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HENG SURE: June 17, 1977. The work is to cut off all needs outside your own energy system and hold in your energy. Don’t think about anything outside or want anything, and at the same time, keep a schedule of pure practices going, control your body and mouth and work on a transcendental technique for transforming your narrow vision of the mundane into a holistic view of the interpenetrating perfection and completion of both noumena and phenomena.
If you can do this for a long time, if you don’t slack off on energy, if your purpose is true and your vision does not waver, if your time is ripe and your past vows firm and well-guided, then maybe, just maybe, it will all come together and fuse in this life and your will turn your body’s essence into adamantine seeds of sagehood (sharira).
You’ve got one chance in a thousand. Are you dumb enough to try? If you thought Marine boot camp was tough, try being in a Buddhist training monastery. What’s the difference? Here you do it all to yourself voluntarily.
If you’re really clear about what you’re doing and if your faith is strong, then none of the so-called "bitter practices" feel like suffering. What hurts is the self. What brings joy is helping other work to enlightenment. Get rid of the self; work for others--no pain, no suffering, no bitterness. Good work.
In the "World Ruler’s Adornments" Chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra which we recite each evening, the text and verses describe the states and the methods to liberation of gods, dragons, and the eight-fold pantheon of spiritual beings. Their work in the mundane world has to do with personal cultivation and with various practices that benefit living beings in the world. These Bodhisattvas end suffering for others and make them happy, they reduce their afflictions, fears, worries, and obstacles and they use a great many kinds of techniques called expedients or "sill-in-means" to bring others to faith, to understanding, and to a vision of the Tathagata.
The Thus Come One’s overwhelming size, his powers, his compassion, and his longevity are praised and extolled. Superlatives abound and most often one hears of the uselessness of words to capture the actual nature and magnitude of the goings-on in the Flower-Store world.
One can easily see why the preface describes the sutra as being understandable only by the Great Bodhisattas whose capacity, spiritual comprehension, and skills are already vast and great. "Even advanced Bodhisattvas are left behind like fish scales dried on the dragon gate" (from having failed to make the jump and fallen to the reefs below).
The sutra is a challenge, an inspiration, a dream, and a puzzle. To us it is roadmap marking the days of work for the Triple Jewel here on the Avatamsake Highway in the Saha world.
How much of everyday life of the 20th century do we have no part of? Take a look:
- Keeping up with the news on T.V., radio, papers, and magazines. - Buying and making payments on material things. - Living for the weekends and vacations. - Working 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 - Killing, stealing, lying, and playing around. - Meat, alcohol, and tobacco. - Grooming, perfuming, clothes. - Dating, chasing, and cheating. - Movies and concerts and television and records. - Intoxicants, stimulants, and relaxants. - Sports: spectator and participant. - Fads and trends. - Health and life insurance. - Time and labor-saving appliances. - Electricity Although we do not deal with the above list of activities and pursuits, our lives are full and meaningful, satisfying and active. We contribute to and we share in the basic concerns of all people: birth, death, suffering and joy, ignorance and wisdom. And we save a lot of energy this way, which we devote to our work and to all beings everywhere. The key word for success in cultivation we hear over and over is sincere. In English sincere means sin without cere wax. Without wax, i.e. no mask, no covering, no falseness. In Chinese the word is ch’eng hsin. Hsin is mind or heart. Ch’eng can be analyzed as words which are brought about, established, accomplished, i.e. you practice what you preach, you are as good as your word, you stand behind your words, you are a person of your word, you do what you say in your mind. This is sincerity.
Both languages express a state of being here and now, the immediacy of being totally present, without reserve, without pretense or expectation, no going forward or backwards, no postponing or calculating, no hesitation or selfishness--no wax-- as good as your word. Unmasked, you practice what you preach! This is sincerity.