Issue 310

Therefore, I know that your mind is fundamentally wonderful, bright, and pure. You yourself are confused and deluded. You miss what is fundamental, and you are caught in the turning wheel of the six paths, tossing and floating on the stormy sea of birth and death all the time. No wonder the Thus Come One says that you are the most pitiable of creatures.

Shakyamuni Buddha said: Everything which can be returned is clearly not yours. Then, if anything that has nowhere to be returned to is not yours, whose are those? But you still don’t understand. Therefore, I said, “I know that your mind is fundamentally wonderful, bright, and pure.” You dare not admit that it is your true mind. So, I know that you yourself are confused and deluded. There is no place for your true mind to return to. You are confused, meaning you don’t understand; you are deluded, meaning you appear seemingly right, but not. You lost your fundamental nature and you don’t understand your true mind, Hence, you have plunged down and are caught in the turning wheel of the six paths. Your fundamental, true mind escapes you. This is what I meant when I said earlier that you lost it. It is something that originally belongs to you, but you don’t realize it, so it seems lost.

How does one plunged down? If one fails to understand one’s true mind, then life after life one falls and does not ascend. Why have you fallen so low? It is simply because you have lost that true mind of yours. This ‘loss’ is akin to a total perishing, yet it is not a true or absolute perishing; but to suffer such a downfall – it is a true, utter downfall!

Where will one end up? One falls into the sea of suffering, and one turns this way and that, tossing and floating on the stormy sea of birth and death all the time. Being in the sea where one suffers birth and death is just like being tossed about on the surface of the open ocean and being drowned. If birth and death have not been ended, it is like drifting aimlessly in the vast ocean. Even if you can handle the water and swim, after being tossed about for long enough you will drown.

No wonder the Thus Come One says that you are the most pitiable of creatures. For this reason, the Tathagata has given you the name “Most pitiable of creatures”, declaring that you are truly a pitiable being!

Ananda said, “I recognize that the seeing-nature does not return to anything, but how can I come to know that it is my true nature?”

The Buddha explains the true mind once but Ananda does not understand. He explains it twice and Ananda still doesn’t understand. He explains it three, four, five, six times more and still Ananda does not understand. He still has not clearly recognized his true mind. Earlier, the Buddha spoke of how you are constantly adrift and drowning within the cycle of birth and death. Life-and-death is analogous to the vast ocean, and the karmic offenses you created are analogous to the water in the vast ocean. Your human body gets tossed back and forth in the water of the vast ocean. That represents living beings’ giving rise to delusion, creation of karma, and undergoing of retribution. Not recognizing the true mind, one creates karma and drifts along with the karma created, within a dimension like a sea. It is said, “The sea of karma is vast.” It has no boundary. Sometimes you are tossed about on its surface, sometimes you sink to the bottom. It is dangerous to be in that water! That is what makes Ananda pitiable.

Now Ananda has another doubt. What evidence is there that he became suspicious? Ananda said, “I recognize that the seeing-nature does not return to anything.” The word “recognize” reveals Ananda’s doubt. In a sense, he ‘did’ know. Yet in another he didn’t; so how could he claim to know? He still didn’t quite grasp what that ‘knowing’ actually entailed. In fact, he says he knows that the seeing-nature does not return to anything, as the Buddha has mentioned earlier, the eight characteristics each have their respective objects of return; yet regarding this ‘seeing-nature’, even if you wish to give it to someone else, you could not. Although Ananda said, “I now realize that this seeing-nature cannot be returned,” but in fact he doesn’t know what it is ultimately all about. Within his “knowing” that the seeing-nature does not return, a doubt has already arisen, a doubt which resides in and is produced from the so-called knowing.

But how can I come to know that it is my true nature? Now he makes it even clearer. “I know that the seeing-nature does not return to anything. Non-returnable is one thing; but how do I know it is my true nature?” If he had no doubts, if he really recognized it, how could he fail to know it is his true nature? He knows the doctrine of being unable to give the seeing-nature to anyone, but he still does not know that the seeing-nature is truly the nature of his mind. That is why he asked, “How can I know?” – asking how he could ascertain that this seeing-nature was indeed his true mind-nature, for he still did not know.

After all that the Buddha has explained, Ananda still doesn’t have a mind. It is still lost, because he still doesn’t recognize it and still doesn’t know he has it. I believe that at this point in the sutra, Ananda clearly has no sense of inner mastery whatsoever. Why is there no such mastery? Simply because he has not recognized this true mind.

The Buddha told Ananda, “Now I have a question for you. At this point you have not yet attained the purity of no outflows. Blessed by the Buddha’s spiritual strength, you are able to see into the first dhyana heavens without any obstruction, just as Aniruddha looks at Jambudvipa with such clarity as he might an amala fruit in the palm of his hand.

The Buddha sees that Ananda is simply too pitiful. He repeatedly answered Ananda’s multiple questions but Ananda still doesn’t understand after repeated explanations. This is because Ananda puts all his effort into harnessing his erudition. As it is said, “Branches grow from the nodes.” As in a tree, the leaves grow from the branches. Without branches, how can there be leaves? But Ananda wants to produce leaves by making branches spring from the nodes. Since Ananda was so pitiful, the Buddha taught him in a spirit of “great kindness where there are no affinities” and “great compassion where the substance is the same.”

You should be most compassionate towards whoever has the least affinities with you. That is what is meant by “the great kindness where there are no affinities.” If they have no conditions with you, if they don’t get along with you, you should have a compassionate attitude toward them. I have told you that “one person is all people; all people are just one person.” One is all, all is one. That is what is meant by great compassion where the substance is the same. For example, I consider your difficulties as I would my own. No matter what, I think of a way to alleviate your difficulties.

I often see some of my disciples smoking cigarettes, and I hope that they will quit smoking so they can align well with the Buddha’s energy. If you stop smoking, you can breathe the same air as the Buddha. If you don’t, then the clouds of smoke you breathe in and the veil of fog you breathe out will keep the light of the Buddha from reaching you. Therefore, I hope that every one of my disciples who has taken refuge with me – everyone who truly wishes to study the Buddha-dharma – will cast off this bad habit which is not in accord with Dharma. Otherwise, the misery of this bad habit will bear down on me as if I myself have done it. Why? I base myself on the Buddha’s spirit of “great compassion where the substance is the same.” So, I hope that no one will have faulty habits. I hope that everyone will be a perfect person. When any one of you is not a completely good person, I will feel that I myself am not a good person, because I am just like you. Therefore, since I want to be a good person, I have to think of a way to cause you to be a good person, too. That is what is meant by the “great compassion where the substance is the same.” If everyone had this attitude nowadays, there wouldn’t be any wars or fighting in the world, no arguments, nothing at all!

The Buddha told Ananda, “Now I have a question for you. At this point you have not yet attained the purity of no outflows. You have not obtained the fourth fruition of arhatship. You have merely accomplished the first fruition, which does not reach the purity of no outflows.” Blessed by the Buddha’s spiritual strength, you are able to see into the first dhyana heavens without any obstruction. Although Ananda hasn’t attained the purity of no outflows, by means of the Buddha’s strength, he can see the realm of the first dhyana heavens.

The purity of no outflows is the purest of purities. Nothing is defiled about it. It’s easy to talk about, but it’s a very difficult state to reach. In that state, there are no outflows from the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind. When your eyes see things and your spirit runs outside after the thing you saw, that is an outflow. If your ears hear something and you cannot apply the skill of returning the hearing, but instead run outside to listen, that is an outflow too. Your nose smells scents, your tongue tastes flavors, your body comes in contact with objects, your mind climbs on dharmas: these are all classified as outflows. I’ve explained before that it is like a glass bottle with a hole in the bottom. It leaks when water is poured into it!

If you people don’t cultivate and don’t attain the state of no outflows, each of you is like a leaky bottle that always leaks. Leaking here and there, you flow from the realm of heavens to the realm of humans, from the realm of humans to the realm of animals, from the realm of animals to the realm of hungry ghosts and into the realm of the hells. You go with the flow, back and forth, without knowing where you are flowing to. It depends on what kind of karma you have created.

Ananda had already opened the Buddha’s wisdom eye, even though he hasn’t attained the purity of no outflows. When it comes to opening the wisdom eyes, there are a thousand differences and distinctions. Unlike opening the ordinary eyes of people and being able to see things, opening the wisdom eyes has different levels. Some can see across ten miles, some twenty, some thirty, or 100, 1000 or 10000 miles distance. At the very most, one can see across 84,000 miles and can contemplate things that occur within 80,000 great kalpas. It’s not the case that as soon as your wisdom eyes open you can see everything. Only by relying on the strength of the Buddha’s spiritual penetrations, was Ananda able to see the first dhyana heavens clearly.

The Venerable Aniruddha was foremost in the heavenly eye. His name is Sanskrit and is interpreted as “not poor.” In this life and for life after life, Aniruddha is never poor. In the Amitabha Sutra, he is called ‘Aniruddha,” and his full name is called ‘Anuruddha’. These are all his names. This venerable one was a cousin of the Buddha. I mentioned earlier that he had a strange problem. When the Buddha is not lecturing sutras, he was fine. But the moment the Buddha began to expound the sutras, Aniruddha would fall asleep.

Seeing Aniruddha fell asleep there,
the Buddha scolded him:

Hey! Hey!
How can you sleep
Like river snails, clams and oysters
in the deep?
Sleep, sleep, a thousand years;
The Buddha’s name you will not hear.

Tell me, what is wrong with you? Why are you sleeping like that? You’re like a river snail, a clam or an oyster, always sleeping inside the shell. Like a conch inside its shell, its head never comes out, as if it just sleeps in there. If you sleep like this for a thousand years, you will never hear the Buddha’s name.