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You don’t have to die to enter nirvana or the Kingdom of God. You only have to dwell deeply in the present moment, right now.
It was Jesus who told me, “The kingdom of God / Heaven is within you.” But in the teachings of The Buddha I understand how to dwell there permanently amidst the impermanence.
The Avatamsaka Sutra says that all dharmas (phenomena) enter one dharma, and one dharma enters all dharmas. If you go deeply into any one of the teachings of the Buddha, you will find all of the other teachings in it.
The way out of your suffering depends on
how
you look i...
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“A human being is not a human being. That is why we can say that he is a human being.” These are the dialectics of the Diamond Sutra. “A is not A. That is why it is truly A.”
A true flower contains the whole universe.
“To see the Universe in a grain of sand, or eternity in an hour…”
William Blake
Nirvana means extinction — first of all, the extinction of all concepts and notions.
When we ask, “Dear Buddha, are you a human being?” it means we have a concept about what a human being is. So the Buddha just smiles at us. It is his way of encouraging us to transcend our concepts and touch the real being that he is. A real being is quite different from a concept.
Look deeply to try to overcome the gap between your concept of reality and reality itself. Meditation helps us remove concepts.
The Three Dharma Seals (Dharma mudra) are impermanence (anitya), nonself (anatman), and nirvana. Any teaching that does not bear these Three Seals cannot be said to be a teaching of the Buddha.1
Impermanence is more than an idea. It is a practice to help us touch reality.
If we see impermanence as merely a philosophy, it is not the Buddha’s teaching.
From the point of view of time, we say “impermanence,” and from the point of view of space, we say “nonself.”
Things cannot remain themselves for two consecutive moments, therefore, there is nothing that can be called a permanent “self.”
They are the same.
It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
Impermanence is what makes transformation possible.
The teaching of impermanence helps us appreciate fully what is there, without attachment or forgetfulness.
The Second Dharma Seal is nonself. Nothing has a separate existence or a separate self. Everything has to inter-be with everything else.
We have the tendency to behave this way also, and it causes a lot of suffering. If we know how to touch our nondiscriminating mind, our happiness and the happiness of others will increase manifold.
Nonself is not a doctrine or a philosophy. It is an insight that can help us live life more deeply, suffer less, and enjoy life much more. We need to live the insight of nonself.
Choose “insight” into a thing over “indoctrination” about a thing.
We should practice so that we can see Muslims as Hindus and Hindus as Muslims. We should practice so that we can see Israelis as Palestinians and Palistinians as Israelis. We should practice until we can see that each person is us, that we are not separate from others. This will greatly reduce our suffering. We are like the cookies, thinking we are separate and opposing each other, when actually we are all of the same reality. We are what we perceive. This is the teaching of nonself, of interbeing.
Cf w/St. Paul’s teaching about the (mystical) body of Christ: (paraphrasing) “The hand cannot say to the eye, ‘I have no part w/the’…” and “If one member (of the body) suffers, the whole body suffers…” etc.
Nonself means that you are made of elements which are not you.
The insight behind the song, “She’s Leaving Home” by The Beatles.
The teachings of impermanence and nonself were offered by the Buddha as keys to unlock the door of reality. We have to train ourselves to look in a way that we know that when we touch one thing, we touch everything. We have to see that the one is in the all and the all is in the one.
Nirvana, the Third Dharma Seal, is the ground of being, the substance of all that is.
Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts.
Nirvana is the ground of all that is.
Nirvana teaches that we already are what we want to become. We don’t have to run after anything anymore. We only need to return to ourselves and touch our true nature. When we do, we have real peace and joy.
Any teaching that does not bear the mark of the Three Dharma Seals, the Four Holy Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path is not authentically Buddhist.
The teachings of one, two, and four Dharma Seals were all introduced after the Buddha passed away.
The Two Relevances require you to speak with skillfulness, tolerance, and care.
The Four Standards of Truth
The First Standard is “the worldly.” The teaching is offered in the language of the world so that those in the world will be able to understand.
The Second Standard is “the person.”
When the Buddha taught, he was deeply aware of the particular assembly, and what he said was specifically addressed to them.
The Third Standard is “healing.”
Everyone has some illness that needs to be healed. When you speak to express healing, what you...
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The Fourth Standard is “the absolute.” The Buddha expressed absolute truth dir...
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We can use these Four Standards of Truth to understand the sutras as we read them.
the Four Reliances.
formulated by later teachers, not by the Buddha.
The First R...
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rely on the teaching and not the person. It means we can learn even from a teacher who does not pr...
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“Do as I say, not as I do.”
if a precious jewel is in a garbage can, you have to dirty your hands.
Perhaps the ancestral teachers thought it was so rare to find someone who could teach by his or her life’s example that if we just wait for someone like that to come along, we might miss the chance to benefit from the teachings that are available now.
Hence no need for an assertion of “inerrancy” and “infallibility” in order to ascertain and appropriate the written truths of any ancient teachings into one’s life so as to receive a benefit by them.
The Second Reliance is to rely only on discourses where the Buddha taught in terms of absolute truth and not on those whose means are relative truth.
