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Heng Ch'au:
Thursday
March 9, 1978
The ways of the thus come ones, great
Immortals are subtle, wonderful and hard
to comprehend. Not thought, they are apart
from every thought. Those seeking them in seeing
can't obtain them.
Avatamsaka sutra
Ten Grounds Chapter.
After a while bowing turns the world into a monotonous blah. Everything looks one color, sounds one sound, smells one scent, tastes one rain or sunny all blend together and feel the same. One becomes keenly aware of another reality, the world of the mind and all its subtle, wonderful states. When the world of the senses goes flat and flavorless, the world past seeing opens up. It's a world of direct experience "not thought, apart from every thought."
Today the entire world seems identical with the sutra. Wherever we go we are never outside the Avatamsaka, the dharma realm, out own mind, these three are the same. Everything and everyone is a chapter, a page of these great teaching.
These states come and go: they come after long, hard concentrated bowing; they go with falsethinking and emotion. A quiet day. Steady bowing, just the wind and ocean roar. Suddenly everywhere feels like anywhere, anywhere feels like everywhere. Time stops, no inside, no outside-the earth beneath your feet feels as close as the depths of outer space above, like one substance unbounded, neither big not small, without a beginning or end. A wordless kind of experience.
"Their nature is basically empty and
it's still.
Non-dual it is, but it is also
Unending....
They are not beginning, not middle or end;
They are not expressible in words;
They transcend the three times;
Their characteristics are like empty space."
-Avatamsaka sutra
Ten grounds chapter.
Questions of survival and supplies, who you were in the past our might be in the future, all fade away into empty space like the faint cries of sea gulls muted by the absorbing vastness of the sea.
Then you realize that all the things you take for real and important and run after every day are just dreams, a child's fragile sand castle that won't outlast the next big wave.
The words of the sutra, ancient and changeless wisdom, incomprehensible to mind and thought, these speak right to your heart. One world stops, but another opens that is far more true and real. And there's no way to express any of it. One just bows in gratitude and reverence for having met up with this "friend" who knows your sound.
"Such states as these are difficult to perceive. They can be known bit not expressed; Through the Buddha's power they are Proclaimed. You should receive them with all Reverence."Avatamsaka sutra
"Ten grounds chapter."
Erik, a state park ranger, offered some kerosene and a lantern.
"Where are you from? Who are you associated with?" he asked.
Then without waiting for an answer, he smiled and answered his own question,
"Oh, it doesn't really matter, we are all the same."
"The bodhisattva clearly understands that living beings are just a single dharma. They do not have two natures."
-- Avatamsaka sutra.
Heng Sure
"If you want to see the Buddhas in every direction, if you want to give away an inexhaustible treasury of merit and virtue, if you want to eradicate all the bitter hassles that living beings have, you ought to quickly resolve to get enlightened." --Avatamsaka sutra "The merit and virtue of first bringing Forth the Mind Chapter"
Again and again I return to the basic truth: what counts is heart. If you really want to get enlightened, then nothing will hold you back. In American talk we say, 'where there's a will, there's a way.' The Ven. Abbot's eulogy to dharma Master Hsuan Chuang has these lines:
"...one hundred blows could not disturb his vajra will. Ten thousand demons could not reverse his Bodhi mind"....
The master instructed us to stand firm when demonic obstacles arise, to continue our work and ignore them. A genuine resolve for Bodhi will cut through any obstacle.
Last Sunday at the southern end of the Big Sur Coast, we were met by eight highly unusual people just at sunset. Heng Ch'au said, "They look like they saw us at the last minute and didn't have time to get their people-costumes on straight." Strangely shaped, moving slowly, they tried to break our practices, to move our minds. We flowed instructions and kept on bowing. Later we were advised "it was the mountain goblins and the water sprites come to play, come to test you out. But they didn't get in."