Episode 288 – Putting Aspirations into Practice
>> “All Buddhas come to the world to manifest and teach the same path. For the one great cause, for true principles, they gave provisional teachings. Using relative wisdom, they teach according to capabilities. Using ultimate wisdom, they awaken others to supremely wondrous truths.”
>> For the causes and conditions of. His one great work: The Buddha manifests in this world to expound the Dharma. This is due to the causes and conditions of the one great cause. Why is it called the one great cause? Basically, it turns people from delusions to realizations.
>> The Buddha manifests in this world, not due to karmic retributions from past lives, but because His compassion and vows lead Him to reveal the meaning of. His understanding and views. This is how the Buddha’s understanding and views can lead to aspirations and practice and the personal realization of ultimate reality.
>> “Wanting to enable sentient beings to realize the Buddha’s understanding and views” is to enable everyone to awaken.
“All Buddhas come to the world to manifest and teach the same path.
For the one great cause, for true principles, they gave provisional teachings.
Using relative wisdom, they teach according to capabilities.
Using ultimate wisdom, they awaken others to supremely wondrous truths.”
This is telling everyone that all Buddhas, from the present Sakyamuni Buddha to past Buddhas of infinite worlds, come to “manifest and teach.” So, when They manifest in this world, Their experiences and teachings are very similar.
For example, Sakyamuni Buddha was born and grew to adulthood in the palace. The way He developed His views on this world and. His determination to become a monastic, the process of His spiritual practice, His attainment of Buddhahood and transformation of sentient beings, etc. were like all Buddhas who come to this world. So, it is said, “All Buddhas share the same path.”
Every Buddha has the same hope for sentient beings. They came to teach and help them understand that they themselves have a wisdom equal to all Buddhas. Tathagata-nature. This was each Buddha’s hope for sentient beings. However, sentient beings are ignorant and [slow]. So, each Buddha gave sentient beings provisional teachings to teach true principles. This was because each Buddha came to the world for the one great cause,
but if They [directly] taught true principles, many people could not accept them, could not understand or realize them. Thus, in order to give everyone time to adjust, the Buddha slowly guided them toward realizations. So, the Buddha had to apply “relative wisdom. Relative wisdom” adapts to sentient beings’ capabilities. Based on their capabilities, the Buddha gave them methods that suited them. He did this for everyone. For example, when kindergarten teachers talk to the kids, they use language suitable for young children. In elementary school, middle school, high school, college and graduate school, the language each teacher uses is different. This is known as “relative wisdom.”
Then what is “ultimate wisdom”? “Ultimate wisdom” helps us understand our minds and see our true nature. It is something we intrinsically have. It is the Buddha’s understanding and views, the Buddha’s pure and undefiled wondrous wisdom of True Suchness, which “awakens others to supremely wondrous truths.” [The Buddha] came to help us awaken to the fact that we intrinsically have the same [nature as the Buddha]. This is the one great cause for which the Buddha comes to this world. He wants to tell everyone that. “The Buddha, the mind and sentient beings are no different [in their nature].” We all have the same nature of True Suchness as the Buddha. The one great cause for which the Buddha comes to this world is this simple.
For the causes and conditions of. His one great work: The Buddha manifests in this world to expound the Dharma. This is due to the causes and conditions of the one great cause. Why is it called the one great cause? Basically, it turns people from delusions to realizations.
These are “the causes and conditions of. His one great work.” So, “the Buddha manifests in this world to expound the Dharma.” Because of this one great cause, the Buddha manifested in this world. He gave teachings for sentient beings because of “the causes and conditions of the one great cause.”
What are these causes and conditions? Why is it called the one great cause? Basically, it turns people from delusions to realizations.
Because we live in a world lacking in clarity, [He gave] various teachings for our daily living. But we left the path laid out by the Dharma, so we are lost. We are like mountain climbers who go to the mountain and decide to stray far off the clearly marked paths. This is how we get lost and cannot find the path again.
I have told you about the time. I hiked Tulan Mountain and passed by a big banyan tree. In this indigenous forest, which is thousands of years old, we can no longer find the original banyan tree because the forest has become densely packed with its thick roots. So at that time, after I went into that forest, I became lost in the mountains. Where was the road? I was still on the same mountain, and I saw one tree trunk after another, but I could not find my way out of them. I also could not tell where the original tree was. Have you seen this kind of tree before?
Sometimes I think, “Isn’t this what sentient beings do?” When I talk about turning from delusions to realizations, I always think about being on Tulan Mountain. Being lost was very terrifying, I really did not know where the path was.
How can we be safe? By returning to our intrinsic nature. Then we will be very safe and can be like the Buddha, who thoroughly understands the true principles of all things in the universe. Once we do this, will we get lost again? So, this was the Buddha’s one great cause. He hoped we could return to our Tathagata-nature and never get lost again. The karmic conditions of His one great cause were to guide sentient beings to turn from delusions to realizations. This shows the Buddha’s compassion.
The Buddha manifests in this world, not due to karmic retributions from past lives, but because His compassion and vows lead Him to reveal the meaning of. His understanding and views. This is how the Buddha’s understanding and views can lead to aspirations and practice and the personal realization of ultimate reality.
“The Buddha manifests in this world, not because of karmic retributions from His past lives.” That is definitely not the case. We ordinary people, because of the law of karma, are guided by our causes and conditions to experience cyclic existence in the Six Realms. If we created good karma in a past life, naturally, we will be born to [kind] parents and grow up in a wholesome environment where we live a good life and enjoy all the blessings and wisdom of the world. But some people’s lives are not like this. They suffer from the moment they are born. They are born to poor families, live in poverty and try hard to escape it.
Do you remember this story? One day, in Dalin [Tzu Chi Hospital], a volunteer told a story about an old woman who was born in a very poor place. She lived in a village deep in the mountains and had a hard life, never having much to eat. When she was in her teens, she had just one wish, to quickly escape this poverty and relieve the suffering her family faced. So, when someone came to arrange a marriage when she was 17 or 18 years old, she did not care who she was marrying, she just wanted to escape the poverty. This was how she got married.
After she married, even though she no longer lived in the mountains and was close to the city, she was still poor. On top of that, she came to an unfamiliar family, and she did not have a good relationship with her mother-in-law. She had to take care of the family, deal with their economic difficulties and put up with their [bad attitudes] every day. All she heard were unpleasant comments. Her relationship with her mother-in-law was very bad. Her husband was a laborer, and he drank and gambled. This suffering was worse than what she
experienced before she got married. Therefore, when she reached middle age, she could not take this suffering anymore and asked for a divorce. After her divorce, she left with her daughter and had to find a way to make a living. She had to work very hard to support them both. [Once she met someone else], she got married again. The widower she married had a son. So, in this case, she had to learn to accommodate this child. Life in this family was not smooth, either. Shortly after that, her husband passed away, so then she struggled to support her own child along with someone else’s child.
When she was in her 80s, she got sick. She was hospitalized in our Dalin Hospital. Every day she lamented her suffering and how no one could fully understand it. There was no one to take care of her. Her stepson did not have a good relationship with her. Though her daughter was filial, she lived far away. So, the old woman suffered [alone]. One day, her daughter came to see her and told [volunteers] about all the suffering in her mother’s life.
Her daughter then contacted her stepbrother. When her stepbrother came, Tzu Chi volunteers spoke to him and his wife. They told the couple about the law of karma, so her daughter-in-law became terrified and immediately decided to visit her more regularly. So, finally, the old woman had someone to take care of her. Later, people asked her, “Grandma, do you want to tell us what to do about your funeral arrangements?” The old woman said, “I really want to go to my child’s home.” She said, “Wherever I came from, please let me go back there.” So, where did she really want to go? Her stepson did not want to acknowledge her. Her own child, from her first husband, had already left. So, in the end, where did she go? No one wanted her. So in the end, the hospital made arrangements to send her ashes to a columbarium.
Consider this elderly person, this old woman. She lived for over 80 years. Since she was born, she struggled to escape suffering. See, established karma cannot be changed. This kind of karmic retribution, for us ordinary people, is something we bring with us from past lives.
Hadn’t the Buddha already transcended the Six Realms? [The reason He returns] is because. He cannot bear to let sentient beings suffer. This suffering began with a single deluded thought. Once immersed in delusion, we cannot awaken, and thus we continuously multiply our afflictions, ignorance and karmic retributions. This is why we keep being tormented by suffering. The Buddha could not bear this, so He manifested in this world. He did not come here because of karmic retributions from past lives, but because of His great compassion and vows.
To transform and save sentient beings, He manifested in this world. These are His understanding and views. He knew about the karmic retributions they faced because of His understanding and views. He saw through this world and understood the Six Realms because of His understanding and views. Thus, the Buddha wanted everyone to awaken. Awakening is Bodhi. So, He wanted to guide us to walk on the Bodhi-path.
So, we must form aspirations. We all have to awaken, so we can have the same mind as the Buddha and be unable to bear letting sentient beings suffer. Thus, we form aspirations. After the Buddha has inspired us, we must take action. We have to put [the Dharma] into practice.
So, we constantly discuss the Three Flawless Studies, precepts, Samadhi and wisdom. Also, we must listen, contemplate and practice. We must sincerely listen, contemplate and practice. In our daily living, we must uphold precepts and remain in Samadhi to awaken our wisdom. This is part of the spiritual practice of forming aspirations and taking action. If we form aspirations and practice, we can have. ․a “personal realization of ultimate reality.” If we can do this, then we can realize the nature of True Suchness. As long as we can start walking, we can be like Buddhas, who cannot bear to let sentient beings suffer.
We are already deluded, which brings great suffering. But we can practice the Buddha’s teachings to understand the path. At the same time, we must also lead other people to walk this same path.
“Wanting to enable sentient beings to realize the Buddha’s understanding and views” is to enable everyone to awaken.
To awaken, we must realize that we all intrinsically have intrinsic Buddha-nature. This was the Buddha’s intention, hoping all of us would understand that our Buddha-nature is always there, so we can always be equal to the Buddha. Unfortunately, we are in the state of ordinary people right now. We are still lost. Someone is guiding us by saying, “Come, come, this is the right path to take,” yet some people are still indecisive. They cannot move forward wholeheartedly. This is because we sentient beings have accumulated much karma, which holds us back.
So, we have to dedicate ourselves wholeheartedly and begin to take action. When the Buddha teaches, we must sincerely accept His teachings. If we can do this, we can move up, step by step, and transcend that state. Only then can we see this more broad and expansive state. So, we must always be mindful.