Issue 267

At the time of your initial resolve, what were the outstanding characteristics which you saw in my Dharma that caused you to suddenly cast aside the deep kindness and love found in the world? The Buddha asked Ananda what first made him decide to renounce worldly love and leave the home-life; what good states of mind did he experience that led to his resolve.

In this world the kindness of parents is very great and the love between couples is particularly intense. If people could redirect the love which exists between married couples into love for the study and practice of the Buddhadharma, then everyone would realize Buddhahood. Unfortunately, most people can’t do that. If you can redirect this love to listen to the sutra, to study and cherish the Buddhadharma, the possibility would be limitless!

What about Venerable Ananda? In the very beginning he had changed his mind and was able to cast aside his love for his wife and his parents. He no longer paid attention to the deep kindness and love of his parents or his wife. In fact, he didn’t care for anything else except to follow the Buddha and left the home-life. Hence the Buddha asked him: “What were the outstanding characteristics which you saw in the first place?” Outstanding characteristics are most supreme and unlike the ordinary characteristics.
This section of the text is about the Buddha asking Ananda for his reason to leave the home-life: “What is the reason you are able to put down everything? What makes you no longer pay attention to your parent’s deep kindness or your wife’s emotional love? What makes you totally disregard everything after you saw me? Speak up! Quickly!” the Buddha said. “Don’t think about it, just tell me straight out about what made you decide to leave home.”

Ananda said to the Buddha, “I saw the Tathagata’s thirty-two characteristics, which were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable, that his entire body had a shimmering transparence just like that of crystal. I often thought to myself that these characteristics cannot be born of desire and love. Why? The vapors of desire are coarse and murky. From foul and putrid intercourse comes a turbid mixture of pus and blood which cannot give off such a magnificent, pure, and brilliant concentration of purple-golden light. And so, I gazed upward with great longing, followed the Buddha, and caused the hair to fall from my head.”

Since he was supposed to speak plainly, Ananda said to the Buddha, “I saw the Tathagata’s thirty-two characteristics, which were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable.” From the invisible crown on the top of his head down to his level, well-proportioned feet, thirty-two major and eighty minor characteristics adorn the Buddha’s body. If you want to know them all, the Great Dictionary of Buddhism has detail descriptions and you can study them together.

Editor’s Note: The Great Dictionary of Buddhism lists the following thirty-two characteristics. Another name for it is thirty-two major characteristics of a great person:

1. Level feet
2. Thousand-spoked wheel mark on the feet
3. Long, slender fingers
4. Pliant hands and feet
5. Toes and fingers finely webbed
6. Full size heels
7. Arched insteps
8. Thighs like a royal stag
9. Hands reaching below the knees
10. Well-retracted male organ
11. Height and stretch of arms equal
12. Every hair-root blue colored
13. Body hair graceful and curly
14. Golden-hued body
15. Ten-foot aura around him
16. Soft, smooth skin
17. Soles, palms, shoulders and crown of head well-rounded
18. Area below the armpits well-filled
19. A dignified body like that of a lion [king] 20. Body erect and upright
21. Full round shoulders
22. Forty teeth
23. Teeth white, even and adjoining
24. Four canine teeth pure white
25. Full cheeks like those of a lion
26. All food tastes supreme
27. Tongue long and broad
28. Voice deep and resonant
29. Eyes deep blue
30. Eyelashes like a royal bull’s
31. White urna curl that emits light between brows
32. Fleshy protuberance on the crown of the head

“These thirty-two characteristics were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable, finer than anything I’d ever seen,” Ananda said. “Nothing in the world can compare to the wondrous adornment of your appearance, Buddha!”

The Buddha’s Reward-body, his entire body had a shimmering transparence just like that of crystal. One can see the internal pure bright light from outside, just like that of crystal, so beautiful and perfect. That was Ananda’s answer to the Buddha. He said that he saw the fine characteristics of the Buddha, and his body is like a blue colored crystal, so wonderfully beautiful and perfect. When Ananda often thought to himself that these characteristics cannot be born of desire and love. This ‘thought’ is just his ‘conscious mind’. He used his ordinary discriminating consciousness, his ordinary mind which is subject to production and extinction. How, he thought, could the thirty-two special characteristics of the Buddha be born from emotional, lustful, desire and thoughts of love? Why? What makes me think like that?

The vapors of desire are coarse and murky. Vapors of desire is the sexual ambience between men and women. It is coarse and murky! It is very unclean. Why is it unclean? From foul and putrid intercourse comes a turbid mixture of pus and blood. Men and women have intercourse and think it is good, but it actually gives off vapors which are extremely rancid. It contains pus and blood and is very messy, unclean and turbid. We can’t rely on our bodies born from the desire of men and women to give off such a magnificent, pure, and brilliant concentration of purple-golden light, the color of distant mountains, which constantly illumines the Buddha’s body.

Thinking this, Ananda gazed upward with great longing, followed the Buddha, and thus the hair fell from his head. Because of the Buddha’s fine characteristics; his body is not born as a result of his parents’ intercourse; and Ananda also saw the benefit of the brilliant concentration of purple-golden light, hence he admired the Buddha’s appearance like one who is thirsty for water. Ananda forsook one kind of love, his emotional love for his family, and took up another kind: he fell in love with the Buddha’s appearance. And that is the reason Ananda left the home-life.

Right here is where Ananda made his mistake. He didn’t leave home out of a genuine desire to cultivate the Way. After he left home, he concentrated too heavily on studying the Sutras. He was fond of the Buddha’s appearance and redirected his love for his family to love for the Buddha’s appearance. Although it is not the love of desire, nevertheless, it is still a kind of emotional love. Earlier, I said that you should redirect the love which exists between married couples to a love for the Buddhadharma. However, you cannot put an end to birth and death just by loving the Buddhadharma.

What must you do? You need to genuinely cultivate the Way in real practice. You have to be mindful of what you are doing at all times and in all places. You must never forget for even a moment to practice and uphold the Buddhadharma. Early in the morning and late at night you should be studying the Shurangama Sutra, sitting in meditation, and listening to the Sutra lectures. Don’t have false thinking and don’t talk so much, since neither can help you at all in your study of the Sutra or your investigation of Ch’an. You should stake your very lives on the work and sacrifice everything else in order to study Buddhism. Then the understanding you gain will enable you to be genuinely wise and truly intelligent!

But since Venerable Ananda was solely concerned with loving the Buddha, he didn’t cultivate samadhi. He thought (as he confesses in the text), “The Buddha is my older cousin. When the time comes the Buddha will give me samadhi power.” He didn’t realize that no one could stand in for him, in body or in mind and this was his mistake. Ananda was very intelligent, probably more intelligent than any of us, but when he concentrated on studying the Sutras at the expense of cultivating samadhi, he was too smart for his own good. He mastered the words but not the substance. He could remember all the Dharma the Buddha had spoken and never got one word of it wrong, but without any samadhi-power, he fell prey under the spell of the “Brahma Heaven” mantra of Matangi’s daughter.