Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Robert Chang
Religion 225 Final
January 14, 2011
2. The bodhisattva loves all beings as if each were his only child. He
becomes sick when they are sick and is cured when they are cured. You ask
me, Majur, whence comes my sickness; the sicknesses of the bodhisattvas
arise from great compassion.
The above passage is spoken by the zen master Vimalakirti to the
crown prince, Manjusri, in the Mahayana scripture known as The Holy
Teaching of Vimalakirti. Manjusri has been sent by the Buddha himself to
investigate the apparent sickness that is suffered by Vimalakirti and upon
being questioned about his ailment Vimalakirti responds by explaining that
his sickness is the very sickness possessed by all bodhisattvas.
Vimalakirti describes a deeper understanding of what it means for a
being to attain enlightenment than what has previously been taught by the
Buddha Gautama and it is for this very reason that the Buddha sends
Manjusri to him. The previous understanding of nirvana was as a state of
having achieved the cessation of suffering which arises from attachment to
the self and to all material attachments to the self. It seems as though one
could achieve this cessation through their own personal development and
the following of the eightfold path, but Vimalakirti explicates that this is not
the case and that ultimate enlightenment and the absolute end of suffering
is not as personal as had been previously believed. A necessary property
possessed by a bodhisattva is that of ultimate compassion for all beings and
a necessary quality of this compassion is the ability to empathize with all
beings. Therefore one can never be free of this sickness unless they are able
to liberate all beings from suffering and aide them in the achievement of true
enlightenment.
In this passage Vimalakirti has illustrated the first of the four noble
truths and its effect on all living beings as well as the true nature of
cessation (the fourth noble truth) as it requires that all beings achieve
nirvana. This in turn also illustrates dependent origination since no being
can truly realize the cessation of suffering unless all beings realize it and
thus the true nature of the path (the third noble truth) as a necessarily
universal path is clear. One last distinction that is made in this passage is
the distinction between the buddhas who achieve nirvana expound their
doctrine and then achieve parinirvana and the boddhisattvas who postpone
the attainment of parinirvana in order to ensure that all beings can become
enlightened.
understands the cause of suffering and how one must train himself in order
to remove these dharmas, but errs in his assumption of an underlying self
(the tree and the mirror).
This is where the subtle difference between Shen-hsui and Hui-nengs
verses comes to the forefront as the key distinction between incomplete and
complete understanding of enlightenment. Hui-nengs verse states that the
form of the tree and the mirror, too, are results of the dharmas and that
there is in fact no underlying being. That the Buddha-nature is essentially
linked to the doctrine of no-self (the human ego being the hardest
attachment to severe) and all beings are empty beneath worldly defilements
and sufferings, thus incorporating another major Buddhist ideal, voidness.
1. Compare and contrast two of the following traditions that we have studied
in the second half of the course: Pure Land, Chan/Zen, and Tantric Buddhism.
Your discussion of similarities and differences between them should touch on
at least some of, but need not be limited to, the following points: concepts of
liberation, forms of practice, use of language, role of the teacher, approaches
to death, etc. What qualifies them as part of the Mahyna?
Pure Land and Zen Buddhism are two forms of Buddhism that
developed centuries after the death of the Buddha Gautama in order to
rectify branching beliefs as to how the Dharma should be practiced as the
original Dharma in its purest form recedes further and further into the past.
It is worth noting that, like traditional Buddhism, both of these factions of
Buddhism put a high emphasis on the necessity of meditation in order to
attain spiritual enlightenment, however, it seems that it has become an even
more central tenet of these two factions than it had been in the centuries
preceding their arising. These two branches of modern Buddhism hold their
greatest similarity in the fact that they were both developed in an effort to
protect and interpret the Dharma in a time when far removed from its purest
existence, immediately upon being expounded by its source, Siddhartha
Gautama.
One very interesting development in these forms of Buddhism is a new
emphasis on structure. Although traditional Buddhism did have a structure,
as described by the Buddha, between monks and laypeople the Zen tradition
made an addition of the increased role of the master and his pupils. The
master, or patriarch as the master was known at the conception of the Zen
tradition, takes on pupils and teaches them the Dharma while they live
carrying out everyday tasks. One of the most central doctrines of the Zen
tradition is that of emptiness and the belief that our innermost nature is
simply the Buddha-nature (fo-hsing) which is to be realized in a direct and
sudden experience of inner awakening (wu/satori) (Gethin 262). The master
is portrayed in Zen literature as behaving in unexpected and spontaneous
ways and responding to questions with apparent non-sequiturs and riddles
(Gethin 262) in an attempt to break their pupils free from traditional and
habitual modes of thinking in order to achieve sudden enlightenment. The
master does so because Zen philosophy believes that the conventional
teachings of the Dharma put the mind in thought patterns that are less
conducive to sudden attainment, and that one must use abstract and skillful
means of liberation to achieve nirvana.
The very idea of sudden attainment is one of the central questions of
Zen Buddhism and there has been a great debate over the question of
whether attainment is a gradual process or a spontaneous occurrence. The
Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng explains that there is, in fact, no distinction between
sudden and gradual enlightenment but rather it is merely the mind of the
person who attains enlightenment that determines the rate of attainment,
and that the enlightenment that is achieved is the same in both cases (Stryk
338). The Sixth Patriarch also expounds the importance of meditation in Zen
Buddhism by stating: meditation and wisdom are the bases. First of all,
do not be deceived that the two are different. They are one reality and not
two. Meditation is the substance (ti) of wisdom and wisdom is the function
(yung) of meditation (Stryk 337). In the Zen tradition practitioners are
material things but also discusses the emptiness of nirvana and how it is
unlike any other things that can be conceived, again through the use of
skillful means (Stryk 89-143). However, one with understanding of
nonduality will quickly point out that samsara and nirvana are dualistic in
nature and, adhering to the doctrine, one can see that there is in fact no
difference between them. An example that is used is the idea of using
poison to cure poison (the former referring to an antidote) representing the
idea that the wise can get rid of passion by means of passion itself (Strong
208). It is in this way that we see the ultimate relationship between nirvana
and samsara: Nirvana is more than just the liberation from samsara, as this
implies a dualistic relationship, but it is also the freedom from attachment to
the very idea of nirvana.
In order to become enlightened one must realize not just nonduality
and emptiness but also the nonduality of enlightenment and
unenlightenment and the emptiness of the concept of emptiness. The
understanding of these precepts is tantamount to realizing the bodhisattva
ideal and the relationship between nirvana and samsara. The use of skillful
means is necessary for the understanding and teaching of these ideas and
one of the greatest examples of these methods lies in the verses written by
the potential Sixth Patriarchs of the Zen branch, Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng
(Stryck 334). The formers verse represents a mastery of linguistic tools in
order to express the necessarily of the practice of the bodhisattva ideal while
the latters verse represents the skillful expression of the concepts of no-self,
nonduality, and emptiness.
These concepts form the fundamental principles of the bodhisattva
ideal and though an enlightened master might employ skillful means in order
to show a person the door to enlightenment the final jump can only be made
by a student who can truly understand the Ultimate Wisdom of the
nonduality of nirvana and samsara (and of all things) as well as the inherent
emptiness of all things.