Thank you for your participation in the Vesak Day (commemorating Buddha’s
Birthday, Awakening, and Parinirvāna, Perfect Nirvana) celebration! This is a good
occasion for us to reflect and relive the Buddha’s Way. He opened the great gate of
amrita, ambrosia of immortality, for all for the first time in the whole history of
living beings.
We had to take a detour o the way here today due to the flooding caused by the
heavy rain the day before yesterday. It rained cats and dogs and I had to stop
my car to escape from the tornado warning just a couple of miles from my
home to shelter in a gas station. As the tornado danger seemed to pass, I dared
to go home drenched.
The heavy rain storm stopped soon, as if there was nothing. Nirvana means no wind,
no tornado, of karmas. The Buddha said that all living beings are karma-heirs,
karma-relatives, and karma-machines. Only when we stop our karmas, settle in
nirvana, can we become awakened from our delusions, as if we wake up from our
dreadful dreams.
Only in this way can we be awakened from the beginningless night of nescience.
The Buddha lived always on joy, joy of nirvana, even though he could not get his food
in his begging bowl in his alms round. He said that we can not reach the limit of the
world by walking. It is reached only by witnessing the true nature of the world, the
heart. Vimalakirti said, “The heart pure, the land pure.” Only the heart can find and
feel purity, peace, harmony, and happiness.
Carl Busse made a poem, Beyond the mountains: Beyond the mountains, people
say, lives happiness. We seek happiness beyond mountains, and come home with
tearful eyes. We vainly seek outside, leaving the inside – the very core, coeur, heart of
the essence of us and all. Anything outside us must be lost, and eventually
unattained. The heart is the source of life of us and all.
I watched a TV program, Science Zero, from Japan last night, which said that our
blood veins, if put into a line, measure 100,000km, about two and a half circles of
the globe. To let our hearts pump in the fresh air and pump out the fresh blood that
long, we must truly work with the free and full function of our breathing. Breathing
regulates usually uncontrolled functions, blood pressure, heart rate, etc.
Zazen, sitting Zen, is the essential function and functional essence of the Buddha’s
heart, Buddha Heart Seal, sealing everyone into Buddhahood, stopping physical,
verbal, and mental karmas, settling in nirvana, seeing the Dharma of Dependent
Origination, that all phenomena are dependently originated on causes and
conditions, thus cease without them.
As you see in the handout sheet, Four Stages of Zen (Jhāna, Dhyāna, Chan,
Meditation). Investigation, contemplation, joy, comfort, and single-pointedness of
the heart cease in this order as the stages advance with the conceptions, emotions
(five coverings), and volitions (four fluxes) disappear. Eventually equanimity and
samādhi lead to nirvana.
Here and now is the pivotal point of our life. So, we must work with our whole-
hearted striving and strength to circulate the fresh blood and air all through the
body, brain, bio-sphere, and big-globe since Big Bang. Our true body is the Dharma-
body, Dharma-dhātu, beyond small skin sacks. It is the limitless life ocean beyond
bursting bubbles. Then, every day is a good day.
6/2/13 (Vesak Day Dharma talk)
Note:
1. Carl H. Busse (1872-1918) made a poem titled “Over the Mountains“:
Over the mountains,
Far to wander, people say,
Lives the Happiness.
Aah, so I went,
In the swarms of others,
Came back with cried out eyes.
Over the mountains,
Far, far away over there, people say,
Lives the Happiness.
2. In the Four Stages of Zen, emotions
represented by the five coverings (lust-desire, covetousness-malevolence, sloth-
drowsiness, agitation-worry, doubt) disappear at the first stage; volitions represented
by the four fluxes (lust, becoming, view, nescience) disappear at the second stage.
strange-types-ice-sun-dog-Photograph by Wang Ying, National Geographic