Episode 574 – The Kind Father Loves His Children Impartially
>> “Human nature is originally good. Children are pure, innocent and uncontaminated. The kind father loves all his children equally, so they reach the same all-encompassing wisdom as the Great Enlightened One.”
>> “Now, these young children are all my children, and I love them all impartially. I have these great carts covered with the Seven Treasures, countless in number. I should give them to each [child] with an impartial mind so that they are not treated differently.”
>> This is an analogy for how sentient beings equally possess transcendent, flawless seeds, equally listen to the Dharma and equally put it into practice. Thus we are all equally the Buddha’s children. So, the Buddha, with impartial compassion, gives each the Great Vehicle teachings.
“Human nature is originally good.
Children are pure, innocent and uncontaminated.
The kind father loves all his children equally,
so they reach the same all-encompassing wisdom
as the Great Enlightened One.”
I often say, “Human nature is inherently good.” This pure intrinsic nature is what we were born with, but we have remained unenlightened. We have transmigrated in the Six Realms and reproduced our afflictions, so our inherent goodness has slowly been contaminated. However, right after we were born, at the very beginning of our life, we manifest that inherent goodness, that innocence and liveliness. This is also what we are like in our childhood. So, “Children are pure, innocent, uncontaminated.” As children, we have not yet been contaminated, and our past habitual tendencies have not yet resurfaced. When we are very young, we are uncontaminated. When a kind father interacts with his young children, he finds them adorable. Thus young children are loved and adored by their parents; this is very natural. When children are young, they are innocent and without guile, so parents have great affection for them. Of course, this affection is impartial. Childhood is the time when people are most pure and innocent.
But as the world and the environment change, our family members or our friends slowly and gradually influence and change us. Our originally pure natures have slowly become influenced. So, we have gradually become distant from our pure and undefiled nature; slowly, we grow further from it. The farther we are from it, the closer we are to ignorance and the closer to the habitual tendencies that we brought along with our past [karma] converging again with us. So because of this, we are slowly pulled away from our relationships with our family and with our friends. Thus, what we need is a great awakening, “so [we] reach the same all-encompassing wisdom as the Great Enlightened One.” So, there must be a kind father to teach his children with wisdom and love. This father and his children must also have an affinity and affection. Then this awakened love will constantly bring them together. This is the working of causes and conditions.
In Tzu Chi, don’t we often hear stories like this? There are old people who labored their entire lives to provide for their families. They did all they could for their children and worked hard to support them. As their children grew older, they each developed different personalities, causing their parents to be worried and anxious. Ultimately, the parents may end up alone, or may only have each other. One may fall ill, making the other the caregiver. Or both may fall ill, with no one left to help either of them. Perhaps one is left to grow old and die alone. We hear many stories like this.
We often hear about old people holding the hands of Tzu Chi volunteers and squeezing them tight, unwilling to let go, saying, “The volunteers treat me better than my children. I feel closer to them than I do to my own family. They take good care of me and. I also join them in doing recycling work. I feel very happy now. I have no troubles or worries.” We hear many stories like this.
There are also young people who grew up under difficult conditions. Perhaps they had irresponsible parents who did not love and care for them. They were tormented at home until they finally ran away. Perhaps they ended up doing something illegal, and were punished by the law. In prisons, there are many young people. But there is still a group of Living Bodhisattvas, Tzu Chi volunteers, who visit the prisons. They do everything they can to help these youths, who are not yet adults, to bring purity to their minds and guide them to develop the correct mindsets.
One time (in 2013), when I was traveling around Taiwan, a group of young men came to see me in Pingtung. They were accompanied by Tzu Chi volunteers. Every one of them had delicate features; they were very handsome and very young. They sat up straight in the front row. One of the young man was very brave. He talked about the kind of life he had once led, the problems his family faced and what his parents were like. This was the reason that this child became hateful. He hated his family. He hated his parents. Therefore, he intentionally behaved badly and began to associate himself with people who did not engage in honest work. Eventually, he did everything from selling drugs, to taking drugs, to gambling. When he was older, he began to steal and to rob people. He did unbelievable things. He got into fights, robbed people, drank, gambled and even assaulted people. So, from a very young age, he was in and out of prison. Eventually he received a very harsh sentence.
When Tzu Chi volunteers visited the prisons, they began to keep him company. They taught him to read and to study the Dharma. Through their continuous interactions, he gradually began to purify his mind. This led him to become a vegetarian. He became more well-behaved. He followed rules and. He became a role model inside the prison. He did good deeds, was willing to help others and was very earnest and diligent. This [behavior] came from the vows he made, so after he was released from jail, he became well-behaved. He repented his ways in front of his parents. He knelt before them and kowtowed. His parents came with him to see me. They said, “We are grateful. We are grateful to you, Master, because of Tzu Chi, we got our child back.”
“He was not filial before and did all kinds of [bad] things, He had cut off his relationship with us, which was a relationship of more than ten years. When he came home this time, he knelt before us and repented his ways.” I asked them again, “Is he well-behaved now? Very much so. Every day he brings us tea.” Both his father and mother said the same thing. I asked, “Did he only bring you tea on the day he came home and repented?” They said “No. He does this every morning; he has done this for an entire year so far.” Every day he leaves the house at the same time and comes home at the same time. Every morning he greets his parents and serves them tea before leaving the house.
This is the story from one of those young men. Out of the more than ten young men, there were as many stories of lives that have been changed. Though things began unfavorably for them, they had the karmic conditions to encounter beneficial friends who served as their fathers, their teachers, who visited prisons to teach them, care for them and guide them. The volunteers helped them to be let out of prison. At the same time, most importantly, they were freed from the prison of their own minds. When these men opened up their own hearts, they saw the natural radiance within themselves and returned to their original state of innocence.
“The kind father loves all his children equally.” In fact, with good karmic conditions, everything we encounter will be pure Dharma, and everyone we meet will have pure love. Those who give out of pure love are like parents and like teachers. This is because they give out of an affection as dear as that between father and son,
one that is pure and undefiled. To the Buddha, we sentient beings are like newborns. He loves us the way a kind father loves a newborn child. So, He will never abandon us, and we must always practice according to the teachings. By doing this, we will have “the same all-encompassing wisdom as the Great Enlightened One.” We can return to our pure intrinsic nature. With the Buddha-Dharma we can converge with our nature of True Suchness. This is what we must understand in order to return to our inherent nature.
Everyone should be familiar with the earlier text. The elder had unlimited wealth, and he used various methods and various treasures to draw his children out of the burning house of the Three Realms. He hoped everyone would choose the cart drawn by the great white ox, which would help everyone to travel the bright and broad path and move forward steadily. This is the Bodhisattva-path.
Then the following sutra passage states,
“Now, these young children are all my children, and I love them all impartially. I have these great carts covered with the Seven Treasures, countless in number. I should give them to each [child] with an impartial mind so that they are not treated differently.”
The elder wanted to be impartial when he gave them [his treasures], “so that they are not treated differently.” Isn’t this what we just discussed? The Buddha sees sentient beings as if they were His young children. His feelings for them are like that of a father holding a young child. It does not matter how badly children behave. When they are running around all over the place, though their father keeps calling to them and their mother tries to give them directions, the children continue to run around wildly, climbing up and down. Still, their parents remain very patient. Speaking softly, they hold them close. This is how the world is. We sentient beings are hard to train, but the Buddha, or the kind father of the world, still loves us no matter what.
We are confused and do not understand the Dharma. Therefore, the Buddha patiently guides us. With love, He treats us all equally. The Buddha spent more than 40 years helping sentient beings become equal in their capabilities. Only after 42 years had passed did He teach the Lotus Sutra. He hoped that all sentient beings and disciples would be able to hear this teaching. If He had not taught it then, He would have run out of time.
This is an analogy for how sentient beings equally possess transcendent, flawless seeds, equally listen to the Dharma and equally put it into practice. Thus we are all equally the Buddha’s children. So, the Buddha, with impartial compassion, gives each the Great Vehicle teachings.
The Buddha could not change [His limited lifespan] so He understood that though many people were still in a confused daze, He had to teach the Great Vehicle Dharma. Therefore, He provided sheep-carts, deer-carts and ox-carts. From this we can clearly see that when the Buddha taught the Lotus Sutra, there were still many confused Small Vehicle practitioners. Two out of three people were still stuck at the state of the sheep-cart or deer-cart. This is why sentient beings are suffering. They are constantly trapped in cyclic existence in the Six Realms. Thus they were like children. The Buddha feels that. “[These] are all my children, and I love them all impartially.” Thus He said, “I have these great carts covered with the Seven Treasures, countless in number.” The Buddha gave many teachings. But when He taught the True Dharma, He had very limited time so He could not explain it according to all the varying capabilities of sentient beings.
For a period of time in His old age, the Buddha was in poor health. He told Ananda, “Ananda, the lifespan of Buddhas is similar to that of humans. However, Buddhas can live for a long time. If I am needed to stay here for one kalpa, I have the ability to do so. This depends on my affinities with this world. Do the people need me to stay here longer, for the period of one kalpa?” The Buddha asked Ananda this three times in the same way. However, at that time, Ananda did not answer the Buddha.
So, heavenly beings, King Brahma and King Mara stepped in and said, “You have said in the past that once Your affinities with this world have ended, You would enter Parinirvana. Since Your affinities with it have ended, You should enter Parinirvana right now.” That was when the Buddha decided, “My conditions for transforming this world have ended,” so He limited Himself to 80 years. Otherwise, with the power of the Buddha’s vows, if He had needed to extend His time here, He could have lived in this world a long time. But that opportunity was missed.
Later, as Kasyapa was about to compile the sutras, he reproached Ananda for this. He asked Ananda, “At that time, why didn’t you respond by asking the Buddha to stay?” Deeply upset, Ananda said, “When I heard the Buddha ask the question, I really wanted to respond. But I felt as if Mara was controlling my mind. I could not answer.”
From this we learn that this was the karma of the people in this world. “Those advanced in spiritual practice may still be influenced by maras.” King Mara could not control the Buddha, but he could control Ananda’s mind. Therefore, the Buddha did not have enough time to personally teach every sentient being and help each one understand and realize the principles of the Great Vehicle. At the age of 80, the Buddha had to enter Parinirvana. He had been teaching the Lotus Sutra for seven years. So, the Buddha was in His 70s when He began expounding the Lotus Sutra.
He had already bestowed a prediction of Buddhahood upon Sariputra. The Buddha did this because He wanted Sariputra to take responsibility for the Sangha. This was because the Sangha believed that. Sariputra could realize the Buddha-Dharma. Moreover, Sariputra was foremost in wisdom. If Sariputra could believe and accept this, then so could everyone else. This was the Buddha’s intention behind [choosing Sariputra,] foremost in wisdom, as the recipient of the Dharma. This was also why He bestowed the first prediction of Buddhahood upon him.
The Buddha “loves them all impartially,” so in the Chapter on Bestowing Predictions, He bestowed this prediction on more people. Even His nemesis Devadatta received a prediction of Buddhahood from Him. Whether mischievous or obedient, He saw them all as His children. Like a kind father who cares for his children, he loves all sentient beings. Thus He said, “[These] are all my children, and I love them all impartially.”
The Buddha still had many teachings to give, but no way to give them all at that time; His time had run out. However, as we have mentioned, even the Four Noble Truths, the Twelve Links of Cyclic Existence, and the Six Paramitas are all Great Dharma. They are all True Dharma. In the essence of all material things in the universe, there is Dharma; there are principles. As Buddhist practitioners, we must indeed always be mindful. There is so much Dharma in our daily living. If we are always mindful and return to a state of innocence, we can accept the teachings that are given. In this way, one day we will also be able to achieve “the same all-encompassing wisdom as the Great Enlightened One.” Our enlightened state can be equal to the Buddha’s.
Dear Bodhisattvas, we must return to our pure Buddha-nature and abide by our “original nature,” which is “inherently good.” We must be like “children [who are] pure, innocent and uncontaminated.” We have a “kind father [who] loves all his children equally.” Therefore, we must mindfully accept the Dharma without any doubts. We must cherish our relationships and pass on the Dharma as Dharma-children, like how a father passes on the family business to his son. By doing this, we will be filled with Dharma-joy, boundless Dharma and “the same wisdom as the Great Enlightened One.” So everyone, we must always be mindful.