Last night during the Touching the Earth class, we spent time looking deeply at the third earth touching:
"Touching the earth, I let go of my views and ideas that I am this body and my life span is limited."
As you can imagine, much discussion followed. I recalled that this idea of letting go of body boundaries was very much expressed in the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra. This morning, I cracked open the Heart Sutra, and most specifically Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary, and I thought it might be a helpful addition to the third Earth Touching:
"...all dharmas are marked with emptiness. They are neither produced nor destroyed." Dharmas in this line means "things." A human being is a dharma. A tree is a dharma. A cloud is a dharma. Then sunshine is a dharma. Everything that can be conceived of is a dharma....The French scientist Lavoisier said,
“Nothing is created, and nothing is destroyed.” This is exactly the same as in
the Heart Sutra. Even the best contemporary scientists
cannot reduce something as small as a speck of dust or an electron to
nothingness. One form of energy can only become another form of energy.
Something can never become nothing, and this includes a speck of dust.
Usually we say humans come from dust
and we are going back to dust, and this does not sound very joyful. We don’t
want to return to dust. There is a discrimination
here that humans are very valuable, and that dust has no value at all. But
scientists do not even know what a speck of dust is! It is still a
mystery. Imagine one atom of that speck of dust, with electrons traveling
around its nucleus at 180,000 miles per second. It is very exciting. To
return to a speck of dust will be quite an exciting adventure!
Sometimes we have the impression
that we understand what a speck of dust is. We even pretend that we understand
a human being-a human being who we say is going to
return to dust. Because we live with a person for 20 or 30 years, we have the
impression that we
know everything about him or her.
So, while driving in the car with that person sitting right next to us, we
think about other things. We aren’t interested in him any more.
What arrogance! The person sitting there beside us is really a mystery! We only
have the impression that we know her, but we don’t know
anything yet. If we look with the eyes of Avalokita (Boddhisatva of Compassion), we will see that even one
hair of that person is the entire cosmos. One hair on his head
can be a door opening to the ultimate reality. One speck of dust can be the
Kingdom of Heaven, the Pure Land. When you see that you,
the speck of dust, and all things, inter-are, you will understand that this is
so. We must be humble. “To say you don’t know is the beginning
of knowing,” is a Chinese proverb.
One autumn day, I was in a park,
absorbed in the contemplation of a very small but beautiful leaf, in the shape
of a heart. Its color was almost red, and it was barely
hanging on the branch, nearly ready to fall down. I spent a long time with it,
and I asked the leaf a lot of questions. I found out the leaf had
been a mother to the tree. Usually we think that the tree is the mother and the
leaves are just children, but as I looked at the leaf I saw that
the leaf is also a mother to the tree. The sap that the roots take up is only
water and minerals, not good enough to nourish the tree, so the
tree distributes that sap to the leaves. And the leaves take the responsibility
of transforming that rough sap into elaborated sap and, with the
help of the sun and gas, sending it back in order to nourish the tree. Therefore, the leaves are also the mother to the tree. And since the
leaf is linked to the tree by a stem, the communication between them is easy to
see.
We do not have a stem linking us to
our mother any more, but when we were in her womb we had a very long stem, an
umbilical cord. The oxygen and the nourishment
we needed came to us through that stem. Unfortunately, on the day that we call
our birthday, it was
cut off and we received the illusion
that we are independent. That is a mistake. We continue to rely on our mother
for a very long time, and we have several other mothers as
well. The earth is our mother. We have a great many stems linking us to our
mother earth. There is a stem linking us with the cloud. If there
is no cloud, there is no water for us to drink. We are made of at least seventy
per cent water, and the stem between the cloud and us is really
there. This is also the case with the river, the forest, the logger, and the
farmer. There are hundreds of thousands of stems linking us to
everything in the cosmos, and therefore we can be. Do you see the link between
you and me? If you are not there, I am not here. That is
certain. If you do not see it yet, look more deeply and I am sure you will see.
As I said, this is not philosophy. You really have to see.
I asked the leaf whether it was
scared because it was autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told
me, “No. During the whole spring and summer I was very
alive. I worked hard and helped nourish the tree, and much of me is in the
tree. Please do not say that I am just this form, because the
form of leaf is only a tiny part of me. I am the whole tree. I know that I am
already inside the tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will
continue to nourish the tree. That’s why I do not worry. As I leave this branch
and float to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, ‘I
will see you again very soon.”’
Suddenly I saw a kind of wisdom very
much like the wisdom contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You should
not say, life of the leaf, you should only
speak of life in the leaf and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you
can see it in me and in the tree. That day there was a wind blowing and,
after a while, I saw the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil,
dancing joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there
in the tree. It was so happy. I bowed my head, and I knew that we have a lot to
learn from the leaf because it was not afraid-it knew
that nothing can be born and nothing can die.
The cloud in the sky will also not
be scared. When the time comes, the cloud will become rain. It is fun becoming
rain, falling down, chanting, and becoming part of the
Mississippi River, or the Amazon River, or the Mekong River, or falling onto
vegetables and later
becoming part of a human being. It
is a very exciting adventure. The cloud knows that if it falls to the earth it
might become part of the ocean. So the cloud is not scared.
Only humans get scared.
A wave on the ocean has a beginning
and an end, a birth and a death. But Avalokitesvara tells us that the wave is
empty. The wave is full of water, but it is empty of a separate
self. A wave is a form which has been made possible thanks to the existence of
wind and water. If a wave only sees its form, with its
beginning and end, it will be afraid of birth and death. But if the wave sees
that it is water, identifies itself with the water, then it will be
emancipated from birth and death. Each wave is born and is going to die, but
the water is free from birth and death.
When I was a child I used to play
with a kaleidoscope. I took a tube and a few pieces of ground glass, turned it
a little bit, and saw many wonderful sights. Every time I
made a small movement with my fingers, one sight would disappear and another
would appear. I did not cry at all when the first
spectacle disappeared, because I knew that nothing was lost. Another beautiful
sight always followed. If you are the wave and you become one with the
water, looking at the world with the eyes of water, then you are not afraid of
going up, going down, going up, going down. But please do
not be satisfied with speculation, or take my word for it. You have to enter
it, taste it, and be one with
it yourself, and that can be done
through meditation, not only in the meditation hall, but throughout your daily
life.
While you cook a meal, while you clean the house, while you
go for a walk, you can look at things and try to see them in the nature of
emptiness. Emptiness is an optimistic word; it is not at all
pessimistic. When Avalokita, in his deep meditation on Perfect Understanding,
was able to see the nature of emptiness, he suddenly overcame all
fear and pain. I have seen people die very peacefully, with a smile, because
they see that birth and death are only waves on the surface
of the ocean, are just the spectacle in the kaleidoscope.
So you see there are many lessons we
can learn from the cloud, the water, the wave, the leaf, and the kaleidoscope.
From everything else in the cosmos, too. If you look at
anything carefully, deeply enough, you discover the mystery of interbeing, and
once you have seen it you will no longer be subject to
fear-fear of birth, or fear of death. Birth and death are only ideas we have in
our mind, and these ideas cannot be applied to reality. It is just
like the idea of above and below. We are very sure that when we point our hand
up, it is above, and when we point in the opposite direction,
it is below. Heaven is above, and Hell is below. But the people who are sitting
right now on the other side of the planet must disagree,
because the idea of above and below does not apply to the cosmos, exactly like
the idea of birth and death.
So please continue to look back and
you will see that you have always been here. Let us look together and penetrate
into the life of a leaf, so we may be one with the
leaf. Let us penetrate and be one with the cloud, or with the wave, to realize
our own nature as water and be free from our fear. If we look
very deeply, we will transcend birth and death.
Tomorrow, I will continue to be. But
you will have to be very attentive to see me. I will be a flower, or a leaf. I
will be in these forms and I will say hello to you. If you
are attentive enough, you will recognize me, and you may greet me. I will be
very happy."
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