An international team of scientists shared the first image of a supermassive black hole on April 10th.
That image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. It is the hisotrical unveiling of the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow.
This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun.
If we say that our life’s starting point is a black hole. We can say that each life on earth has a history of 13.8 billion light-years behind it even though we haven’t been born yet.
Our parents and grandparents handed over the baton to us. We are also living our parent’s life.
The theme of 750th Shinran Shonin memorial service was “Now, life is living you.”
If we think of this big Life as an Ocean, then our individual life is a wave on it.
We are living in a big ocean and it is not separate from the wave, we are part of the ocean.
We won’t disappear when we die, we just return to the big wave of the Big Life.
The theme was “Now, life is living you.” It is not “we are live our own individual life.” You don’t own the life you are living. Regardless of whether we see it or not, regardless of whether we understand it or not, we are part of the Big Life and its history that goes back billions of years into the past.
The black hole, far far away, 55 million light-years from here, is connected to us. It is a part of us.
We can restate the theme “Now, life is living you,” as “Now, your parents’ life is living you” or “Your grandparents’ life is living you” or “Your great grandparents’ life is living you” or “Your ancestor’s life is living you”
“If you ate a tomato for breakfast then the tomato’s life is living you.”
Countless things sustain your life, our life. It is working now, working now to keep you alive. Long ago people called this working of the Big Life “Amida”.