Wake Up (19 page)

“While I am addressing my Lord Tathagata, he is hearing, at the same time, the Transcendental Sound of Avaloki-Tesvara. It is just as though, while we are in the quiet seclusion of our Dhyana practice, there should come to our ears the sound of the beating of drums and if our minds, hearing the sounds, are undisturbed and tranquil, this is the nature of perfect accommodation.

“The body develops feeling by coming in contact with something, and the sight of eyes is hindered by the opaqueness of objects, and similarly with the sense of smell and of taste, but it is different with the discriminating brain-mind. Thoughts are rising and mingling and passing. At the same time it is conscious of sounds in the next room and sounds that have come from far away. The other senses are not so refined as the sense of hearing; the nature of hearing is the true reality of Passability.

“The essence of sound is felt in both motion and silence, it passes from existent to non-existent. When there is no sound, it is said there is no hearing, but that does not mean that hearing has lost its preparedness. Indeed! When there is no sound, hearing is most alert, and when there is sound the hearing nature is least developed. If any disciple can be freed from these two illusions of appearing and disappearing, that is, from death and rebirth, he has attained the true reality of Permanency.

“Even in dreams when all thinking has become quiescent, the hearing nature is still alert. It is like a mirror of enlightenment that is transcendental of the thinking mind because it is beyond the consciousness sphere of both body and mind. In this Saha world, the doctrine of intrinsic, Transcendental Sound may be spread abroad, but sentient beings as a class remain ignorant and indifferent to their own Intrinsic Hearing. They respond only to phenomenal sounds and are disturbed by both musical and discordant sounds.

“Notwithstanding Ananda’s wonderful memory, he was not able to avoid falling into an evil way. He has been adrift on a merciless sea. But if he will only turn his mind away from the drifting current of thoughts, he may soon recover the sober wiseness of Essential Mind. Ananda! Listen to me! I have ever relied upon the teaching of the Lord Buddha to bring me to the indescribable Dharma Soul of the Diamond Samadhi. Ananda! You have sought the secret lore from all the Buddha-lands without first attaining emancipation from the desires and intoxications of your own contaminations and attachments, with the result that you have stored in your memory a vast accumulation of worldly knowledge and built up a tower of faults and mistakes.

“You have learned the Teachings by listening to the words of the Lord Buddha and then committing them to memory. Why do you not learn from your own self by listening to sound of the Intrinsic Dharma within your own Mind and then practicing reflection upon it? The perception of Transcendental Hearing is not developed by any natural process under the control of your own volition. Some time when you are reflecting upon your Transcendental Hearing, a chance sound suddenly claims your attention and your mind sets them apart and discriminates them and is disturbed thereby. As soon as you can ignore the phenomenal sound the notion of a Transcendental Sound ceases and you will realize your Intrinsic Hearing.

“As soon as this one sense perception of hearing is returned to its originality and you clearly understand its falsity, then the mind instantly understands the falsity of all sense perceptions and is at once emancipated from the bondage of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking, for they are all alike illusive and delusive visions of unreality, and all the three great realms of existence are seen to be what they truly are, imaginary blossoms in the air.

“As soon as the deceiving perception of hearing is emancipated, then all objective phenomena disappear and your Intuitive Mind of Essence becomes perfectly pure. As soon as you have attained to this Supreme Purity of Mind-Essence, its Intrinsic Brightness will shine out spontaneously and in all directions and, as you are sitting in tranquil meditation, the mind will be in perfect conformity with Pure Space.

“Ananda! As you return to the phenomenal world, it will seem like a vision in a dream. And your experience with the maiden Pchiti will seem like a dream, and your own body will lose its solidity and permanency. It will seem as though every human being, male and female, was simply a manifestation by some skillful magician of a manikin, all of whose activities were under his control. Or each human being will seem like an automatic machine that once started goes on by itself, but as soon as the automatic machine loses its motive power, all its activities not only cease but their very existence disappears.

“So it is with the six sense organs, which are fundamentally dependent upon one unifying and enlightening spirit, but which by ignorance have become divided into six semi-independent compositions and conformities. Should one organ become emancipated and return to its originality, so closely are they united in their fundamental originality, that all the other organs would immediately cease their activities also. And all worldly impurities will be purified by a single thought and you will attain to the wonderful purity of perfect Enlightenment. Should there remain some minute contamination of ignorance, you should practice the more earnestly until you attain to perfect Enlightenment, that is, to the Enlightenment of a Tathagata.

“All the Brothers in this Great Assembly, and you too, Ananda, should reverse your outward perception of hearing and listen inwardly for the perfectly unified and intrinsic sound of your own Mind-Essence, for as soon as you have attained perfect accommodation, you will have attained to Supreme Enlightenment.

“This is the only way to Nirvana, and it has been followed by all the Tathagatas of the past. Moreover, it is for all the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas of the present and for all in the future if they are to hope for Perfect Enlightenment. Not only did Avaloki-Tesvara attain Perfect Enlightenment in long ages past by this Golden Way, but in the present, I also, am one of them.

“My Lord enquired of us as to what expedient means each one of us had employed to follow this Noble Path to Nirvana. I bear testimony that the means employed by Avaloki-Tesvara is the most expedient means for all, since all other means must be supported and guided by the Lord Buddha’s Transcendental Powers. Though one forsake all his worldly engagements, yet he cannot always be practicing by these various means; they are special means suitable for junior and senior disciples, but for laymen, this common method of concentrating the mind on its sense of hearing, turning it inward by this Door of Dharma to hear the Transcendental Sound of his Essential Mind, is most feasible and wise.

“Oh Blessed Lord! I am bowing down before my Lord Tathagata’s Intrinsic Womb, which is immaculate and ineffable in its perfect freedom from all contaminations and taints, and I am praying my Lord to extend his boundless compassion for the sake of all future disciples, so that I may continue to teach Ananda and all sentient beings of this present kalpa, to have faith in this wonderful Door of Dharma to the Intrinsic Hearing of his own Mind Essence, so surely to be attained by this most expedient means. If any disciple should simply take this Intuitive Means for concentrating his mind in Dhyana Practice on this organ for Transcendental Hearing, all other sense organs would soon come into perfect harmony with it, and thus, by this single means of Intrinsic Hearing, he would attain perfect accommodation of his True and Essential Mind that does not pass away.”

Then Ananda and all the great assembly were purified in body and mind. They acquired a profound understanding and a clear insight into the nature of the Lord Buddha’s Enlightenment and experience of highest Samadhi Meditation Ecstasy. They had confidence like a man who was about to set forth on a most important business to a far-off country, because they knew the route to go and to return. All the disciples in this great assembly realized their own Essence of Mind and purposed, henceforth, to live remote from all worldly entanglements and taints, and to live continuously in the pure brightness of the Eye of Dharma.

Thereupon the Lord Buddha, in conclusion, advised the following rules of Discipline to those who most surely wished to attain to the stage of Great Wise Being (Bodhisattva-Mahasattva) in this life.

 

“Concentrate the mind” means to stay wise and pure, continuously, to see things as they are and not to be fooled into believing in their respective “realities” and so to cease to grasp at them. It is like a man who wakes up in the middle of the night to the supreme and final truth and nods with satisfaction, saying, “Everything is the same thing.” He wakes up from a dreamless sleep of perfect unified void in which there was no such conception as “perfect unification” and he sees that all created things are the same as emptiness, that they are surface manifestations in a perfectly empty sea of Single Reality, that they are not individuated parts but one whole Is-ness, all the Same.

“Keep the precepts” means to adhere strictly to the four principal rules of purity, so that by so doing the disciple being free from the intoxicants, becomes free from suffering, and therefore he is free from Sangsara and all its polluting, tristful, illusionary conceptions of death and rebirth. The Precepts are based on kindness to all living creatures, and are self-purifying. “O Monk, empty this boat!!! if emptied, it will go quickly; having cut off passion and hatred, thou wilt go to Nirvana.”

The Four Precepts are:-

 

“Practise dhyana” means to make it a regular practice to meditate in holy trance so as to attain to Samadhi Meditation Ecstasy and Samapatti Spiritual Graces and Powers which are the states of liberation from this Sangsaric world as pointed out by all the Mighty Awakened Ones in the past, in the present, and to come.

As the Lord Buddha finished his instruction, recorded in the Surangama Sutra, there was great rejoicing in the hearts of all those present, bhikshus and bhikshunis, lay disciples of both sexes, Great Wise Beings, Practising-Buddhas, Saints, Arhats, and newly converted mighty Kings. All made sincere and humble obeisance to the Buddha and departed with grateful and joyful hearts.

Devadatta became notorious in later days by attempting to found a new sect of his own with severer and stricter rules than those prescribed by the Buddha. He acquired great skill in magic of a worldly kind, including hypnotism. This he practiced on the young Prince Ajatasutru, son of pious Bimbisara, bringing him to a determination to murder his father. Becoming king of Magadha, Ajatasutru had a special monastery built for Devadatta. Devadatta prevailed and induced the new king to help him oust Gotama from the leadership of the Sangha Brotherhood, claiming that old age had overtaken the Blessed One.

Buddha, ignoring this folly, said of his cousin:- “He is as one who seeks to pollute the ocean with a jar of poison.”

Seeing that his plot to wrest power from the Blessed One had failed, and not realizing that the Blessed One did not think in terms of “power” or “weakness,” Devadatta proceeded to plot against his life. Bands of cutthroats were set up to kill the Lord, but they were converted as soon as they saw him and listened to his preaching, won over by his loving and dignified bearing. The rock hurled down from the Gridhrakuta hill to hit the Master split in two, and luckily both pieces passed by without doing him much harm. A drunken elephant was let loose on the royal highway just at the time the Blessed One was coming along that path; the savage and spiteful behemoth, beholding Buddha, came to himself at once, and bending, became docile in his presence, for, like St. Francis of Assisi, the Blessed One had a strange power over animals. With lotus hand the Master patted the head of the beast, even as the moon lights up a flying cloud, and said:-

“The little elephant breaks down the prickly forest, and by cherishing him we know that it can profit men; but the cloud that removes the sorrow of the elephant old-age, this none can bear. You! swallowed up in sorrow’s mud! if not now given up, lust, anger and delusion will increase yet more and grow.”

 

To his disciples the Buddha said:- “Silently I endured abuse as the elephant in battle endures the arrow sent from the bow; for the world is ill-natured. They lead a tamed elephant to battle, the king mounts a tamed elephant, the tamed is the best among men, he who silently endures abuse. Mules are good, if tamed, and noble Sindhu horses, and elephants with large tusks; but he who tames himself is better still.”