Good morning!
We can see a nice big, bright, beautiful sun this morning, expecting the spring equinox
just within a month. The equinox has the equal day and night. The day and a couple of
days before and after it are called o-higan (お彼岸), the yonder shore, meaning nirvana,
unconditioned peace. The Buddha reached it and anyone can reach it after his example
with practice in peace and prognosis.
Today we have sesshin, embracing the mind (摂心) or touching the heart (接心). This is
the best time to reach nirvana, embracing and touching our hearts and minds. Usually
we are too busy looking and running around somewhere else, scarcely looking inside,
embracing them, much less touching them, the very core of our minds and hearts – the
heart of our life.
But, when we sit solid and serene, our minds also become solid and serene in pure peace
and prognosis. That is to embrace the Buddha mind, which embraces all and the whole
world, touching the core of the mind – witnessing how the mind functions, creates our
worlds,, and lives in such worlds. Thus, we could reach the Shōbōgenzō-nehanmyōshin
(正法眼蔵涅槃妙心), the right Dharma eye stored in the exquisite mind.
A passage of the first volume of Dogen’s Shōbōgenzō, Genjōkōan, Realizing Universal
Truth (現成公案), reads:
When one first seeks the Dharma, one is far away and apart
from the boundary of the Dharma. When the Dharma has
already been rightly transmitted to oneself, one is the person in
one’s own original part.
When one goes downstream in a boat, in turning one’s eyes to
the bank, one mistakenly thinks that the bank is moving; but in
intimately fixing one’s eyes on the boat, one knows that it is the
boat that is moving. In like manner, in discriminating milliards
of dharmas with the body and mind in confusion, one mistakes
one’s mind and one’s nature as ever-abiding. In intimately
carrying one’s actions and returning to this very one, it
becomes clear that milliards of dharmas are not this one.
So, when we are drawn to all the outside things, we think that there are the permanent
selves abiding in our bodies and minds. But, when we touch our minds, we find out that
the bodies and minds are moving, constantly changing, and that there are no such
things as the separate substance called selves. All things are in the Dharma of
Dependent Origination, like the great ocean, unlike bubbles. We mistakenly think our
bodies like bubbles are eternal and the outside banks like ocean changing.
Thus, we have the self-centered, separated, small ideas of ourselves and the worlds.
The common precept verse of the Seven Buddhas says,
Doing all good,
Doing no evils,
Purifying the mind
Is the teaching of all Buddhas.
Only when we purify our minds, can we know what is good and what is evil in the
unbiased, penetrating perspective. Otherwise we are all mistaken and make all kinds of
problems and sufferings not only for ourselves, but also for all others. So, purifying the
mind is the most urgent and essential priority and practice for everyone to actualize for
oneself and for all others.
Dogen says that the Buddha Dharma must be learned and practiced for its own sake,
not for the selves’ sakes. If we do it for ourselves’ sakes, we err, due to our karmas for
the small selfish views and values, creating small, stiff standards, and strifes, resulting
in repeated sufferings. That is why the Buddha said,
Better than those who would conquer thousands upon
thousands in the battlefield are those who would conquer
one’s self. That is the true war conqueror.
If we conquer our small selves, we conquer all. Then, we don’t create any problems or
sufferings. Thus, we conquer all and win all, not just partially winning and partially
defeated. We are all interconnected in this Dharma Dhātu, Realm or Root. What are the
roots? The six sense bases or organs are the roots (and the inseparably connected sense
objects and perceptions are added and called the twelve and eighteen roots,
respectively).
Based on the sense bases we create all sense worlds, act, and create all human inventions
and institution, coins, cars, cities, civilizations, and so forth. Because of our karmas, we
compare, compete, create conflicts, and cause collapses. Some win; some lose. But from
the selfish actions no one wins; no one succeeds – all are diseased, distressed, decay, die,
and destroyed.
So, if we want to realize the wholly wholesome way and world, we must go beyond our
small, separated selves. Then, we will find we have no problems and no sufferings.
Otherwise, we must constantly suffer – causing sufferings all over in time and space.
Only when we solve our birth and death, can we solve our sufferings in sickness, aging,
death, loss, parting, etc. Essentially they come from the appropriated or attached five
aggregates (form, feeling, idea, etc.)
Then, our actions become defiled, individually, socially, and ecologically. Thus, we create
the five calamities of civilization: delusion, bondage, discrimination, exploitation, and
extermination. Only when we embrace our minds, touch our hearts, and purify them,
can we realize the fivefold blisses of culture and cultivation: awakening, freedom,
equality, love, and peace.
Equality in quantity in our body counts does not mean equality in quality in our minds
and hearts. The difference in the essential quality lies in the mundane and the
supramundane, defiled and undefiled. In our relative mundane world we agree on
certain views or values, but they are not necessarily holy (wholly wholesome, selfless
and supramundane, universal and absolute) truth, goodness, beauty, etc.
That is why we must sit, stop our karmas, see the universal absolute or paramount
(parama-attha, parama-artha) truth (sacca, satya), and realize it beyond conventional
(lokiya, mundane) one (sammuti, sammati, agreement). We hope that we can sit and
settle solid and serene in the Buddha mind and the Buddha heart, enjoying this precious
moment here now, never returning and retrievable, seeing the universal absolute truth,
and enjoying amrita, ambrosia of immortality.
2/23/13
