The aim of Buddhism is enlightenment. All of the Sutras, together with the Diamond Sutra that can be serialised from subsequent week, are Dharma talks that are the phrases spoken by the historic Buddha for the aim of main individuals to enlightenment. So, the core of all of the Sutras is simply two issues; how we will attain enlightenment, and the way every little thing seems when now we have attained enlightenment.
Enlightenment means having the ability to see and listen to every little thing with out being influenced by one’s preconceived notions and body of thought that are made up of phrases and data. That’s to see and listen to issues with out attaching any phrases, together with names, which describe or clarify them, to issues. Seeing issues on this method is known as seeing them as they’re, or seeing them as empty, which known as seeing the true-Self, or reaching the Pure Land. Accordingly, the core of all of the Sutras, it may also be mentioned, is how we will see the true-Self, or how we will attain the Pure Land and what the true-Self, or the Pure Land is like.
What issues right here is that paradoxically, whereas telling us to detach all phrases from issues after we see and listen to them, the Sutras are explaining in phrases each how we will see issues with out being influenced by phrases and data, and the way they seem after we see them on this method. Put in different phrases, the Sutras are saying what can’t be defined in phrases and explaining in phrases what can’t be mentioned. Which means that we can not admire the core of the Sutras by mental understanding primarily based on phrases. This is the reason the historic Buddha mentioned, “Not a phrase have I mentioned” to forestall individuals from lacking what he actually meant by clinging to mental understanding, and why historical masters invented expedients of koans that are Zen questions to assist individuals to surmount the constraints of mental comprehension. So, studying the Sutras requires greater than mental understanding, and taking mental understanding for true understanding is thought to be being deluded by phrases in Buddhism.
This is the reason the Sutras shouldn’t be learn and brought in the identical method that worldly literature is.
Within the case of worldly books, the contents of them can’t be totally comprehended till a minimum of half, if not all, of every e-book is learn. Nevertheless, within the case of the Sutras, if we admire even a single phrase accurately within the Sutra we’re studying, it’s no apart from enlightenment and the identical as having learn all the opposite Sutras, to not point out the one we’re studying at that second as a result of every phrase, every phrase and every sentence accommodates all that the Sutras say. Briefly, every of them is the gate to enlightenment and now we have solely to open and go any considered one of them. This is the reason the Dharma talks seek advice from ‘a gate to enlightenment’ and never ‘a textual content on enlightenment’. That is additionally why historical masters would even say that the Sutras are usually not purported to be learn however to be seen. So, we should always regard every phrase, every phrase and every sentence as a gate to enlightenment as an alternative of being deluded by phrases and clinging to mental understanding.
Subsequently, you must preserve it in thoughts that when you have not attained enlightenment, irrespective of what number of instances you may have learn or copied a Sutra, you haven’t understood even a single phrase accurately within the Sutra, that’s, you may have knocked arduous on and touched the gate solely to fail to go the gate.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All pictures ©Simon Hathaway
