Lecturer: Master Zheng-Yan
Subject: Craving Gives Rise to Cyclic Existence (生死緣於起貪愛)
Life is painfully short. It is like the dew; its existence is regrettably brief, illusory and impermanent. So, we must seize the moment and cherish the relationships that we have accumulated through our countless rebirths.
How long, really, is the lifetime of a human? Life is very brief, just like the morning dew. If you look outside, there are dewdrops now on the tips of the grass. But as soon as the sun comes out, you will see that the morning dew has disappeared. Or, when there are a few dewdrops, with a slight breeze, the leaves move, and these drops disperse and fall.
So, human life is truly brief, like dew. A human lifetime does not last very long if we compare it with the lifespan of those in heaven, it is very brief. However, people have longer lives than animals. Therefore, it is hard to discuss longevity. There are bacteria in our body whose lives only last seconds of our time.
Ask a doctor how long germs can survive in open air, and they will tell you that they perish in seconds. The life of bacteria is measured in seconds. It is truly hard to calculate the length of life.
But, as the Sutras say, this is how our time compares with that of the Four Heavens and Trayastrimsas Heaven. A day in Tusita Heaven is equivalent to thousands of years on Earth. Even if we were reborn dozens of times, one of their days will not have ended. In short, human life is truly painfully brief and just like an illusion. This is what the Buddha said, that life is like dew or a flash of lightning. We must contemplate it in this way. We should contemplate our impermanent life as dew or lightning.
Lightning flashes as fast as the fire sparks created by stones struck together. When we talk about dew and lightning, it means that we should seize time, which is impermanent and passes by so quickly. Life is so brief, so why do we take issue over petty matters?
Life is like dew, its existence painfully short. We should seize the moment and cherish the relationships we have accumulated throughout our rebirths.
We are born into this world with various causal connections with those around us. Each of us has parents and relatives. The countless relatives of our rebirths are all connected to us. As mentioned before, the Buddha said parental kindness is hard to repay. So when He saw a pile of bones, He reverently bowed down to the bones. This action prompted Ananda’s question, and Buddha spoke the Sutra of Profound Gratitude to Parents.
In India, the deceased are either cremated or alternatively given a sky burial. In a say burial, the dying individual is taken from his home prior to death and left in a certain place to die naturally. The body is left there, exposed to the elements so that it naturally decomposes. At that time, birds will also come to eat. In India, there is a type of bird that will eat these corpses.
When all the flesh and organs are consumed, only the bones are left.
Thus, we refer to bones piled high as a mountain. Because many of the dying were left there, a mountain of bones was formed.
After the Buddha saw the pile of bones, He spoke the Sutra of Profound Gratitude to Parents. Parents truly love and nurture their children. During a child’s infancy, how much milk does a mother provide? Let us look at the next passage. It says, “Our bones pile up as high as Mount Vipula outside the city of Rajagrha. Our mothers’ milk is as much as the four oceans, the blood they gave is more than that.”
The example I just gave was from the passage that Master Wu-Da wrote using. Mt. Vipila near Rajagrha as an analogy. The pile of bones that Buddha encountered at that time, could just as easily have been here. These bones of ours have been accumulating over many lifetimes. After countless reincarnations, the heap of our bones is piled up as high as. Mount Vipula outside the City of Rajagrha.
I do not know how tall Mount Vupula is, but if our bones pile up to the size of a mountain then it is clear they have been accumulation over many, many lifetimes. If we make a similar comparison, how much of our mothers’ milk have we drank?
In the past, most children were breast-fed instead of given cow’s milk. Some had their mother’s milk until the age of two. Some, more pampered children, were breast-fed until they turned three.
The ancients said that children should be breast-fed until they turned three. In the past, parents feared that children younger than three would suffer from indigestion. So the mother or grandmother would chew food before they fed it to the child. They mindfully nurtured their children with love. Milk from our mothers would fill four oceans, because after countless rebirths, we have had unknown numbers of parents. If our bones already pile up to a mountain, the bones of our parents would pile even higher, because each of our bodies was produced by two parents. That is why it is said, the milk we took from our mothers would fill the four great oceans. This is an analogy.
As for “the blood they gave, actually, mother’s milk is like blood; people often say a child takes his mother’s blood.” When I was young, I often heard others say this. But many people nowadays are not breast-fed, so the younger generation no longer hears such a saying. A mother’s milk is like her blood, so children essentially take their mother’s blood.
If the milk is as much as the four oceans, “the blood they gave is more than that.” Actually, the four oceans are filled with a tremendous amount of water. But the blood is much more than that. We should understand that life is very brief. Life after life, after we are born, we need nurturing from our parents. No one can survive at birth without parent’s nurture and care, without milk to help one grow.
Therefore, since we have had so many parents, if the bones from our rebirths form a mountain, those of our parents must be double that amount, not to mention siblings and other relatives. Then there are even more.
The next passage reads, “The tears shed by our relatives at our deaths are as much as the water of the four seas. Thus it is said, with desire, things arise, with the extinction of desire, things cease. Therefore, greed and desire is the origin of birth and death.”
We have had countless relatives and loved ones throughout our rebirths. Life after life, we are faced with the suffering of being separated from our loved ones and meeting those we hate, etc. How many tears have we shed as a result? Here is another analogy. It is as much water as the four seas. The tears we cried in love, hate, resentment over our many lifetimes are as much as the water of the four seas. Imperial Preceptor Wu-Da was very descriptive; he depicted the amount of tears we shed as filling the four seas.
Then he went on to say, “Thus it is said, with desire, things arise.” Once there is desire, things arise. When the desire is exhausted, things cease. We should understand that our parents’ desire resulted in conception, and our bodies were produced as a result. If their desire did not exist, neither would we. So, birth and death are dependent on parents’ desire. However, due to these kinds of desires, when people are in a relationship, romantic love can also create much hatred. The deeper the love, the more intense the hate. Because one person loves another very much, he cannot tolerate that she would have the slightest feeling for someone else.
Some mothers love their sons so much that they become jealous of their daughter-in-law. This jealousy turns into hate. Although the mother set up the marriage, when the son treats his wife better, the mother hates her.
Most marriages are formed out of love. Couples are so intimately in love that they entrust each other with their minds and bodies. So when extramarital affairs occur, how can one not hate?
The extremes of love and hate lead to many tears of suffering. We see this in our society every day. These kinds of things happen in modern society. This simple metaphor describes the extremes of love and hate as bringing tears of sadness that would fill the four seas. The tears from familial love, romantic love, from hate, passion, resentment or from sadness, grief are as vast as the water of the four seas.
Many people nowadays agonize so much in love and hate that they suffer from depression. They may cry just from sitting down. They may cry just from seeing someone. This is quite common.
This kind of mental illness brings much suffering to many people. So these tears are as deep as the four seas. This means that we have had many rebirths. They have been filled with love and desire, so we continue to be reborn. We not only die with love and hate, but also carry these causes to be reborn again. Such entanglement is never-ending, life after life.
So, transmigration within the Six Realms is suffering beyond words.
Everyone, we should always be mindful. All the people we see now may be those we loved or those who loved us. We should cherish our past and all those related to us from past lives. Therefore, we should cherish and love every person. Everyone, we should understand that all people in the world were related to us in the past,
so they are still our family in this life. Thus, we should always be mindful.
(Source: Da Ai TV 靜思晨語 法譬如水)
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