of the Buddha’s enlightenment reverberates through everything”—a concept that bridges the mythical, the imaginal, and the everyday aspects of our spiritual lives.
The Tan Butsu Ge holds special significance in our tradition at Bright Dawn. When our founding teacher, Gyomay Kubose, was questioning whether he would even remain Buddhist, it was this poem and its commentary that transformed his understanding entirely. He credited it with cementing his commitment to the Buddhist path.
Interestingly, this same text often becomes a stumbling block for many Western students entering our program, precisely because of its devotional nature—it reads like a love poem to a teacher, which can feel uncomfortably religious to those who have left previous faith traditions.
As Western Buddhists, we face a unique challenge. Much of how we encounter the Dharma remains intellectual rather than emotive. This stems partly from our wariness of emotional investment in spiritual matters, having often left previous religious traditions. We’ve become gun-shy about anything that feels “too much like religion.”
Yet the question remains: How do we connect to the Buddha and the teachings not just intellectually, but with our hearts?
To understand the Tan Butsu Ge, we must first understand its context within Pure Land tradition. According to the teachings, Shakyamuni Buddha adapted his message to meet each person where they were. For monastics, he provided challenging practices—deep meditation, perfections, mindfulness training, and strict rules. For ordinary householders like ourselves, he told the story of Amida Buddha.
The story begins with Dharmakara, originally a king who encounters a Buddha (Lokesavara, sometimes associated with Avalokiteshvara) and experiences a profound awakening. In the poem, Dharmakara addresses this teacher with words of profound love and admiration:
“Your radiant face like a mountain peak etching the first burst of morning light has awakened me and has awesome and unequaled majesty.
This isn’t mere flattery—it’s the language of someone who has fallen in love. When we fall in love with another person, don’t we love gazing at their face? There’s something beautiful about being truly seen by another, and in this story, Dharmakara experiences perhaps the first time anyone has actually seen him for who he truly is. We all desperately want to be seen, and here, the Buddha sees Dharmakara completely.
In Pure Land cosmology, the Pure Land represents a realm where everything teaches the Dharma. The trees, the birds flying overhead, the wind through the branches, the babbling streams—all of these are continuously disseminating the Buddha’s teachings. Nothing in this realm is merely decorative; everything serves the purpose of spiritual instruction. The sound of the Dharma is ever-present, always reverberating.
When we say “the Pure Land is here now,” we recognize that our everyday world serves this same function. This is our Pure Land, and it too is teaching us the Dharma constantly, if only we have the ears to hear it.
The line from the Tan Butsu Ge that particularly captures my attention reads: “The whole universe vibrates with the great sound of your enlightenment.”
The poet’s choice of the word “vibrates” is significant. Contemporary physics confirms that everything is indeed in constant motion—every cell in our bodies, even the cells in our bones and brain, are moving continuously. The space between atoms in our cells is proportionally greater than the distance between planetary objects in our solar system. We are more empty space than solid matter, and we are all constantly humming with this perpetual movement.
At the heart of everything is movement, vibration. We are all resonating with the fundamental frequency of existence.
Haya Akegarasu, Reverend Gyomay’s teacher, offered this commentary on the Buddha’s voice: “No matter which direction you face, all you hear is the voice of the Buddha.” He explained that this state of awareness allows us to find spiritual nourishment not only in Buddhist texts but in all forms of literature—the Lotus Sutra, the Bible, even the newspaper.
When our spiritual ear is properly tuned, we can hear “the reverberating sound of enlightenment which flows with a rhythm throughout the universe’s ten directions.”
This means we can hear the rhythm of true enlightenment in, Beethoven’s music, he whir of factory machinery, a person’s noble voice speaking from their spirit, the sound of a piano, the rumble of a train.
All of these can be heard as echoes of enlightenment’s noble truth.
As Western Buddhists, we must discover the imagery and symbols that personally connect us to the Dharma and the Buddha. While some find inspiration in traditional Buddha statues, others may not. What matters is finding something that resonates within us, connecting us to the teachings in a visceral rather than merely intellectual way.
The Buddhist teachings and wisdom are not confined to Buddhist books, scriptures, temples, or podcasts. The truth of the Dharma unfolds all around us, guiding us toward awakening, awareness, and mindful living. This concept appears not only in Pure Land sutras but also in the Flower Garland Sutra, which tells us that the voice of the Buddha permeates all realms, manifesting through all phenomena—through wind and even the blossoming of flowers.
During a previous discussion, Fellowship members shared where they hear the voice of the Buddha in their daily lives:
- In the silence of mountains
- In the wind
- In a baby’s babbling
- In rainfall and sunrise
- In moments of warmth and connection
- In the teaching quality of metaphors
- In moments of presence and witnessing
One particularly powerful insight came from recognizing that unique moments—like a specific sunset painting the sky—will never be repeated exactly. Each moment is a singular gift, a unique teaching offered just once.
While we naturally recognize the Buddha’s voice in beautiful moments, there’s profound wisdom in also hearing it in our triggers, stress, and trauma. These difficult moments serve as calls to return to presence, to sit with ourselves, to be with our emotions. The beautiful moments are gifts, but the challenging ones remind us to come back to mindful awareness.
In traditional Pure Land Buddhism, when we recite “Namo Amida Butsu,” it’s understood that it’s not merely us speaking—it’s the Buddha moving through us, the Buddha speaking through our voice. It’s our mouth, but the Buddha’s voice expressing the fundamental vibration that exists in everything around us.
Living in recognition that we exist within the Pure Land means understanding that everything is teaching us Dharma constantly. Consider an autumn leaf—imperfect by conventional standards, perhaps misshapen or damaged, yet teaching us about impermanence and rebirth. From a Dharma perspective, there’s no such thing as perfect or imperfect; there’s simply what is.
As one Dharma teacher beautifully expressed it: “What a leaf calls death, the tree calls spring—leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf.” The leaf becomes part of the soil and is reborn as a new leaf on the same tree. This is why we shouldn’t be too hasty to remove all fallen leaves from our yards.
The voice of the Buddha isn’t limited to Buddhist contexts. We can find it in the wisdom of all traditions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Indigenous creation stories. These represent humanity’s 10,000-year dialogue about what it means to be human. When someone says “Thank God,” they’re using their words for the same reality we might call Buddha-nature or the Great Mystery.
We need not be attached to specific terminology. The power lies in remaining open to learning: What is this trying to teach me? What can I learn from this experience, this person, this tree?
Trees offer a perfect example of this direct teaching. Their power, their rootedness in the earth, their reaching toward sky—these qualities speak to something profound in us. If you’ve never truly looked a tree “in the eye,” I encourage you to try. There’s a green fire within them, a presence that communicates directly to those willing to receive it.
This is the power of the imaginal—not whether something is scientifically verifiable, but what it teaches us, how it helps us connect more deeply to our lives and to those around us. This relational connection to the Dharma and the Buddha transcends mere intellectual understanding.
The voice of the Buddha calls to us from everywhere—from the beauty of nature, from the wisdom found in all literature, from the kindness of others, and even from difficult people who serve as our teachers. Our suffering itself attempts to wake us from unconscious living. Buddha, after all, simply means “awake.”
All around us, things are trying to wake us up—nature, teachers, communities, even our struggles. Teachers wait everywhere to guide us on our spiritual journey, as long as we turn toward them with willingness to listen and hear the voice of the Buddha speaking through everything.
In this recognition, every moment becomes sacred, every encounter a teaching, and every sound—from a baby’s laughter to a train’s rumble—part of the great symphony of awakening that reverberates throughout the universe.
Namu Amida Butsu
Everyday Nembutsu 