Lecturer: Master Zheng-Yan
Subject: Turn knowledge into Wisdom (轉知識為智慧)
Do you dream when you sleep? Everyone has dreams at night. Ignorance is like dreaming; we have no control. We are lost and easily moved by our circumstances. When we wake up, we realize it was an illusion; none of it was real. And in the illusion, there are constant changes.
Anyone who has ever had a dream should understand what I am saying. Isn’t life just like this? Living in ignorance is like dreaming; we have no control over ourselves. People’s pure and bright enlightened natures are obscured by ignorance, as if seeing the world through a fog. Isn’t that fog-like state just like a dream? It prevents us from clearly seeing what is in front of us. So we should try to realize what is illusory. We spoke of the view of Illusoriness. Everything in the world is illusory because nothing is permanent.
Whatever is in front of you, or behind me, whatever you see in front of you or behind me it is not permanent. Although we do not realize it now, with time we will come to realize that everything changes imperceptibly over time. So what is permanent? What is real? This is why we must become enlightened, to realize that in the illusion, nothing is permanent. Look at this pot of flowers in front of you. Do the flowers stay that way forever? No, they have a limited lifespan. Orchids bloom longer than other flowers. In a few more days, or a month, the brilliant blossoms will wilt away. But then other buds will bloom into flowers. This is impermanence. This is change.
Changing conditions are unreal. They are not real. But while nothing is real in this unreal world, we have to believe there is truth in the illusion. Flowers and plants have essential oils. The five grains have nutritional value, right?
From day to day, without nourishment from these things, how would we live? So in our lives, if we are mindful, we can prove there is real in the unreal. There is truth in illusion, even in dreams. We think during the day, and dream at night. Some dream-states are very strange, but we should trust in our subconscious.
This subconscious takes us to many places. Perhaps we were really there in a past life. Maybe after some unknown period of time, it has manifested in our dreams through our subconscious. So we must believe that there is truth in the illusion. So everyone must mindfully experience life.
We learn Buddhism to see the Ultimate Truth in ourselves. We each have a True Nature that we must learn to discover. It is like the essential oil in plants. When we attain realization, speaking the truth will not be difficult. Once we realize the truth in ourselves and fully understand it, we will have the ability to understand everything. If we can clearly realize this, we can eliminate afflictions and thus eliminate obstacles.
So the text continues on to say, after we push aside obstacles, we can “happily teach and remain undefiled.” If we are undefiled by afflictions, then is everything we say true? Will our principles be correct? If we push aside all afflictions, the Truth will appear. Then we can happily teach it to others. We can freely say what we want to say, because it will all be the True Dharma. Since it is the True Dharma, we will never again be defiled by any afflictions. We will speak freely and attain “peace of mind in freely applying the Dharma.” When we speak with a peaceful mind, we will not doubt the Dharma we speak. There are many teachings of the Dharma that use metaphors and skillful means to attract people and help them transform themselves, but we will be equally at peace in using them. So we should know that when we are hindered, it is because we obstruct ourselves. But when we are able to clearly understand, all afflictions will disappear. When afflictions are removed, “ignorance and its resulting habits will be completely eliminated and never repeated.” Because we all suffer from ignorance, our minds are often obscured by afflictions. So we hope everyone can gain knowledge. We want to turn knowledge into wisdom, and then into enlightened wisdom.
Chinese characters are beautiful, and they make sense. People who have knowledge are called intellectuals. There are many people who are intellectuals; they only have some knowledge and understanding. I tell everyone that we should strive to have wisdom rather than knowledge because knowledge and wisdom are absolutely different. Knowledge is just knowing the name of this type of grass or that type of flower. But we do not really understand its true nature. What is the true principle? We should penetrate and understand it. Then we will have “differentiating wisdom.” But we are ignorant, so we want to eliminate that ignorance. We teach and speak joyfully and are undefiled, so we cannot allow afflictions to defile us again. Without afflictions we can “feely apply the Dharma and skillful means.” So we must eliminate these afflictions. Not only that, we must also rid ourselves of “ignorance and its resulting habits so they are completely eliminated and never repeated.” After we work hard to attain the Truth and the right methods, we must never be influenced again.
The text continues by saying, “The flawless Noble Path is bright as the day. I vow to take refuge and pay respect to all Buddha’s.” Actually, flawless means having no afflictions. When our wisdom is not obscured by afflictions, when afflictions and ignorance are not blocking us, we seek the Noble Path.
We all learn Buddhism in the hopes that we can approach the Noble Path. If we practice on the Right Path, we can draw near to the Buddha’s realm. That is the Noble Path. This Noble Path is flawless, which means without afflictions. The Noble Path leads to wisdom. As we move forward on this path of wisdom, our world will be as bright as day. We will no longer be dreaming. Everything will be clear. When we walk on the Noble Path, we will not be obscured by ignorance.
I read a story. Somewhere in mainland China, in a very poor village, a woman suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She had poor mental faculties. All she could do was smile. No one knew where she came from. Everyone looked down on her. There was an old woman in the village with a son. The son was in his 30s or 40s. He could not find a wife, so he had no one to carry on the family name. So the old woman brought this woman home to be a wife for her son. Although he was reluctant, he married her for the sake of the next generation. About a year later, she gave birth. After the child was born, the grandmother took the child to bathe and wrap him. This child was very precious to the family so they watched him closely. They did not let the mother near him. The mother did not know much, but she knew she had a child. She kept reaching for the child, but the grandmother held onto him. She begged to hold the child, but the grandmother refused.
After a few months, the grandmother cooked a bowl of rice for her. They never let her eat anything good but that day she cooked the rice especially for her and said, “Leave after you finish this meal.” The woman did not understand much, but when she heard that they were driving her out, she realized that she would not see her child ever again. Not only was she not allowed to hold her child, she would not even be able to see him either. She had taken a couple of bites already but when she heard the old woman say this, she put the bowl down. The old woman started yelling at her. She did not know how to respond. She just cried. She took out half the food from the bowl. What did that gesture mean? It means that she would eat just half because she wanted to stay. That was what she tried to express. Although the old woman’s heart softened a bit, she refused to have another person in the house. So, she hit her daughter-in–law with a hoe. She angrily drove her away and said, “Do not enter this door again. You must leave this place.” The woman left. But did she really leave? She continued to wander the village for years.
When the child was around seven or eight he started school and people made fun of him for not having a mother. Someone told him, “Your mom is insane.” Whether she was insane or not, he hoped to see her.
One day, the other children yelled, “your mom’s coming. She’s over there.” When he looked, he saw a filthy woman. But everyone said she was his mother. So he walked over to her. This woman reached out like she wanted to hug him. Her maternal instinct was still there. When he turned back to the other children, they kept saying things like, “Your mom is crazy.” He was very anger. He turned around, looked at her, and pushed her aside.
The grandmother saw it too and decided to teach him a lesson. She said, “How can you do that? She’s your mom. No matter what, you cannot be unfilial.” But he could not accept a mother like this.
He just kept going to school every day. After a few years, his grandmother died. His neighbor cooked meals for him and his mother delivered it to him every day. The school was more than two hours away and she went every day to bring him food. One day, when she brought his food, there were some peaches with it. He wondered how they got there, so he asked, “Where did you get these? She said simply, “Picked it.” The son was very moved. He never called her “Mother,” but she kept delivering food to him over the years.
One day when he was in middle school, he saw that his mother had picked more peaches for him. He realized that every day he ate food delivered by her and suddenly he was very moved. He raised his head and said, “Mom!” He complimented her, “The peaches are sweet. His mom smiled and he realized she was actually a beautiful person.
The night, his neighbors asked, “Where did your mom go?”
He said, “She went back.”
“No, she didn’t come back, where did she go?”
“Where is she now? She’s not back!”
He started to get scared. He said, “My mom brought some peaches today.”
The auntie next door asked, “What did you tell her?”
“I said the peaches were tasty.”
She said, “That is dangerous.” She told him to follow her. She knew there were peach trees next to the cliff. Since her son told her it was tasty, she must have gone back to pick more. So they went to the peach orchard along the cliffs. They kept looking for her. Finally they found a broken branch. Beneath the broken branch was a deep canyon. They looked down and saw his fallen mother. She was dead, in a pool of blood, grasping a branch of the peach tree.
The son felt great regret. In elementary school, he pushed her away. Every day he yelled at and ran away from her. She brought him food daily. She unfailingly made the two to three hour trip. She brought him three meals a day. Her motherly love was so true. He vowed to study hard to honor her. After he graduated from college, he wrote down this story.
Everyone, this is principle of maternal instinct. No matter how confused she was, the love she had for her son remained. So what is this true love? It is also a form of attachment, the attachment of maternal love.
So what is the truest principle? I hope we can all understand the Right Path, which includes being filial. Being unfilial leads us down the wrong path. When we do thing we must follow the principles; that is the correct thing to do. We must mindfully vow to eliminate afflictions, and truly follow the Noble Path. We must follow in the Buddha’s footsteps. So we must always be mindful.
(Source: Da Ai TV 靜思晨語 法譬如水)
首頁 
