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Heng Ch'au
Thursday
February 23, 1978
A carful of people pulled on to the shoulder ahead of us, a woman got out, staggering and holding a bottle. She watched us bow. Everyone in the car became quiet. She dropped her bottle, walked up to us, fell on her knees and started sobbing. she knelt beside us in gavel and cried, repenting of being an alcoholic and wasting her life.
We didn't say anything but in our hearts we wanted to say," its okay. Don't waste a second. Tears are useless. Turn around and go towards the food and repay your parents kindness. From today don't drink anymore, don't kill or steal, don't lie or be immoral. If you can avoid these then everything will soon get better and your life wont be wasted. Be strong and dignified. Turn around and go back to your true, pure nature.
T'ao yuan-ming's poem, "The return" came to mind as the woman and dried her tears.
"I am going home! My fields and gardens are choked with weeds. Why should I not return? My mind has been my body's slave. But why should I remain melancholy? Having awakened to the past, I need not reproach myself. I know that in the future I Can make up for it. I know that I am not far from the path of confusion. But I m now awake to the present As right and the past As wrong."
Heng sure
"He does not seek what living beings
can speak of.
These are all conditioned, false,
Empty affairs.
Although he does not rely on the
Path of the words and language,
At the same time he is not attached
To not speaking."
-- Avatamsaka sutra
"Ten transferences chapter"
Buddhadharma exists for living beings who want to find the holy in every moment. It uses words but soon leaves words behind.
Buddhist sutras point the way to the holy. They are a piece of the magic itself. The Avatamasaka sutra is guiding Heng Ch'au and me out of the darkness. It is our trail out of the woods. It is our road back home.
We treat the sutra as a magic map. We bow to it, praise and worship it, make gifts to it, read, write, and study it. It responds. Like magic. It is the oldest wisdom on the planet.
How long has the Avatamsaka sutra existed? How long has its wisdom led beings to realize "mystic, sweet communion" with their own Buddha nature? When a Buddha appears in the world, like our Buddha Shakyamuni, he always speaks the Avatamsaka sutra first, after his enlightenment. How many Buddhas have there been? Infinite numbers of them. In how many worlds? Countless , mind-boggling numbers of the world. Time and space collapse. The path of words and language is cut off and the place of the minds working is extinguished.
The Avatamsaka sutra is old. Its dharma is magic. It guides us to the holy in everything. The bodhisattva says:
"I do not dwell in mundane dharmas.
My joy is in leaving the world...
I dwell in the limits of reality
Without any labels...
-- Avatamsaka sutra
"Ten transferences chapter"