Explanations by Master Cheng-Yan
Subject: Opening up the Provisional to Reveal the True (會三歸一 開權顯實)
Date: Junary.02.2018
“Now this teaching merges the Three to return to the One. It opens up the provisional to reveal the One Dharma. Thus people turn from the Small to the Great. The perfect teaching of the Great Dharma of One Vehicle is so profound and distant it cannot be fathomed, so firm that it can never be shaken.”
Everyone, we must be mindful! The Lotus Sutra’s Chapter on Dharma Teachers is about to come to an end. The Chapter on Dharma Teachers is all about getting everyone to delve deeply into and mindfully accept and uphold this sutra. The meaning of this sutra is to reveal the perfect and harmonious teachings. We must all put our hearts into experiencing this and also demonstrates the depth and breadth of this sutra; it encompasses so much.
Furthermore, in this evil world of the Five Turbidities, in these chaotic times, this sutra is the wondrous medicine to treat the world in the present age. This is because it contains principles that are broad and expansive. But when it comes to teaching this sutra, it not only covers a long time and a wide breath, it also calls upon us to put it into practice.
This wondrous Dharma is for treating all kinds of afflictions; sentient beings’ mental ailments need to be treated with the wondrous Dharma. We must have the will; only then can we be treated by the Dharma-medicine. This is what we must seek to mindfully experience. So, this Dharma merges the Three Vehicles to return to the One. “Now this teaching merges the Three to return to the One.” We must put our hearts into seeing clearly and understanding. This Dharma merges the Three; the Small Vehicle, the Middle Vehicle and the Great Vehicle merge together to become the One.
“The One” opens up the provisional to reveal the true. In the past, the Agama teachings were given to suit [those with] limited capacities. When people enter the door, the Buddha had to first help them to understand worldly matters. He helped those who had just entered the door to comprehend worldly matters first.
In addition to the laws of nature causing the suffering of birth, aging, illness and death, over the course of life we will also experience the suffering of parting from loved ones, meeting those we hate, not getting what we want and the raging Five Aggregates. There are eight kinds of sufferings in total. But every one of us are like this; from birth until death, these sufferings of parting from loved ones, meeting those we hate and not getting what we want all come back to the raging Five Aggregates. But we do not understand these principles; we just live every day like this. Indeed! We have to part from the people we love. The people we love will part from us. The things we love will be lost. When these things happen, we suffer!
We merely recognize that this is suffering; we do not know understand how the origins of this suffering of parting from loved one come about. [There is also] “not getting what we want.” With mindset we have in life, all we know is “I want this; I must have it!” When we think, “I want it, so I must have it,” we try to get it, by any means necessary. In the process, we create ignorance and afflictions; we create all kinds of karma. This parting from loved ones and the desires for what we want [cause suffering]. There is also “meeting those we hate.” “I love this person, but I cannot be with them; we have to part. Now I am suffering! Yet with the people who are with me, some kinds of causes and conditions lead to resentment, animosity and hate.”
With these afflictive emotions in the relationship we likewise create many afflictions and much ignorance. If we can interact with everyone simply, and if everyone can cherish the affinities we have for us to be together, wouldn’t that be great? With an even mind, upon parting, we can wish one another well; this leaves us with a joyful heart. Why would there need to be so much suffering between people, giving rise to afflictive emotions? This leads to the creation of karma and many conflicts emerge between people and then develop further. This comes from the ignorance of sentient beings.
For things that are ours, we should be constantly grateful. Living in this world, how many things do we need? If we can have three filling meals a day, have warm clothing to wear and have a place to stay that protects us from the wind and rain, we should already be very grateful. What else is there to pursue, to go to so much difficulty to obtain? For the Buddha, enjoying the pleasures of the palace was also the way He lived. He left on His own to engage in spiritual practice and traveled along both banks of the Ganges to search for teachings. He visited people to learn teachings and understand the principles, the teachings about what is created through people interacting with each other. What was the main guidance of these teachings? What did they say about the ultimate nature of life’s gains and losses? During this time, the Buddha spent more than ten years continuously seeking.
Of course, some say it was six years, others as it was 11 years. Whether it was six or 11 years, He was alone during this time. After attaining Buddhahood, the concept He shared with everyone was that “1000 households can provide rice for your bowl. The lone monastic can roam over 10,000 miles.” How confident and at ease they were! Their minds were without hindrances. Their minds were not hindered by any object, not hindered by passions or cravings. What they had was the path; they walk on the Bodhisattva-path. They go among people to windily spread the Buddha’s teachings so everyone could understand; to spread the Dharma and benefit sentient beings. This is also a way to live. Ordinary people’s businesses [expand] step by step; they constantly expand their businesses. No matter how much they have, it is not enough.
They spend their whole life toiling away. They work hard, but does all this hard work get them anything in the end? It does! They end up with many karmic forces that pull them into the future, in a direction that they have no control over. This is how life works. We must deeply understand this now. The Buddha already taught this Dharma for everyone to know clearly.
In this evil world of the Five Turbidities, the afflictions that come from endless desires continue to grow in number, and the people who create karma grow in number. These states of mind, our afflictive emotions, grow more severe, and our afflicted thoughts become more complicated. This creates turbidity in the world. We need the Dharma as pure water to wash away this turbidity. This is just like how during a drought, a light breeze stirring can result in a sandstorm. This covers the sky in a haze, such that one cannot see faraway places. This is due to a lack of water.
The turbidity of the world is so severe because it lacks the Dharma. People have so many afflictions because they have yet to take the Dharma to heart. The Buddha gave us this perfect teachings, the One True Dharma of the Great Vehicle, a true teaching, a perfect and harmonious teachings. He hoped that we can continuously pass it on, uphold the sutra, read and recite it, transcribe and expound it, make offerings of conduct and so on so that this sutra can be disseminated widely. In His later years, He merged the Three Vehicles to return to the One. The teachings the Buddha gave over His lifetime are the Small, Middle and Great Vehicle Dharma.
Actually, He taught according to capabilities. He did not wait until the Lotus Dharma-assembly and then fully teach the Great Vehicle Dharma. That was not what He did; He taught according to capabilities. But when He reached old age, He gathered all the teachings and categorized them. Small [Vehicle] teachings are for those who had just entered the Buddha’s door and knew nothing at all about the Buddha-Dharma. As for worldly matters, many of them had already experienced suffering, but they did not understand the principles underlying the origin of suffering.
So, the Buddha taught the Agama sutras as the first step. He analyzed things to help everyone understand that the source of suffering is the mind. Greed, anger, ignorance, arrogance and doubt bring about much suffering. So, the Buddha analyzed the mind for them. With all the many afflictions of the mind, He addressed each of them, analyzed them and gave them names. So, there are many numerical terms in the Dharma, so many different numbers and terms. Originally, the teachings are very simple. The Buddha, in order to teach people, adapted to people’s capabilities and in this way, continuously established numerous terms and rules to teach and admonish us. This was in the Agama teachings, which were inseparable from the Four Noble Truths, suffering, causation, cessation and the Path. After they understood the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha taught everyone this comes from the karmic law of cause and effect. So, He taught in many ways; the sutras contain many stories from His numerous past lives, from countless kalpas ago; Whether His previous lives, His disciples’ previous lives or the affinities between them and so on, the Buddhist sutras have many examples of this. He used the past as an analogy for the present, used those causes and conditions and so on.
However, these are all collected within the Agama sutras, the Agama teachings. Following that were the Vaipulya and Prajna teachings. People’s capabilities had gradually matured. People’s capabilities had gradually matured. If they only had the Dharma of “existence” alone, He feared that sentient beings would get stuck at these teachings of “existence” and easily give rise to delusion.
Therefore, the Buddha started guiding them to enter the Dharma of “emptiness”. The Middle Vehicle is the Vaipulya teachings. The Vaipulya teachings are skillful means. He opened many doors of skillful means to guide everyone to further understand that all things that have “existence” arise from the convergence of causes and conditions. Since causes and conditions converge, eventually they will separate, and these things will be no more.
How do these things cease to exist? That is emptiness. By entering the Prajna teachings, our wisdom becomes clear. We understand how things come together, how they disperse and so on. We apply our wisdom to experience these principles of emptiness. This is entering the Prajna teachings. During the Prajna period, the Buddha spent 22 years discussing the Prajna teachings. He explained the Prajna teachings in hopes that everyone would be able to understand.
The Prajnaparamita sutras help everyone realize that the appearances of the world all ultimately return to emptiness. But [in talking about] how everything was empty, the Buddha was also worried that sentient beings would become attached to the idea of "emptiness”. Feeling like nothing exists anyway, they might idle their time away; this is wrong. So, He brought emptiness and existence together in the One Dharma of the Great Vehicle. The One Dharma of the Great Vehicle was what He wanted everyone universally to experience and understand.
So, in the Chapter on Dharma Teachers, it seems like very day I am saying, “You must go among people to experience these numerous afflictions. You must experience them.” Going among people is like entering a big furnace to be tempered, to be forged into pure, refined utensils. This is why we must go among people. “Afflictions are Bodhi.” Only after something is forged in a raging fire can it become pure and refined. When we are among people, we see how everyone’s ignorance and afflictions come about. Do things need be this complicated? Does there need to be so many afflictions? Participants are deluded, whereas bystanders see clearly. This allows us to experience and understand. So, He “opened the provisional.” He opened up teachings of emptiness and existence to reveal the One True Dharma, which is the Great Vehicle Dharma. The Great Vehicle Dharma encompasses everything. It is the One Dharma.
In terms of the people, these spiritual practitioners can be Hearers, or Solitary Realizers, or people who have formed great aspirations, the Bodhisattvas. In any case, all who learn and practice the Dharma and reach this place will “turns from the Small to the Great.” This is no Small or Middle Vehicle.
Ultimately, the Buddha wants everybody to form Great Vehicle aspirations. After everyone understands, they will turn from the Small to the Great, towards ”the perfect teaching of the Great Dharma of One Vehicle.” The perfect teaching of the Great Dharma of One Vehicle is what the Buddha was now opening and revealing on Vulture Peak, the Lotus Sutra. It is the perfect teaching of the Great Dharma of the One Vehicle. Here, He collected everything together; the Small and Middle Vehicle taught in the past were brought together in the One Vehicle. The Great Dharma of the One Vehicle is so “profound and distant it cannot be fathomed. It is very profound, very distant. For unenlightened beings aimed toward the state of Buddhahood, the road ahead is long and they have for to go. How much farther? That depends on our minds. If we still have many affliction in our minds, then of course we still have very far to go.
However, if we eliminate our afflictions, it is right here in this moment. This is a very profound principle. So, it is right here in this present moment. Even if it is here in this moment, to unenlightened beings like us, the path to Buddhahood seems very distant from us. This is because we are unenlightened beings. We must engage in spiritual practice. We all must admit that we are unenlightened beings. But if unenlightened beings can put their hearts into this, it is actually right here in this moment. Everyone intrinsically has Buddha-nature. The Buddha said, “The mind, the Buddha and sentient beings are no different [in their nature]”. Where is the Buddha’s goal? It is right here at this present moment, since we are no different [in nature] from the Buddha. So what is the difference? We are covered by afflictions and ignorance. That is the only difference.
But even though we know this principle, letting go of and eliminating [afflictions] is very difficult! So, He said this is “so profound and distant it cannot be fathomed.” When are we going to be able to brush our ignorance and afflictions aside and let them go? This is where the only difference lies. The Buddha-Dharma is fundamentally very firm. It requires us to be “so firm that [we] cannot be shaken.” Once we give rise to a spiritual aspirations, “If we sustain our original aspiration, we will surely attain Buddhahood.” We can immediately attain Buddhahood. The Buddha-mind is in our mind; the Buddha is in our own heart. “There is no need to go far to seek the Buddha. Vulture Peak is already in our minds. We each have a stupa on this Vulture Peak. We can practice at the foot of that stupa.” It is not far at all! It is this close. It is just that our spiritual aspirations are not firm yet. Because we are constantly wavering and our minds are fluctuating, we are always advancing and then retreating, taking one step forward, then one step back. Going forward and backward in this way means we will forever be marching in place in our unenlightened state, forever unable to actually advance.
If we can firm up our spiritual aspirations, then no ignorance or affliction can sway our minds then no ignorance or affliction can sway our minds. This is what we must learn to do. This is profound, very deep. “It is so profound that is wondrous.” It has wondrous principles and is very profound.
It is so profound that is wondrous, so distant that is boundless. This ultimate truth is the safe and stable land of all Buddhas. No one can reach it except Buddhas in the ultimate state.
The Dharma truly is extremely profound. It truly is extremely profound. For unenlightened beings, this wondrous Dharma is so distant that it cannot be fathomed; it is boundless. How distant and far-reaching is it? It is truly boundless. We often say that our lifespan is limited. How long will it extend anyway? We do not know, but we can open it up. Do we want to open up our lives? That will depend on how much we have opened up our [minds]. How deep we want to go also depends on us. If we have experienced the Dharma and can understand it, the Dharma is profound, subtle and wondrous. It is very wondrous. It is so open and vast that it is boundless. It is distant, vast and boundless. We can apply the Dharma any way we like. If we were to go in the opposite direction, we would give rise to ignorance and affliction. For unenlightened beings to reach the state of Buddhahood, the road is still very far and cannot be measured. So, “The ultimate truth is the safe and stable land of all Buddhas.” If our minds can return to oneness, with our hearts encompassing the universe, becoming one with heaven and earth, then this is the safe and stable land of all Buddhas. The ultimate truth of the Buddha-Dharma is the perfect One Vehicle Dharma. It is “the safe and stable home of all Buddhas. No one can reach it except Buddhas in the ultimate state.” Unenlightened beings still have much ignorance. Clearly, they are very close.
However, the dust storm within them prevents them from seeing where that true, safe and stable land is. Everywhere in this universe is part of the Dharma-realm. It is because we unenlightened beings are able to comprehend this that we are unable to reach it; only a Buddha is able to reach it. Everyone intrinsically has Buddha-nature. Once we return to our nature of True Suchness, we have reached the ultimate state and become one with the Dharma-realm, the universe. This is the safe and stable land. So, as His “one great cause, the Buddha opened and revealed this for sentient beings.”
The one great cause is opened and revealed now for the assembly to ultimately clarify the teachings for Hearers and also enter the Bodhisattva-path. For the sake of the one great cause, the Buddha opened and revealed His understanding and views so we can realize and enter them.
It was because of these causes and conditions that the Buddha came to the world and opened and revealed [the Dharma] to us. His one great cause was to help us understand and be very clear. He definitively clarified it so we could ultimately understand [the teachings for] Hearers and Solitary Realizers. He told us we must enter the Bodhisattva-path, for that is the ultimate Dharma. This was what the Buddha, at the Vulture Peak Assembly and in the Lotus Sutra, ultimately clarified for us. It was “to ultimately clarify the teachings for Hearers and to enter the Bodhisattva-path.”
The Buddha came to this world for this one great cause. He came to “open and reveal, so sentient beings must realize and enter.” We must awaken to and enter this state. This is the Buddha’s greatest hope for us. So, for us to “realize and enter the Buddha’s understanding and views” is the Buddha’s greatest hope, the goal for which He came to this world. So, “Where there is the water of understanding and views, there is no dry earth.”
Where there is the water of understanding and views, there is no dry earth. By listening, understanding, practicing and learning, we can draw near the great, perfect and universal enlightenment of Bodhi.
If we have the understanding and views of the state of Buddhahood, then those teachings, those principles, the Dharma-water, will be forever within our hearts. The ground of our minds will not be so completely dry that when we are agitated by the slightest ignorance, a dust storm of ignorance and dust-like delusions will arise and cause our minds to be so hazy that we cannot see the path we must walk. So, we must be mindful. “Where there is the water of understanding and views, there is no dry earth.” As for the water of understanding and views, if we constantly have this Dharma-water in our hearts, then the ground of our minds will be free of dust-like delusions. We will be free of these delusions and afflictions.
Otherwise, if the ground of our minds is dry, when the wind of ignorance blows, [the dust of] the dry field of our minds will “fly all over.” That is ignorance! So, we must [have] the Dharma-water. The Dharma-water can continuously nourish our wisdom-life. For our wisdom-life to grow, we need the Dharma-water. So, “By listening, understanding, practicing and learning, we can draw near the great, perfect and universal enlightenment of Bodhi.” If we earnestly and mindfully listen to the teachings of the Dharma, then we can experience and understand all of it. Then we make the resolve to engage in spiritual practice. We must practice and review what we learned. We must also implement this in the world. For a person to become a doctor, after their academic studies, they would have to go through [clerkship]. To observe the way doctors treat their patients and the way patients suffer, they have to go through [clerkship]. After [clerkship], they graduate and if they really decide they want to become a doctor, they will have to do an internship at a hospital. They will follow the attending doctor on their rounds through the wards and watch the doctor diagnose patients. The attending doctor will analyze for the interns what illness this is, what kind of bacteria he has, and how the illness started. They are there learning as interns. After being interns for some time, they become resident doctors.
The attending physicians gradually give some of their responsibilities to them. The resident doctors spend night and day [observing] the situation of their patients. As residents, they spent time with their patients. They have to understand [their patients]; they have to watch, listen and understand them, must observe and listen to the patients describing [their situation] in detail and record all of this to give to the attending doctor. Gradually, the attending doctor trains them, and gradually, the residents will know how to save someone in an emergency, what medicine to use. Gradually, they can treat patients’ illnesses. This is the same principle.
As Buddhist practitioners, we must do the same. We must learn and practice. As we engage in spiritual practice, we take one step after another in this way. We must practice! First, we learn it ourselves. Then, we gradually go among people. Among the people, there are many who are suffering. Afflictions and ignorance are like illnesses of the mind. They cause people to groan in pain like patients; we hear many cries of afflictions and ignorance. “Is this right or wrong?” They are struggling there, groaning and wailing. What kind of illness is this, anyway? [To find out,] we must be mindful. We are just like resident doctors. We have decided to go among people to experience and listen to the complications [of life]. What might sound right is actually wrong. What seems right is actually wrong. There is so much ignorance, so many phenomena that are hard to understand.
There are so many kinds of ailments among people. So, we must engage in spiritual practice. Thus, we say we need to heave great compassion, to unceasingly accumulate compassion and expand our hearts, our spiritual home. Our spiritual home encompasses the Three Realms. The Three Realms are like a burning house. Do we want our minds to be in the burning house? Or do we want to enter the safe and stable state of the Tathagata? This depends on our minds. So, we must mindfully seek to comprehend this. If we enter the Tathagata’s home, then we will be peaceful and at ease. This is to expand our spiritual home so our hearts encompass the universe. We become one with everything in heaven and earth. This is the ground of the Tathagata’s mind; this is His safe and stable land. This is the True Dharma. We must mindfully experience and realize it, must practice and understand it. Then, our firm resolve will slowly bring us nearer to the prefect enlightenment of Bodhi.
This universal and perfect enlightenment is Anuttara-samyak-sambodhi. Indeed! Engaging in spiritual practice is like going to medical school. Medical students go from not knowing to gradually comprehending the suffering of the illnesses in the world. It is the same with our spiritual practice. We [begin from] not knowing anything at all. Though we are surrounded by suffering, we do not recognize its principles, so we continuously struggle in difficulty.
Like patients, we suffer. If patients haphazardly take medicine, they endlessly replicate [their suffering]. The causes of their illnesses constantly produce symptoms, causing their illness to grow more and more severe. They are completely unaware of this; they just sit there, groaning. This is how the illnesses of sentient beings come about. So, to adapt and respond to the world, [the Buddha] used many methods to help others. Originally, [the Dharma] was very simple, but He had to use many different terms to help relieve the suffering of sentient beings. This is like what Tzu Chi does. To adapt and respond to the suffering of sentient beings today, we have the mission of charity. We have been doing charity from the very beginning all the way until today.
There are so many suffering people around the world. The farther and farther we look, the more and more suffering people we see. For some, due to the imbalances in nature, they suffer from natural disasters. Some people come carrying their karma to be born into a place of suffering. With their direct and circumstantial retributions, they experience a lifetime of suffering. We see more and more suffering beings like them.
Furthermore, the ignorance in people’s minds lead them to create so many disasters, so many bloody and unbearable man-made calamities. From the perspective of charity, on a broader scale, there are so many suffering people in the world. We have to establish a spirit of humanitarianism. So, we provide relief. This is the charity mission; it relieves the suffering of sentient beings.
But the Buddha-Dharma [tells us], “Having relieved them from suffering, [Bodhisattvas] then expound the Dharma for them.” So, we must exercise the spirit of the Buddha’s teachings and pave the Bodhisattva-path so that everyone can walk it. When we approach suffering people, we are not just helping them once, but caring for them in the long term. When their suffering is at its worst, we help them free themselves from hardship in that time of great urgency. Then, we provide them with a place to settle down and help them live a stable life.
Next, we help them understand the ways they can also help others. Thus, “Having relieved them from suffering, “[Bodhisattvas] then expound the Dharma for them.” These were the methods the Buddha opened and revealed when He came to the world. Is this enough? Physical illness is truly painful. People fall ill and become impoverished. Because they fall ill, they cannot work, and this can drag an entire family into poverty. Some people were poor to begin with, so they cannot go to the doctor to treat a minor illness. They endure it and drag it on until the illness becomes severe. For this reason, we established a free clinic. When did the free clinic start? Six years after we began the mission of charity. We established the free clinic on Ren’ai Street. Because we were running this free clinic, we discovered the lack of medical care in Hualien. There was a shortage all along the east coast. Because of this, formed aspirations and built a hospital on the east coast.
It was very hard; it took until 1986 for Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital to be completed. From the free clinic in 1972 to 1986, in those ten-plus years, we put in so such effort to build the hospital. Why did we do all that? Because we discovered people were suffering. This aspiration [came from] the Dharma. The Dharma inspired our aspirations. This aspiration was to dig a well. Sentient beings lacked these teachings, lacked these principles. So, in digging a well, we hoped the well-diggers could dig this kind of well. But the process of digging a well requires many people pooling their strength together, bit by bit. This process is very arduous.
We cannot simply build a pond. To build a pond, we need water to flow in drop by drop. But if these drops of water stop coming in, then the pond will dry up. It is better to dig a well. To keep long story short, this was how Tzu Chi began. Because of the suffering in the world, [we have the missions of] charity, medicine, education and humanistic culture. To provide medicine, we needed education. For education’s sake, we needed humanistic culture. [From charity,] we continuously expanded until reaching Tzu Chi’s Four Missions. This is also because the Buddha came to this world for one great cause, to open and reveal [His views]. He helped us comprehend the world’s suffering and helped us to understand that to learn and practice the Buddha-Dharma, we must draw near people and relieve their suffering. So, we have opened up this Bodhisattva-path for going among people. So much Dharma that we could never finish teaching all started from this. In this evil world of the Five Turbidities, what the Buddha cares about is that the Dharma will always abide in the world.
So, with the Chapter on Dharma Teachers, [teaches us] to continue to pass it down. “People who draw near the Dharma teachers will quickly attain the Bodhisattva-path. People who follow these teachers and learn will be able to see Buddhas as numerous as the Ganges’ sands.”
If we are able to put the teachings into practice, we will discover that everybody is a Bodhisattva. By walking the Bodhisattva-path, we return to our intrinsic Tathagata-nature. I believe that this is the process we must put our hearts into, with the goal of attaining Buddhahood. So, we must always be mindful.
(Source: Da Ai TV – Wisdom at Dawn program – Explanation by Master Chen-Yen)
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