dharma

Science and Buddhism V: The Niyamas
The primal drives at the centre of the Wheel of Life (Tom Knudsen)

Instead of a definite personality, and instead of intrinsically existing things interacting with each other, we have the notion of conditional arising (see post Science and Buddhism III).

To clarify it further, Pali Buddhism says there are a number of orders or categories of conditionality (niyamas) (using a modern re-framing of the terms, as developed by Caroline Rhys Davids[1]):

  1. Inorganic — traditionally seen as heat and cold, and the behaviour of the atmosphere.
  2. Organic –specifically the growth of plants from their seeds.
  3. Mental — basic psychology, covering anything with a mind, including animals.
  4. Karmic — one’s choice comes in, one can make ‘skilful’ or unskilful choices; the former are realistic, the latter try to fight reality for egoistic purposes, and thus cause huge problems, for self and others.
  5. Dharma — can be seen as the substrate of ineffable reality itself, never completely summed up in the ‘laws’ of the four other spheres.[2]

Inorganic and organic orders

Science rules in the inorganic order.

The organic or biological order has been greatly illuminated by science, which has established the fact of evolution, with all life interrelated through historic lineages. Science has investigated genetics and developmental biology; physiological processes and the maintenance and reproduction of life.

In Buddhism, three of the undetermined questions illuminate the first two niyamas:

  • What is the duration and size of the universe? 
  • Is the life force the same as the body or not?

Traditional Buddhism asserts that the universe has no beginning. If the big bang is an absolute beginning, then you need a transcendent principle as the cause of universe, some kind of godhead.  Like science, Buddhists do not postulate a transcendent being as the origin of all things.

But it’s interesting that the Buddhist origin myths include conscious beings from the very ‘beginning’.  It said that consciousnesses are left over from a previous world cycle, and they become attracted by the gradually condensing material universe, longing for some kind of embodiment, and their involvement influences the evolution of the new universe until eventually physically embodied self-aware beings appear.[3]  This is a long way from any scientific view! 

However in one Buddhist scripture, there is a teaching about particles of pure energy subsisting in the empty period between the destruction of one universe and the beginning of another, from which all the matter in the new universe is formed, which the Dalai Lama thinks could be rather like the origins of the universe in the fluctuations of the quantum vacuum.[4]

It is certainly true that some ancient Buddhist descriptions of the Cosmos are surprisingly close to modern scientific discoveries.  But so what?  Is this just a coincidence?  If not, does it imply that an advanced and trained introspective mind can have insights into structures far beyond the possibility of its sensory perceiving?

Mental order

It is very fruitful to compare Buddhist and scientific psychologies, and allow a synthesised new psychology to emerge.  For example, Daniel Goleman has attempted to do this in his study of the emotions.[5]

Note the Wheel of Life — the three central animals as the primordial drives (craving, aversion and active ignoring); and consider the six realms.

Is Buddhist psychology scientific?  It has never used the techniques of performing carefully recorded and repeatable experiments, observing only countable variables and measurable quantities.  Traditional Buddhist writers based their conclusions upon reported experiences (so can be accused of relying on anecdotal evidence).  They tended to give weight to experiences reported a) by practitioners regarded as spiritually advanced, and b) in older, authoritative texts.  Nevertheless, early versions of Buddhist psychology were subjected to criticism by later thinkers, and the discipline (not that it was ever regarded as a field separate from the religion as a whole) progressed.

We’ll look at the Karmic order in the next post.

[1] C A F Rhys Davids, Buddhism (1912).

[2] See Subhuti’s 2010 paper.  http://www.sangharakshita.org/pdfs/revering-and-relying-upon-the-dharma.pdf The dharma-niyama can also be seen as spiral conditionality. The names for 1-3 are based on Caroline Rhys David’s alignment of the niyamas with a western classification of scientific knowledge, and don’t directly translate the Pali terms, utu- bija- and chitta-niyama; and dhamma-niyama is traditionally described quite differently.

[3] Agañña Sutta, Digha Nikaya 27.

[4] Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom, 90.

[5] Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama, by Daniel Goleman (Bantam, 2002).

Science and Buddhism IV: Is the scientific description true?
  • The realist view: science is revealing to us all the components of an ultimately real objective universe completely separate from us.
  • The instrumentalist view: we can say nothing about reality, but we use science for its practical convenience.

A traditional Buddhist perspective would agree with neither of these. Our experience is indeed experience of reality — it is not a product of our minds — but the categories that we use to make sense of that reality are provisional — they are not ultimate components of reality.

This labelling and categorisation is a function of human minds, it is influenced by volitional processes of the past and present — human urges, tendencies, weaknesses and so on.  It is our minds that pick out the entities that we experience from the bewildering background of that tangled flow of phenomena. 

We make decisions to draw boundaries around things in a particular way, or we regard particular ‘shapes’ as being in the foreground.  Once we have done that, then the laws of the interactions between these entities we have picked out are now decided, and science can discover what the laws are. 

The entities will behave as they do whatever we think about them, once we have picked them out.  They are not all in the mind.  But the choice of what to look at is very significant indeed.  It produces whole sciences — geology, oceanography, animal behaviour — and the entities multiply, and some of them last a long time through the history of science, and some of them are briefly popular and then die away.  Not long ago, most astronomers were convinced that they could see a network of lines on Mars, and a lot of them agreed that they were canals.  But better telescopes showed that there is nothing at all there resembling the maps that people were drawing up until the 1930s.

The new sciences give rise to their own technologies, and a hint at plans to look for yet more new entities.  For example, once people started thinking of light as being rather like waves on the ocean, they wondered what a much choppier ocean would be like, and X-rays were discovered.  They wondered what a much slower swell would be like, and radio waves were discovered.  But it is no less true to think of light as zooming along like thousands of little pellets, not like waves on the ocean at all.

Is everything pre-determined?

Quantum mechanics suffers from the problem of indeterminism — the unpredictability of quantum events.  Is it that chance is ultimate, and any deterministic laws that we find come from the law of large numbers?  Or is it that determinism is ultimate, and apparent randomness comes from the complexity of huge numbers of interacting events, as studied in chaos theory?  A French Buddhist philosopher of science, Michel Bitbol, takes a dependent co-arising-type approach, showing that the causes of any event are not defined in the absolute, but are “relative to the very circumstances of the production of the phenomena”.[1]  Since phenomena arise in dependence upon an enormously complex context, a context which includes the person or instrumentation detecting the phenomena, they are immune to any certain determination.  Relations between things should be seen as being prior to the things that are relating; however, “neither connection, nor connected nor connector exist”, says Nagarjuna.  Buddhism’s radical analysis is needed to cap philosophy of science, since it comes from “direct stabilised experience of a disabused outlook” — i.e., non-conceptual Insight into reality — while the insights of Western philosophy, impressive though they are, are the products of the free play of ideas.

Is there a self?

Conditioned arising applied to oneself leads to the realisation that there is no core-self, something which current psychologists, as well as neuroscientists, are insisting on with increasing unanimity.  There are just mental processes.  Already 100 years ago, the founder of scientific psychology, William James, said ‘the thoughts themselves are the thinkers’ — there is no mysterious inner core of selfhood doing the thinking.

[1] In Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground, B. Alan Wallace (editor), Columbia University Press, New York, 2003, 349.

A Puja to Manjughosha

Image by Dh. Aloka

  1. Bowing to Manjughosha’s Mind, Speech and Body

To you whose wisdom
Purifies like a cloud-free sun
The veils of passions and of ignorance,
Yielding perfect clarity;

To you who sees all matters as they are,
And so holds the book
Of Prajnaparamita to your heart,
To your mind, Manjughosha, I bow.

To you whose kindness
Views each being as your only son,
Covered in avidya’s darkness,
Afflicted in the prison of time;

To you who utters the sixty-four-fold voice,
Resounding loud as thunder,
Rousing from passion’s sleep,
Shattering karma’s prison fetters,
Dispelling avidya’s darkness;

To you who grasps the sword of wisdom
To cut every shoot of duhkha,
To your speech, Manjughosha, I bow.

To you whose perfect body-of-virtues,
Chief among the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
Always pure, yet completing the Bodhisattva path,
Adorned with one hundred and twelve blazing ornaments,
Dispersing my mind’s darkness,
To your body, Manjughosha, I bow.

  • Manjughosha mantra, and offerings

2. Praise of body

O Manjughosha, treasure of wisdom,
Please for one moment consider
These flowers of verses of praise
Quivering in the wind of faith,
O radiant mass of rays of saffron light,
Like a golden mountain
Embraced by the rays of the rising sun.

Your mountain body is tall and stable,
Your skin is pure and clear
Like soft dust of gold.

Your long, lustrous black hair
Is bound in a knot
And five gem-adorned crests,
Above a brow like the waxing moon.

Your eyes are long, and blue as utpala,
Your mouth is smiling and well-pleased.
From your fine ears
Dangle gem-adorned earrings,
And you wear many other ornaments.

Adorned with armlet and bracelet
Your right hand holds the sword
That cuts the root of the tree of materialism.
Your left hand holds to your heart
The supreme volume
Of exact and full teachings
Of the sole doorway to peace.

Your robe of silk shimmers
And is hemmed with tinkling bells.
You sit in vajra posture
On moon disc, and the saffron centre
Of a six-petalled lotus.

Like the thousand rayed sun
Plunging its seven horses
Into the golden ocean,
Your body everywhere shines.

When I behold your body
I weary of my long wandering.
May my erring mind
Come into the spirit of Enlightenment.

  • Reading
  1. Praise of Speech

O Manjughosha, Lord of sweet speech
Your many voices fill all lands
In every different language
Like a crystal prisming all colours,
Satisfying all living beings.

The melody of your speech
Is like a sphere of music,
Outlasting all the Samsara,
Releasing from sickness, age, and death.

It is pleasant, gentle, heart-stirring,
Harmonious, stainlessly clear, and sweet.
It is not rough, very calm, painless,
And satisfies body, mind, and heart.

It is rational, relevant,
Free of all redundancy,
All-informing, totally illuminating, enlightening.
Its rhythm not too fast or slow,
Its tone sweet, penetrating everywhere.

Its phrases are complete and confident,
Pervaded with joy and insight.
Emerging victorious, it dispels the three times.

These are some of the qualities
present in each and every utterance
Of your Brahma voice.

Not too loud when near,
Not too faint when far,
As if it manifests from the sky
Like the thunder in the rain-cloud
Girt with its belt of red lightning.

Just by hearing your stream of speech,
The receptive accept it,
Condemning wrong discourse,
May I never be parted from hearing your speech!

  1. Manjughosha’s teaching

O Manjughosha, Lord of Dharma,
Certain of the true colour
Of all that can be known
May you grant superlative wisdom
As the supreme refuge.

Not one phenomenon
Is hidden from you,
Thus you never exceed just proportion
In the training of your pupils’ faculties.
You see how sharp or dull are their abilities,
In faith, memory, samadhi and so on,
And so yours is the highest skill
In teaching Dharma.

Since you know entirely
The spiral path
And the Transcendental path,
And the way that leads
To states of misery,
You are the best spiritual friend
Of living beings.
Please grant the supreme instruction
Of the Buddhas!

The elephant of my mind
Is hard to tame,
As it runs amok
In the jungle of unconsciousness.
It is drunk on the liquor of materialism,
Knowledge of right and wrong forgotten,
Wrecking the trees of virtue,
Dragged by the chains of existence’
Losing the female elephant of success.

I should bind it with the rope
Of conscience and mindfulness,
And guide it with the goad of true reasoning
Onto the good Aryan path,
Trodden by millions of supreme sages.

With tireless effort on that path,
By meditating again and again
Without giving up,
I shall reach the Vajra-like Samadhi,
And the mountain of extremisms
Shall be rendered merely a name.

  • Reading: The Song of the four mindfulnesses. (A teaching said to have been received by Tsongkapa from Manjughosha.)

4. Praise of mind

O Manjughosha, lord of Wisdom
Just as the king of eagles
Soars in the heavens,
Your mind stays neither in existence
Nor in peace.
By praising your mind,
May I never part from the wisdom
And love of Manjughosha.

False appearances entirely conquered,
You dwell in the chief of all samadhis.
By your power over appearances,
And your clear knowledge of all experience,
You enter the ultimate realm.

Like a poison tree whose root is destroyed,
And the seeds of all habits eradicated,
how could you ever deviate, O refuge,
From the Dharmakaya?

Though you never leave the ultimate realm,
You know individually in every instant
The vivid appearance of many objects,
Like a rainbow, or reflections in a mirror.

Your direct vision, free of all veils,
Sees the Nirvana that ends defilements,
And its means, the eightfold path.
Thus you are the best of all refuges.

Long you practised the goal of compassion,
The sole path of all victors,
The entrance to the battle
Of the hero Bodhisattvas.

Loving one, you see the errors
Of forsaking others’ happiness.
You never allow suffering to continue,
And are never content
With the most alluring of pleasures.

By your long cultivation of Bodhicitta,
Seeing the equality of self and others,
Practising the exchange of self and others,
You hold all beings as yourself.

  • Svabhavashuddha mantra –

5. Aspiration

Though seeking desperately,
I find no good refuge other than you.
Turning to you, my mind
Feels like a sunburnt elephant
Plunging in the lotus pool!

Having attained an infinite store
Of samadhis and doors of liberation,
May I manifest limitless bodies
To see the Jinas
In a million universes.

Then, having reached the limit of wide learning,
Satisfying limitless beings
With the Dharma,
May I before long attain
The supreme body
Of the chief of jinas, Manjughosha!

Obtaining supreme understanding,
May I cut off the doubts
Of all living beings.
Never transgressing your instructions,
Through devoted, one-pointed practice,
May I quickly gain mastery of speech.

With the vision that belies all extremism,
And the compassion that sees all
As my only child,
May I lead all beings
Onto the supreme vehicle.

Remembering all teachings,
Able to answer all questions,
May I spread out the feast
Of eloquent Dharma.

By the glory of the mind of Manjughosha,
Who, without calculating,
Fulfils the hopes of all,
May I become like you,
As beautiful as the autumn moon,
Whose sweetness fills the limitless sky.

  • Concluding mantras

Ratnaprabha, compiled and re-rendered September 1994, at Guhyaloka retreat Centre, Spain.

The first part is a revised version of the traditiona Manjughosha Stuti. The rest is all adapted from Tsong Khapa’s ‘Cloud Ocean of Praises of Manjushri’, in Thurman, R., ed., Life & Teachings of Tsong Khapa (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamasala, 1982), 188-197.

The story of Dharma Day: The Buddha starts to teach

Lotus pond

Sugawara Mitsushige (1257) (Metropolitan Museum of Art), via Wikimedia Commons

The Buddha’s decision to teach

THE BUDDHA:

[After my enlightenment,] I thought, ‘This Dharma that I have attained is deep, hard to see or realize, it is the highest, most peaceful goal of all. It’s beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to be experienced by the wise. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment and indulges in attachment. It’s hard for the people of this generation to see the truth of dependent arising. It’s hard for people to see the truth of stopping the karma formations, letting go, finishing craving, the fading of addictions, nirvana itself. If I taught, they would not understand me.

Just then these verses … occurred to me:

‘Enough now with teaching
what, only with difficulty,
I reached.

This Dharma is not easily realised
by those overcome
with aversion & craving.

What is abstruse, subtle,
deep,
hard to see,
going against the flow —
those delighting in craving,
cloaked in darkness —
they won’t [be able to] see it.’

As I reflected like this, my mind inclined to dwelling in comfort, and not to teaching the Dharma.

Then Sahampati, [a dweller in the sublime Brahma heavens] … thought to himself:

SAHAMPATI

‘The world is lost! The world is utterly lost! The mind of the fully awakened one inclines to [his own comfort], not to teaching the Dharma!’

THE BUDDHA

Then, just as a strong man might extend his arm …, Sahampati disappeared from his Brahma-world and reappeared in front of me. He … saluted me with his hands before his heart:

SAHAMPATI

‘Sir, let the abundant one teach the Dharma! Let the One-well-gone teach the Dharma! There are beings with little dust in their eyes who are wasting away because they cannot hear the Dharma. There will be those who will understand the Dharma!’ …

‘Throw open the door to the Deathless!
Let them hear the Dharma
realized by the Stainless One!

Just as one standing on a rocky crag
might see people
all around below,

So, O wise one, with panoramic vision,
ascend the tower
fashioned of truth.

Free from sorrow, look at the people
submerged in sorrow,
oppressed by birth & aging.

Rise up, hero, victor in battle!
O Teacher, travel without debt in the world.

Teach the Dharma, O Abundant one:
There will be those who will understand!’

THE BUDDHA

Then, having listened to Sahampati’s invitation, out of compassion for beings, I surveyed the world with an enlightened eye. As I did so, I saw beings with little dust in their eyes and those with much, those with keen faculties and those with dull, those with good qualities and those with bad, those easy to teach and those hard…. Just as in a pond of blue or red or white lotuses, some lotuses — born and growing in the water — might flourish while immersed in the water, without rising up from the water; some might stand at the surface of the water; while some might rise up from the water and stand without being wetted by the water — so too, surveying the world with an enlightened eye, I saw [the range of beings].

Having seen this, I answered Sahampati:

‘Open are the doors of the Deathless
To those who can hear.

Let them show their confidence.

O Sahampati,
If I [had thought I would not tell people]
the refined,
sublime Dharma,
It was because it seemed too troublesome to me.’

Then Sahampati realised,

SAHAMPATI

‘The Abundant one has decided to teach the Dharma.’

THE BUDDHA

He bowed to me, and disappeared.

The Buddha’s attempts to teach

THE BUDDHA

Then I thought, ‘To whom should I teach the Dharma first? Who will quickly understand this Dharma?’

I thought of [my former teachers], but they had passed away…

Then I thought: ‘The group of five [friends] who attended to me when I was practising fasting and self-denial, they were very helpful to me. [Now they are] staying near Benares, in the Game Park at Isipatana. What if I were to teach them the Dharma first?’

Then, having stayed at Bodhgaya as long as I wished, I set out to walk [the long road] to Benares.

Upaka the sectarian met me on the road between the (place of) awakening and Gaya village, and he said to me,

UPAKA

‘Clear, my friend, are your faculties. Pure your complexion, and bright.

What made you go forth? Who’s your teacher? In whose Dharma do you delight?’

THE BUDDHA

‘All-vanquishing,
all-knowing am I,
with regard to all things,
unattached.

All-abandoning,
freed by ending craving:
having fully known this on my own,
whom should I regard as my teacher?

I have no teacher,
and one like me can’t be found.
I have no counterpart in the world with its gods.

For I am a worthy one in the world;
an unexcelled teacher.

I, alone, am fully awakened.
Cooled am I,             unbound.

I’m going to Benares
To set rolling the wheel of the Dharma.

In a blindfolded world,
I’ll beat the drum of the Deathless.’

UPAKA

‘From your claims, my friend, you must be a Jina, a universal conqueror.’

THE BUDDHA

‘Conquerors are those like me
who have reached fermentations’ end.
I’ve conquered evil qualities,
and so, [yes], Upaka, I’m a conqueror.’

UPAKA

‘May it be so, my friend,’

THE BUDDHA

And — shaking his head and taking a side-road — he left.

Then, walking in stages, I arrived at Benares, at the Game Park in Isipatana, where the group of five friends were staying. They saw me coming from some way off, and made a pact with one another.

THE FIVE

‘Friends, here comes Gotama the contemplative. [He has given up] our struggle [of self-denial], living luxuriously, straying from his exertion, backsliding into abundance. He doesn’t deserve our bows, or even for us to stand up to greet him. Still, if he wants to, he can sit down with us.’

THE BUDDHA

But as I approached, they were unable to keep to their pact. One stood up to greet me, another got me a seat. Another got some water for washing my feet. However, they [still] addressed me as ‘Gotama’ and as ‘friend.’

So I said to them, ‘Please don’t address the Tathagata, the Thus-gone one, by name and as ‘friend.’ The Tathagata, friends, is a worthy one, fully awakened. Lend ear, friends: the Deathless has been attained. I will instruct you. I will teach you the Dharma. Practising as instructed, you will in no long time reach & remain in the supreme goal of the spiritual life, … knowing & realizing it for yourselves in the here & now.’

THE FIVE

‘You did not attain any superior human states by practising hardship and deprivation, nor any special knowledge & vision worthy of a noble one. So how can you have done so now — living luxuriously, straying from your exertion, backsliding into abundance?’

THE BUDDHA

‘The Tathagata is not living luxuriously, has not strayed from his exertion, has not slid back into abundance. The Tathagata, friends, is a worthy one, fully awakened. [And twice more I repeated my offer to teach them.]’

[They still doubted, so] I said to the group of five, ‘Do you recall my ever having spoken in this way before?’

THE FIVE

‘No, sir.’

THE BUDDHA

‘The Tathagata, monks, is not living luxuriously, has not strayed from his exertion, has not slid back into abundance. The Tathagata, friends, is a worthy one, fully awakened. Listen, friends: the Deathless has been attained. I will instruct you. I will teach you the Dharma. If you practice as instructed, before long you will reach the supreme goal of the spiritual life and remain there…, knowing & realizing it for yourselves in the here & now.’

And so I was able to convince them. I would teach two while three went to get food, and we six lived off what the three brought back from their alms round. Then I would teach three of them while two went for food, and we six lived off what the two brought back from their alms round. Then the group of five — thus exhorted and instructed by me — being themselves subject to birth, seeing the drawbacks of birth, seeking the unborn, unexcelled security from oppression, nirvana, reached nirvana. Being subject themselves to aging, illness, death, sorrow and defilement, seeing the drawbacks of aging, illness, death, sorrow and defilement, seeking the aging-less, illness-less, deathless, sorrow-less, undefiled, unexcelled security from oppression, nirvana, they reached nirvana. Complete knowledge & vision arose in them, their liberation was unshakeable, and from the rounds of rebirth they were completely free.

From the Noble Quest Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya number 26.

(Edited and adapted for reading aloud by Ratnaprabha from the translation by Thanissaro (1), referring to translations by Bhikkhu Bodhi (2) and Nanamoli (3).)

Sources

  1. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.026.than.html .
  2. http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/middle-length-discourses-buddha/selections/middle-length-discourses-26-ariyapariyesana-sutta
  3. Ñāṇamoli Bhikkhu, The Life of the Buddha (Buddhist Publication Society, 1972)

Lotus Sutra: the Image of the Plants

The Image of the Plants

Monsoon over Biligirirangans, India. (Shyamal – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

From the White Lotus of the Wonderful Dharma Sutra, Chapter 5.
Abridged and adapted by Ratnaprabha for reading aloud.
Based on the translations by Kato et al and Reeves, sub-headings not in the original.

The Buddha adapts the Dharma according to his listeners

The Buddha, the Dharma-king,
Smashing ideas of being,
Appears in this world.

According to the needs of all beings,
He teaches the Dharma in varied ways.

The Buddha teaches people
According to their strengths,
With various explanations
To bring them to helpful views.

The Buddha is like a thunder cloud

The Buddha is like a great cloud
Rising above the [parched] world,
Covering everything everywhere.

A beneficent cloud full of moisture,
Bringing gladness and ease to all,
Where flashes of lightning shine and glint,
And the voice of thunder vibrates afar.

The [hot] sun’s rays are veiled,
And the earth is cooled;
The cloud lowers and spreads
As if it might be caught and gathered.

[Then] its rain everywhere equally
Descends on all sides,
Streaming and pouring without stint,
Enriching all the land.

His hearers are like plants in need of the rain

On mountains, by rivers, in steep valleys,
In hidden places, there grow
The plants, trees, and herbs.

Trees, big or small,
The shoots of all the ripening grain,
Sugar cane and grapevine,

All these are fertilised by the rain,
And abundantly enriched.
The dry ground is all soaked,
And herbs and trees flourish together.

From the same water which issued from that cloud,
Plants, trees, thickets and forests,
According to their need, receive moisture.

All the [plants],
Each according to its scale,
Can grow and develop.

Roots, stalks, branches, and leaves,
Blossoms and fruits in their brilliant colours,
By the pouring of the one rain,
All become fresh and glossy.

Just as their forms and capacities
Are some great and some small,
So the enriching [rain], though one and the same,
Enables each to flourish.

The Buddha proclaims his impartial intent

The Buddha is like this.
He appears in the world,
Like a great [monsoon]-cloud
Universally covering all things;

And having appeared in the world,
He, for the sake of all living beings,
Teaches in varying ways
The reality of all things.

The great World-honoured One
To human and heavenly beings,
And to all the other beings,
Declares this:

“I am the Tathagata,
Honoured by people;
I appear in the world
Just like a great rain cloud,
To pour enrichment on all parched living beings,

“To free them all from suffering
And so attain the joy of peace,
Joy in this world,
And the joy of nirvana.

“Humans and heavenly beings and all!
Give me your full attention,
Gather around
And behold the Buddha.

“For the hosts of the living
I teach the Dharma, pure as sweet dew:
The Dharma with one taste
Of freedom and nirvana.

“With one wonderful voice
I explain this meaning,
Constantly taking the great way
As my subject.

“I look upon all [living beings]
Everywhere [with] equal [eyes],
Without favouring anyone,
With no mind of love or hate.

“I have no preferences
Nor limitations [or partiality];
At all times to all [beings]
I teach the Dharma equally;

“As I would to one person,
So [I teach] to all.
Constantly I proclaim the Dharma,
Never occupied with anything else.

“Going or coming, sitting or standing,
I never weary or get downhearted,
Pouring it abundantly upon the world,
Like the rain, enriching everywhere.

“Eminent and humble, high and low,
Those who keep the precepts and those who break them,
Those of admirable character
And those of imperfect character,

“With right views or wrong views,
Quick-witted and dull-witted,
[With] equal [mind] I rain the rain of the Dharma,
Neglecting no one.”

Summing up

So the Buddha’s unbiased teaching
Is like the one rain.

[But] beings, according to their capacities,
Receive it differently,
Just as the plants and trees
Each take a varying supply.

The Buddha by this [image]
Skilfully reveals [his methods],
And with various expressions
He proclaims the one single Dharma,

The one essential Dharma,
To be practised according to ability,
Just as those thickets, forests, herbs, and trees,
True to their type, grow lush and beautiful.

Just so,
Practising it step-by-step,
All can gain the fruit of the way.

The Dharma taught by the Buddha is like this.
It is just like a great cloud
Which with the same kind of rain
Enriches humans like blossoms,
So that each will bear fruit.

The way in which you all walk
Is the Bodhisattva-way;
By gradually practising and learning,
You will all become Buddhas.

TURNING THE WHEEL OF DHARMA

The Buddha’s first teaching

Image: John Hill

Today, 8 June 2017,  is the full moon of Dharma Day, the anniversary of the Buddha’s first teaching, known as Turning the Wheel of Dharma.

Here is my Re-rendering of the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Ratnaprabha, June 2017)

This is what I heard. (After his awakening), the Buddha arrived at the game reserve near Varanasi, (and was reunited with his five former comrades).

He taught the group of five. He said to them: “Going forth (to seek awakening), you must avoid two extremes.

“Looking for gratification in sense pleasures is demeaning, crude and ignoble. It’s what people always go for, but it’s pointless, and it takes you nowhere near the goal.

“Yet self-torment is also ignoble and pointless, and (it commits you to needless) suffering.

“Instead of veering towards one of these extremes, (if you’re) attuned to reality, you will wake up to the middle path. It yields vision so that you truly know. It leads to peace, to complete awareness, to quenching (the flames) and waking yourself up fully.

“Speaking simply, the middle path has eight aspects. These are complete vision, complete emotion, complete communication, complete action, complete livelihood, complete effort, complete mindfulness, and complete unification (of the mind). When I attuned myself to reality, I woke up to this path.

“Furthermore, (I woke up to four noble truths). Firstly, this is the noble truth, the grand reality, of pain. Birth, ageing and illness are painful. Death is horrible. (Then you’ll encounter) depression, grief and physical agony; unhappiness and despair as well, and losing what you love, and not getting what you want. In fact all the aspects of life that we cling to are painful.

“This is the noble truth, the grand reality (that explains) where pain comes from. It comes from thirst, from craving. It is craving that impels us to remake ourselves so that we are still conjoined with gratification and clinging, indulging in one thing after another. (More specifically), it is craving for sense-gratification, craving for continuing (as we are), or craving for oblivion.

“This is the noble truth, the grand reality, of the finish of pain. It is the fading and finishing of that same craving, giving it up, letting it go, not depending on it any more, so that we are completely free from craving.

“This is the noble truth, the grand reality of the way that finishes pain. It is the same middle path (that avoids the extremes) – complete vision and so on.

“When I fully woke up, I saw this for the first time. A fresh insight, wisdom and awareness, indeed a complete illumination, dawned on me. I truly saw pain as a grand reality, I saw I had to understand it, and (eventually) I did.

“Similarly, I truly saw, as a grand reality, how pain comes from craving. I saw I had to let go of that craving, and I managed to do that.

“And I truly saw the grand reality of (the possibility of) pain finishing (for good). I knew I had to realise that finish directly, and I did realise it.

And I truly saw the grand reality of the middle way that frees one from pain, I saw that I had to journey on that way, and I travelled it to the end.

“It was these crucial insights that enabled me to perfect my full and complete awakening. This is an awakening that completes the journey, (a journey open to) all forms of life in the universe. I saw, and I realised: unshakeable is the liberation of my mind, I’m no longer compelled to re-make myself, this is it.”

The group of five listened enraptured to the Buddha. And as he listened, one of them, Kondañña, saw the truth clearly and lucidly, and realised that all that comes into being must also finish. “Kondañña knows!” Exclaimed the Buddha, “Kondañña knows!”

This, in the game reserve near Varanasi, was the (first) rolling of the Wheel of Dharma by the Buddha. The earth spirits yelled with all their might: “THE SUPREME WHEEL OF THE BUDDHA’S DHARMA IS NOW TURNING, AND NO ONE CAN STOP IT!” And the cheer went up through the ranks of invisible beings up to the (formless) world of pure spirit, so that the whole world trembled, and an incandescent light spread from horizon to horizon.

Brackets signify words added for clarification. Some repetitions have been removed. This re-rendering is interpretive, and other interpretations are possible; it is well worth looking through several translations.

The Buddha’s Last Words

As he lay on his deathbed between the twin Sal Trees, the Buddha’s parting words were: “Be your own light, be your own refuge, the Dharma is your light and refuge. Things naturally decay: win through by mindfulness!”

After reading Jayarava’s very thorough discussion of the last sentence above, from the Pali words given in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, I thought I would produce my own re-rendering, designed for accessibility and usefulness.  Jayarava raises many points about the meanings of the various terms, and his suggested translations are different from the above; he has not checked my rendering.  It is well worth reading his whole blog entry.