‘No Bada Me’ – and Its Very Buddhist Lessons

In a recent monthly online gathering for the Sangha in Texas and for our BCA individual members, we had a new person formerly from Hawaii join our group.  

This lady shared that she had recently lost her husband after 63 years of marriage. I was amazed at how she was able to talk about her husband, and not appear despondent or grief stricken.  

She shared something that her husband, a Hawaiian, used to say in pidgin — “No bada me.” She said “No bada me” means “No bother me,” or “It doesn’t bother me.” She shared that her husband would say that often in his life and he never let things get to him. 

I thought that this was a very Buddhistic expression. Think of how often things bother us in our daily life. We are driving in traffic and someone cuts us off on the freeway. Normally, we curse at them. What if we could say, “No bada me,” and then continue to drive pleasantly rather than be upset the whole morning just because of that one driver on the freeway.  

What if the stock market drops and we lost a ton of money in our investments. Normally, we might be really upset, but what if we could say, “No bada me,” and then move on. What if our boss tells us at work that the company is downsizing and looking for younger staff and that we are being laid off. What if we could say to ourselves (but not directly to our boss), “No bada me.” What if we go for our annual checkup and the doctor says to us, “I am sorry but I have bad news. Your X-ray shows that you have cancer.”  What if we could respond with, “No bada me.”  

Shin Buddhism has a statement just like that. In the “Tannisho,” Shinran Shonin’s devout follower, Yuien, recalls Shinran Shonin to say that the Nembutsu is the unobstructed path (mugedo no michi). This means that for the follower of the Nembutsu, nothing in life is an obstacle or hindrance. Not losing your job, not losing your spouse, not even being told you have cancer is an obstruction. A person of the Nembutsu is able to say, “No bada me.”  

This does not mean you have an indifference to life or that you are cold and unemotional. To me, “No bada me,” does not mean, “I couldn’t care less,” or “Who cares?” It means to have the wisdom to not let things get to us, from small things to big things.  

For this lady from Hawaii, I am sure she deeply misses her husband and is grieving in her own way, but she is not devastated by losing her husband. She has learned his attitude of living a life of “No bada me,” and is facing this great challenge with the same spirit that her husband lived with.  

Throughout the history of Shin Buddhism, countless Nembutsu followers have lived in the spirit of “No bada me,” or the unobstructed path of the Nembutsu. They have faced great challenges, like living under the rule of tyrants, living through world wars, surviving the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, enduring the internment camps in the United States, and facing the loss of a loved one or, in some cases, many loved ones.  

Those Nembutsu followers found not only comfort and solace in the Nembutsu, but they found light, wisdom, strength, and a will to live on, in the face of great adversity.  Some have had to follow the Nembutsu path in secret, meeting in caves to avoid being executed for simply following their religious faith.  

That is the life that the Nembutsu offers us, the great unobstructed path in which nothing in life is an obstacle. We just recite the Nembutsu and move on, or, if we are from Hawaii, we might say, “No bada me!”