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Heng Sure
Howard, aged 60, a cattle rancher from san Simeon stops on a Sunday morning:
Howard: "Buddhists? I thought so. I was in Sri Lanka last year and I studied a bit of Buddhism. I think I've got too much of a western mind because I've tried to meditate ever since but I'm afraid I'm just no good at it. Can't get anywhere with it."
Heng Ch'au: "Well, the best way to cut off thoughts is by looking at what you do during the day. Do you hold the five precepts?"
Howard: (holds out his membership card in the Buddhist mission society. The card lists the five precepts and "do all good. Do no evil. Purify your mind.") "yes, I d o. I've held them nearly all my life."
Heng Ch'au: "Oh, how's that?"
Howard: "When I was a boy, I worked in the mines. Seems like all the men I worked with had dirty minds. All their thoughts and their talk was evil and foul. I didn't want to pick up their habits so I used to memorize poetry. You know "Omar"? I used to say that poem as I worked. I'd recite it up one way and back the other. It worked too. Controlled my thoughts."
Heng Ch'au: "That's wonderful. Real vigor, where it counts. What do you do now?"
Howard: "I run a castle ranch up the road here near Hearst castle."
Heng Ch'au: "Do you eat meat?"
Howard: "Well sure."
Heng Ch'au: "That's included in the precepts against killing. No wonder you can't meditate."
Howard: "What do you mean? No one in Sri Lanka said anything about not eating meat..."
Heng Ch'au: "Oh sure. Look Howard, the point of meditation is to settle the mind and body. To clear it out and concentrate and not be hot or turbid. The point of not eating meat is first of all, to be compassionate and not participate in the harm to any living thing just so you enjoy good flavor. That's basic. Secondly, meat is hot and full of the vibes of killing. It's turbid. It excites your desires instead of calming them. When you're full of meat energy it's really hard to rest, hard to settle down, It's like if you killed a man, you'd never have any peace. You'd be turning it over and over all the time in your heart, right? Eating animals is much the same."
Howard: "(struck by this example-speechless). Well, it would be really hard to quit....maybe I could though...."
Heng Ch'au: "If you meditate and want a response without holding precepts, it' s like boiling sand and hoping to get rice. You can boil it forever and its still going to be sand. Meditation is in the precepts."
Howard: "What do you monks meditate on? I find that I need something to hang my mind on. I can't grasp emptiness."
Heng Ch'au: "One good method is to recite Namo Kuan Shih Yin Pu Sa. If you're sincere and constant in your practice, Kuan Shih Yin Bodhisattva will help you open some doors in your life."
Howard: "Say, could you tell me what I can eat that's not meat?"
The Avatamsaka is clear about suffering, its causes and cure. In the 6th ground, the Bodhisattva sees living beings suffering bitterly in the world, constantly undergoing birth and death on the turning wheel. He sees how all beings who are born in the world come from attachments to self. If you could leave this attachment, there would be no birth and death, and all suffering would cease. But, the bodhisattva knows that,
"Ordinary people lack wisdom. They are attached to a self. They constantly seek its existence and non-existence. They don't look at things correctly. They give rise to false practices and Walk down deviant roads." -- "The Tree of Suffering"
And from these first confused steps the 12 causes and conditions are initiated that end in birth, old age, and death, and "the accumulation of a host of sufferings."
In a single day of bowing we hear the sounds of the worlds sufferings at every turn. Don tells is of his friends who have been married two or three times.
"And they are still running around getting more empty and hollow every day." Desire is suffering.
Howard Swanson, a weather- wrinkled cowboy in is 60's tells us of his life-long search for enlightenment and an end to suffering.
"But when I meditate on the ranch, I can't quiet my mind. I eat a lot of meat. My teacher in Sri Lanka didn't tell me meat increases desire and makes your mind noisy." Eating meat is suffering.
Fillipini, the superintendent of a nearby prison facility says,
"All the kids here got messed up with drugs." Intoxicants are suffering.
In a Laundromat two men talk.
"I've got ulcers worrying about losing my investment."
"Yeah and I've got ulcers from trying not to worry about losing my investment."
Losing is suffering.
A local teacher, "I'm making too much money and cant afford to pay my taxes. Too much, too little, it's all a big headache." Gain is suffering.
So life is suffering, but isn't cultivating the way suffering? Cultivation is also suffering. Bit it is suffering that ends suffering, whereas the way of the world is to add suffering to suffering, with misery increasing misery. That's the meaning of,
"To endure suffering ends suffering."
This is the heart of it: the bodhisattva sees that,
"When ignorance is the condition, suffering cant be stopped. Ending the condition (ignorance) Suffering is all over."
The "condition" is ignorance about the primary truth. So when one sees there is no self, all the sufferings are over. Empty of self is true liberation.
"He knows there is no self and no
others, no lifespan and no life itself.
The self-nature is empty,
Without a doer or a receiver. And
Right then he obtains the liberation
Gate of emptiness which appears before him"
Avatamsaka sutra
"Ten practices chapter"
With no self there's no seeking; no seeking there are no problems. Emptiness isn't being a log or zombie, rather its the lively and wonderful state of nothing sought for, nowhere attached, everywhere content and unobstructed. That's why it's called a gate of liberation.
It's like Don said,
"Boy, all of these problems because of an artificial self that doesn't even exist,"