Today’s FBA Podcast, “The Jewel in the Lotus,” by Sraddhagita, is a beautiful down-to-earth exploration of the great central images of Mahayana Buddhism, usually associated with the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshavara.
This talk was given in 2007.
Free Buddhist Audio
The Jewel in the Lotus
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. (audience applauding) - Well, Bonkalo said I should say, first of all, that it's my night tonight, because for the other speakers, I've been introducing them in the catter, but tonight, it's my night. And I thought I'd tell you a little story from the first half of the retreat, which you'll have to sort of make the connection for yourself later, a little story about a key before I tell you the parable. So on the team retreat, there's a key that we've got to lock this building up. And one day we couldn't find the key. And we searched everywhere. In fact, Suvajamata became, well, Agatha Christie and Miss Marfi, she went around and she asked all the team what they'd been doing, she kind of checked out where everyone had been, who had had the key last? And we just didn't know where it was, and we didn't want to have to phone up the school and say we've lost the key. So we thought we've got to have a look, got to really sort of, you know, try even harder. So then Suvajamata got a flip chart, well, not quite a flip chart, but she felt like that, she had a flip pad and she was going round, literally interviewing the team. And then Fiona remembered that on the end of the key, there was a little tag that didn't say that it was the key for this building. So Miss Marple went back to the key box and she checked all the keys and she found out that the key was hidden in the box. Basically, the key had been hidden in the box the whole time, but it just had a different name. So with the key hidden in the box, that's just a little story to start us off. I'm not going to connect it up to this, you can, as I say, make your own connections. So that's a little story. But it's great when you start seeing connections in your everyday retreat life with what you're going to be talking about. So I'm going to be talking about a very simple parable, really, it's about a man. He goes to his close friend's house and he gets drunk and he falls asleep. His friend has to do some business. So he leads, but before he leads, he ties a priceless jewel in the man's coat, the man still asleep, so he doesn't know. And then the friend leaves and he just goes off to a whole other country. So when the man wakes up, he doesn't know anything about the fact that he's got a jewel in his coat. And so he leaves and he goes to another country as well and he works really hard. It says in the parable, he works hard for food and clothing and he's content of the liquid. But later his friend happens to meet him and he says, "Oh, how have you come to this?" You know, for the sake of food and clothes. Didn't you know that when we last met, I tied a priceless jewel in your coat. It's still there and you and your ignorance have been working really hard and worrying just to keep alarm. How stupid. Go now and exchange the jewel for what you need and do whatever you will. Free from pop it, pop it, pop it, put my teeth in, pop it and any sense of lack. So this parable is very simple. It occurs in the eighth chapter of the white lotus suture. And at the beginning of the chapter, just to set the scene, the Buddha has predicted that one of his disciples, Purna, will become a Buddha called the Radiance of Truth in this very world in millions and millions of years. And he's also predicted that 500 of his disciples will attain Buddha food. So they are just delighted about this. They literally dance with joy, they're overjoyed and they feel as if they gained possession of something wonderful. They rejoice again in something that they've never had. And they give expression to these feelings in this parable. The parable of the priceless jewel, it's also referred to as the jewel in the garment or the drunkard in the jewel. And the disciples explained that they are the man, the Buddha is the friend who ties the jewel in the garment and this jewel is the jewel of Buddha food, which they have forgotten about until the Buddha reminded them of it. So that could be it, that could be just, I could sit down again and say that's about the story. But now I want to explore, well, the motifs or symbols in the parable, not just in the context of the actual sutra but how they're relevant for us and our lives. So they're all quite universal symbols, you could say. Some of them do occur in other spiritual traditions. And I think the thing with symbols, we've been saying throughout the last seven days or so, they are suggestive rather than explicit. So we need to approach them in the spirit of openness and receptivity. What are they pointing to? What might they be pointing to? How can we explore their layers of meaning? Well, the symbols in this particular story, I think are a continuation of the theme in the white lotus sutra. And that theme we've heard about in the other parables and it's that the living of the spiritual life is one of fabulous abundance. This abundance has been explored in the other parables in terms of wealth and jewels in the burning house and in the myth of the return journey but also in terms of natural abundance in the parable of the rain cloud and the symbols of life and growth talk where you just got this sense of this natural abundance, this joyous, irrepressible exuberance of life just bringing up just everywhere. So to begin with, the parable, if you see it as a whole, is an expression of the overwhelming joy, wonder and thankfulness and all we experience on encountering the truth, a reality that goes beyond anything we previously thought felt or imagined. So that's what the disciples basically do. We rejoice in gaining what we never had before. It's a new truth, although at the same time it's one that feels strangely familiar. We've forgotten it for a while. And I think this feeling of numerous and familiarity can be something that we can sort of experience when we first contact Buddhism. It might be through reading a book, seeing an image, going along to a meditation class or coming here on retreat. You might have experienced it. It's not just that you feel you've gained something precious, but almost like you've regained it. And I was really struck by this when I was thinking about with talk a couple of weeks ago 'cause I had read an article in The Guardian about some carers who'd gone on retreat for the first time as part of our breathing space project. And one of the carers said, "I realize how much I've shut down. "The retreat's given me a glimpse of who I used to be." And I was really struck by that. It really touched me. And it really reminded me of this sense of, yeah, newness and familiarity. And it took me back to my own experience of when I first went to the Wednesday class myself at the descent of some 19 years ago, that I did have this feeling that I'd come home somewhere. I'd been searching for something. My searches had taken me to India. I'd done a meditation course there, which was very good. But I don't think it was until I really went to the LBC that I really felt like I'd come home to something. And yeah, I found what I was looking for in a converted fire station in Bettenborn. So that's the beginning of the powerful. I think it's just good to say that the detail of when the jewel is tied in the sleeping man's garment, well, don't take that too literally because really, like in the midst of the return journey and other myths and fairy stories, it takes place outside time, so. The jewel doesn't literally come into our possession at a certain point in time. It's there all the time, outside of time. It's only our realization that we have the jewels that happens in time. And I was thinking another similarity with the myths of the return journeys that both men go off to different countries where they suffer hardship because they're poor. And in both parables, they end up with a wealth of riches that really have been theirs all the time. In this parable, the man suddenly discovers the jewel. His friend tells him in a way that leaves in no time, really, to prepare, which has happened. One minute, he's poor, the next is rich. It's a kind of sudden method, he could say. Whereas in the midst of the return journey, it's much more gradual. The poor man is gradually acclimatized to his wealth. He gets used to it at a pace that slowly dissolves his fear. A gradual method. And this gradual and sudden method is too gradual and sudden method to be likened to two aspects of the Buddha's eightfold path. So the path of vision and the path of transformation. So the path of vision is the kind of initial experience of seeing that you have the jewel. You are the jewel. And the path of transformation is the application of that experience to every aspect of your life. And it's a gradual adjustment to the fact that you've got this jewel. (coughing) So then, there's also the untying of the jewels in the garment, we have to actually untie it. In the story, he does untie it. It has to be taken out of the garment, just like you have to open a rock to see the jewel. The untying of the jewel seems to point to the process of engaging the spirit to the practice. So you have your initial seeing the jewel, but then you have to take it out and actually use it in terms of ethics, meditation, developing our emotions, awareness. Just seeing it isn't enough. You have to act on what you see. You have to let it affect you. You have to bring it into the light to really clearly see it's lustro and it's brilliant. I've got a few arrows in my talk which is why I'm kind of going back a bit. So there are four symbols, I think, four main sort of symbols or motifs. So there's the motif of drunkenness or sleep, the motif of the other country, the motif of the outer garment or the coat, and the motif of the pastless jewel. So I'm just going to explore those a bit and say what they might mean, what they mean to me, what they sparked us in. Obviously relating to the Dharma. So the first motif is drunkenness or sleep and it's a very important motif in Buddhism. It represents a state of spiritual unawareness or ignorance or lack of any true human self-consciousness. It's a lack of illumination, a mental darkness, even a confusion. In another Buddhist symbol, the Wheel of Life, the pictorial image for this is, but it's a blind man with a stick. So it's also a kind of blindness. We don't see things clearly. It's not a literal blindness. It's almost like we're a bit blinkered. Our vision's got a bit of a narrow focus. And when we are drunk, we don't remember. We don't remember things we've said or things we've done. And well, I was thinking about that and remembering my own sort of student days. You know, those kind of days... Well, yeah, I did spend quite a lot of my student days getting drunk and, you know, waking up, well, I'm not remembering what I'd done the night before. I suspect we've all had some... Well, quite a few of us may have had similar experiences, but I remember one experience in particular, which I woke up and I had all these drawings on my leg. Some would actually draw on all these pictures on my leg and I was totally unaware that this had happened. I mean, obviously they did it for a joke, but it really kind of made me aware of just how unconscious I had been. So we're not literally asleep, but we can sort of do things in a kind of sleep, can't we? We can wake up in a kind of sleep. We can go to work in a kind of sleep. We can eat lunch in a kind of sleep. We can get through the day like that and then come back home to go to sleep. But really, we've been asleep the whole day. We're not really in touch with ourselves, not aware of ourselves in a deeper way. We don't really know who we are, what our true nature is, what our potential is. And I think sometimes when we come on a retreat like this, we get a glimpse of that, don't mean we get a glimpse of our potential. And we also don't really have any knowledge at this point that there is a kind of like a higher truth or reality or an ideal or even the possibility of them. We see ourselves in quite a limited way. So sleep in Buddhism is the opposite of what a Buddha is. A Buddha is awake and he's often referred to as the awakened one, one who is fully awake, awake to how things are, awake to reality. So when we encounter Buddhism, it's as if we are shaken awake out of our sleep out of the drunken stupa of ignorance and unawareness. Like the man in the parable, we have the priceless jewel in our possession. We just need to wake up to the fact that we, to that fact. And I was thinking sometimes we need a bit of shaking or sometimes rather a lot of shaking or even a very loud alarm clock that doesn't let us put the smooth button on or even a loud bell like we've been having every morning ringing. That's what we need to really wake us up. And Sankarach has said that the truth does not scorch you nearly as fearfully as the suffering you bring upon yourself when you ignore the truth. So the second motif in the story is the country, the other country. And here the man says food and clothes extends much labor and effort and undergoes real hardship and his content is not very much. So this is a symbol for the kind of world which we often live in when we've got no knowledge of something higher, if you like, a higher truth or reality. It's the kind of world where there isn't very much meaning. So it's the world or country that we live in when we are unaware. And what kind of world or country is that? Well, obviously it's got its limitations. But I found a poem by Rumi which seemed to be pointing to this. Those of you that have been here for seven days will now have been reading a lot of Rumi poems before meditation. And I think Rumi is just brilliant. I'm always finding things in this book that I never have found before and I'm just amazed by him. And I think he's pointing to something of this same experience that's in the parable. So I'm going to read to the poem. It's called "The Pickaxe". And it starts off some commentary on I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known. Tear down this house. A hundred thousand new houses can be built in the transparent yellow canyon buried beneath it. And the only way to get to that is to do the work of demolishing and then digging under the foundations. With that value in hand, all the new construction will be done without effort. And anyway, soon or later this house will fall on its own. The dual treasure will be uncovered. But it won't be yours then. The buried wealth is your pay for doing the demolition. The pick and shovel work. If you wait and just let it happen, you bite your hand and say, "I didn't do as I knew I should have. "This is a rented house. "You don't own the deed. "You have a lease and you set up a little shop "where you barely make a living "sewing captures on torn clothing. "Yet only a few feet underneath are two veins. "Pure red and bright gold can be used. "Quick, take the pickaxe and cry the foundation. "You've got to quit this seamstress work. "What does this patch so mean you ask? "Eating and drinking. "The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. "You patch it up with food and other restless ego sack of sash. "Rip up one board from the shop floor "and look into the basin. "You'll see two glints in the dirt." So he talks about getting to the treasure beneath the foundation. He also talks about our identity being a structure made up of what we identify with and how that must be torn down, completely demolished, along with its little tailoring shop. The patch sowing of eating and drinking constellations. "The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. "You patch it with food and other restless ego satisfactions. "Tear down this house. "A hundred thousand new houses can be built "from the transparent, yellow carnillion buried beneath it." So there's a sense of abundance again when you see how limited your lens or vision is. You've got a leaf and you set up a little shop where you barely make a living sowing patches on torn clothing. Yet, earning few feet away and beneath are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnillion. So again, there's this theme of jewels richness being very close, but we're just not aware of it. "A treasure within our life is unconnected. "To experience, it's an intrinsic thing. "It's beyond calculation. "A given, reached after the ego, is cleared away "and a one-pointedness, a clear discernment, "digs under the fences." So this is the kind of world we live in, practically all the time. We're asleep in that world, that country, the world of what we identify with. Self has closed possessions, and we work really hard to keep all those things and to get more. There's nothing wrong with these things in themselves. It's more the value we attach to them and the emptiness we can often feel when we've got them. They don't really fully satisfy or fulfill us. They are not really the jewel, and, in fact, we're looking in totally the wrong place. We are looking at things the wrong way round in a sort of topsy-turvy way. And I've been working recently as a supply teacher in Tao hamlets, particularly, and I've been working at one school, and I was reminded of this topsy-turviness because the children at the end of term were doing a play for Christmas, and it was called a topsy-turvy Christmas. And it was about these two angels, Ariel and L'Oreal, who were looking down on the world. And there was this song, and two of the lines from the song where it's a topsy-turvy world we live in. We have enough, but we still long for more. It's a topsy-turvy world we live in. Find me a place where it all comes right, right, right. So in Buddhism, there are, in fact, four topsy-turvy ways that we see the world. These are called the papariasas. Buddhism says that we do not see things as they really are. We see them only as they appear to be. We see them the wrong way round. And it's not just wrong information. It's like they're embedded in our own enlightened consciousness. It's how we are wired emotionally. So we usually see the painful as pleasant, the impermanent as permanent, the insubstantial as substantial, and the ugly inverted commas as beautiful. So we can take a closer look at this. For example, in permanence, and use something quite obvious and tangible like a house. We've become attached to it, and we start behaving as if it's going to be there forever. We treat it as though it would permanent, and this applies to our relationships with people as well. On some level, we think people will live forever, and that we ourselves will, too. But Buddhism says, "Have you not seen, "oh, have you not seen? "All beings without exception die." It's not that we actually think that our house is permanent, or that will live forever. If asked, we'd probably say, "Of course I know it isn't permanent, "and of course I'll die, "but our emotional attitude to it "is that we are permanent." And I myself have my own very strong experience of this. I've reflected a lot on impermanence. I've been a Buddhist for, you know, but I've been practicing meditation for 19 or so years, and I've been a Buddhist for most of that time, I would say, probably 17 years. I really consider myself a Buddhist in the sense of really beginning to start to reflect more deeply on life. So I'm not someone who hasn't reflected on impermanence. But in April 2006, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I realized just how much my psyche is wired to think that I'm going to not exactly live forever, but I did think that I would get my, you know, three school years in 10. My mother and father were both elderly, they lived, you know, quite a long time, they were still alive. And I think it's very easy to just think that we're just going to keep, you know, we're going to live for a long time, but we really don't know that. And it definitely had quite a big effect on me, this experience of being diagnosed with cancer, obviously. And I think that experience, I think something in that experience shattered something of some of my views that I'd still realized that I carried. But then I can also see a little bit further on now, how quickly and how easily I can forget, I can forget. You know, for a while, I thought I'll never forget. You know, I'll just, this is my kind of reality, but I do forget, I forget, we forget. I think I was particularly aware of that when I, I'd been diagnosed with cancer and I was waiting to hear whether the cancer would actually spread. So, you know, waiting to see if I had any secondary cancers. And I really had this very strong experience of really being so vividly alive and yet very in touch with, yeah, death. So it's very, it was a very strong experience. I had to follow my arrow. I think I'm like, oh, I've got a glass of water. I can't get the staff here in this cafe. (laughing) But although Buddhism says all that, it also does say that there's an antidote to that. You know, there are things we can do about that. We can first of all stop being an ostrich. We can, I mean, in learning to meditate, you could say you are stopping being an ostrich. You're stopping bearing your head in the sand. You know, ostriches bury their heads, don't they? Actually, when you meditate, you do start to reflect and meditation gives you the opportunity to reflect on impermanence. And if you do that, you actually see that everything is constantly changing. And you can do that when you're doing the mind from sobreathing. You can just notice your breath and notice it's constantly changing. You could say this being that becomes, this is from the Buddha, not from me, from the arising of this that arises, this not being that does not become from the ceasing of this that ceases. So when we begin to reflect on impermanence, we actually move from certainty to uncertainty. So most of the time we live our lives in accordance with appearances, how things appear to be. And we need Buddhism would say to start to live in accordance with reality, with how things actually are, or at least a bits of understanding of reality. 'Cause if we really understood reality, if we really understood impermanence, we would never experience suffering again, ever. At least that's mental suffering. The suffering that we add on to our experience of painful feeling. It doesn't mean we won't experience physical suffering. The Buddha is enlightened being still experienced physical suffering. He's still got old, he got sick, and he died. But he didn't experience mental suffering. So moving on a little bit more to the other Biparias, is when we're deprived of something to which we attach towards. Which we behave as if it will always be there. We can experience suffering to a greater or lesser degree. But I think this is useful because it informs us that we've been seeing that particular thing or person the wrong way up. We also see what is in substantial, not fixed or solid. And this includes our view of our self. We sometimes think that we have a some sort of self, something substantial and fixed, a mid or somehow standing behind the changing processes of life. We imagine what is really unsatisfactory is giving us satisfaction or it will do in the future. So these topsy turvies are connected with what's called the three latchments or marks of conditioned existence. All things are impermanent, insubstantial and painful. It doesn't mean that Buddhism's really gloomy, it's just trying to point out that things are always fading into their opposite. So things are pleasant and there's nothing wrong with pleasure. But when there's a loss of the pleasant, it becomes painful. And there's this constant rising and falling of this. And Buddhism is, you could say, relentless in its application of this principle, not because it, as I said, pessimistic, but because the Buddha really saw reality clearly and in a way nothing escapes. So this rising and falling includes us. It doesn't mean that we see eye as random or without meaning, but just not as permanent ever. We're always changing. And we can just keep applying impermanence to ourselves. I've already said we can do that with the breathing. So the fourth topsy-turvy, seeing what is ugly, inverted commas as beautiful, doesn't mean that we should regard a flower, for example, as essentially ugly. It's more that in comparison with the beauties, we can experience on a higher plane's reality, the beauty of conditioned existence pales or fades into insignificance. Sankarachata says that form takes on a more luminous quality when it's the fused with awareness, lines, colors, and shapes. We need to give ourselves an experience of beauty and appreciation of beauty. It's a necessary experience, I think, of the spiritual life. Pleasure is fine, but the problem is when it moves into craving. So what we can do is try and practice mindfulness with pleasant feeling as a way of entering into a realm of beauty. And when I'm talking about beauty here, look for a quality of simplicity, a quality of in-the-scene, just the scene, a quality of contentment, a quality of clear conscience, and appreciation of impermanence. So our practice of awareness can begin to move our awareness from sense objects to objects of beauty in the natural world and then into spiritual beauty. We can contemplate beauty with craving, but it's also possible to contemplate beauty with an intensity of joy and yet no desire. And we need to notice and distinguish between these two, enjoying beauty for itself without appropriation and free from craving. And again, when I was ill, in these two weeks I was mentioning, which were particularly vivid, I used to spend quite a bit of time walking in Victoria Park and I used to go to my favorite tree, which was this magnolia tree. And I'd been to this magnolia tree lots of times, but during this particular, these two weeks I talked about, I really felt as if I saw the magnolianness of the magnolia. Beautiful, but at the same time, letting go of its flowers. It was like just the blooms were just perfect, just white tinge with pink. And at the same time as it was unfolding, it was also falling. And I remember saying to my trade bandu, you must go and see the magnolia tree. And he said, I have seen it, but I'm not seeing it the way you are. So beauty, it's also good to remember, is not always outside ourselves. Beauty is within us. It's also our attitude that conditions our sense of beauty. And you could say art's a kind of halfway house, but still a house that we need. Beauty ultimately, according to Keats, is wisdom and truth. Or sorry, truth is beauty and beauty is truth. I mean, beauty ultimately could say is wisdom and truth. So Keats in his ode on a Grisha Mearm says, beauty is truth, truth is beauty. That is all we need to know. So, so we need to try and turn our topsy turvy's the right way up. And I think we can do this by, in a sense, doing what roomy is suggesting, by trying to really clearly see things as they actually are, not how they appear to do, to be. So it's this clear discernment that roomy mentions with the pickaxe. It's like we need the pickaxe to demolish some of our views, some of these topsy-turvy ways in which we see the world. So it's seeing the imperman as imperman and knowing that on deeper and deeper levels. So now I'll move on to the outer garment or the coat. What does that symbolize? Well, in the parable, it's obviously hiding the jewel. The jewel is in the folds of the material. The jewel's still in the dark, so to speak. It's concealed from the man. So a coat or a garment is something you wear. You're covered, shrouded, protected. It reminds me that jewels come from the depths of the air. From the dark, from rock, from stone. And we forget that they're there most of the time. We forget about the richness, which is under our feet. The wealth that is derived from the earth. This richness is hidden from us. This huge crystal on the shrine is actually from Pakistan. And, well, it's come from the earth. It's come from rock. And that's amazing when you think about it, it's just incredible. So in the parable, the jewel comes from the dark folds of the man's garment, and its brilliance is hidden until the man tells him that it's there. So you could say this is just like another layer of unawareness, a more subtle one. The man isn't asleep or drunk anymore, but he's still unaware. So now on to the symbol of the jewel. So a lot of these things you'll be able to make these connections yourself. But jewels representing richness, wealth, beauty, purity, value, abundance, preciousness, and perfection. They are sparkling, scintillating, fascinating, luminous. They're a whole shops, even streets devoted to them. I was thinking Bond Street, or near there's got a whole sort of line of jewelry shops, haven't it? They're also absorbing. We can look at them for hours. And I remember going to the crown jewels a few years ago for the first time. And the jewels there are so beautiful. They really are just amazing. I've never seen jewels like them. There's a diamond sector, and the diamond is absolutely just-- it's perfect. I just wanted to hold this diamond sector. And the other jewels, they were rubies, and emeralds, and sapphires. And they were just exquisite. It was the purity of them. And there was a little conveyor belt that you have to go on to go around these jewels. And I kept finding myself just wanting to keep going round and round. And also, I remember when I was there, that the gold there was just so gold. It made all the other gold I'd ever seen look quite tarnished. So I think jewels have a particular quality of light, which is soft and yet rich. And we experience it when we are in a heightened state of awareness. And Sangarachata describes an experience of this. But I'm just going to read for you. One night I found myself, this is his experience, as it were out of the body and in the presence of Amitabha, with this red hood of him. The Buddha of infinite light, who presides over the western quarter of the universe. The color of the Buddha was a deep, rich, luminous red, like that of the rubies, while at the same time soft and glowing, like the light of the setting sun. While his left hand rested on his lap, the fingers of his right hand held up by the stalk, a single red lotus in full bloom. And he sat in the usual cross-legged posture on an enormous red lotus that floated on the surface of the seeds. To the left, immediately beneath the raised right hand of the Buddha was the red hemisphere of the setting sun, its reflection glittering golden across the waters. How long the experience lasted, I do not know, for I seem to be out of time, as well as out of the body. But I saw the Buddha as clearly as I had ever seen anything under the ordinary circumstances of my life, indeed far more clearly and vividly. The rich red color of Amitabha himself, as well as of the two lotuses and the setting sun, it made a particularly deep impression on me. It was more wonderful, more appealing than any earthly word. It was like a red light, but so soft and at the same time, so vivid to be altogether without parallel. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the figure of this red Buddha is as clear to me in recollection as it was the next morning. Lama Gavinda is another kind of person who I think really sees things with, he's that kind of jewelness of color. He's also, he's a German monk who spent some years kind of, well, he did a pilgrimage actually in Tibet, and he's written a book called The Way of the White Clouds, which is about that pilgrimage. And before he goes, he dreams about a lake, and then when he goes to this part of Tibet, he actually sees the lake that was in his dreams, so he's a bit of a visionary. And he describes the lake. He says, "The pangom lakes have passed all expectations. "I could hardly believe my eyes. "Before me, stretched a lake-like sheet "of molten Lakislashila, merging into an intense ultramarine "in the distance and into radiant, cold-bought blue "and opalescent zeronese green towards the nearest shore, "friems with white beaches, while the mountains framing "this incredible color display were a golden aqua, "Indian red and burnt sienna with purple shadows." And I've actually got a book of his pastels, of his pastel drawings that he did, and the actual pastel drawing of that lake, it really has got this beautiful luminous jewel-like quality to it. It's really beautiful. Closer to home, I think we can experience jewel colors very much in art. I was at the National Gallery recently. It's somewhere where I go quite a bit. And I just think of all the blues and pinks, and just those lovely, kind of jewel-like colors that you get in some of the Madonna's and thinking of, you know, painters like Raphael, and then some of the annunciations, just get these really beautiful, jewel-like colors. And also the Venetian painters, Titian and Bellini. And also, again, while I've been teaching recently, I went on a trip to St Paul's Cathedral with some children, and I haven't been to St Paul's Cathedral for years, and we were taking on a little tour, and we ended up sitting under all these, or sitting under the ceilings, and just all this gold glittering, and all these jewels, it was beautiful, and the children, you know, they'd never been anywhere like that, and they were just completely mesmerized. So the jewel is a worthy symbol for the true self. It's the most precious of all material things. And the true self is, of course, infinitely precious. The jewel is bright, shining, and brilliant, and the true self is like that, too. But its brilliance comes from within, rather than being reflected from without. It's luminous and transparent. The jewel cannot be made dirty. It may be hidden in dust, in mud. But when the dirt removed, it shines and sparkles as clean and bright as ever. Our own nature is essentially like this. It may be hidden to us at present by anger, by ignorance, by greed, by jealousy, by all kinds of things. But these defilements, if you like, these veils, they can be removed. And so this true self can shine forth in all its splendor. So we have to keep doing, as Rooney says, the pithax work. We have to keep on removing the obscurations, the coverings that prevent us seeing our jewel. In Mahayana Buddhism, jewels are very much in evidence. There are jewel trees, jewel lakes and lotuses. Amitabha, this red Buddha, he belongs to the western quarter, lives in a pure land with a lapis-lagely plane, intersected by cords of gold in all directions with forests of jewel trees. Ratna Samba, the yellow Buddha of the south, he's also known as the jewel-born. His particular palace is made of gold and studied with jewels and semi-precious stones. In fact, there are riches everywhere. And in his left hand, he holds a beautiful jewel, the wish-fulfilling gem. And his other hand is open in the mudra of giving, supreme giving. Showering us, you could say, with spiritual riches, which make us more expansive. But I think we can begin to do that ourselves in our own meditation. We can see our own mind and heart as sources of spiritual richness. And as we continue to practice, we mind deeper within ourselves. And from the awe of our direct experience, we smelt more and more precious qualities. Ratna Samba has everything, and he gives everything away in abundance because he owns nothing. There is no mind in yours. He also gives things that aren't owned by anyone, which are probably the most precious, not owned by anyone but belonging to all. And we can reflect on this for ourselves. What are the precious things for us that aren't owned by anyone? It might be Shakespeare's sonnets. It might be a starry sky. I'm sure everyone will have their own things. So the wishful, filling jewel symbolizes is the Bodhi Chitta, which is a kind of will to enlightenment for the sake of all beings. And this does tell us something about the Enlightenment experience. You have everything. All your wishes, desires, aspirations are fully satisfied. You could say the Bodhi Chitta is a bit like a Buddhist Aladdin's lamp. There is a universal dream of humanity, you could say, to kind of have a magic lamp. A pot or a jewel gives you what you want and wish for. And it often occurs in fairy stories. But this Bodhi Chitta jewel, it empowers us in a sense to look towards actually beginning to help others. We've been searching through our lives for fulfillment. And we all want access to greater riches and wealth. And sometimes we think mundane goods might do that. And increasingly, I think our wealth or our sense of value goes on those kind of things. When I was shopping with my sister earlier this year, she tried on this coat. And it was a bit too small for her. So then she said to me, oh, you must try on. So I tried it on. And she told me, oh, you look $1 million in that coat. And you should buy it. And I did buy it. But I was very struck by the ever-increasing emphasis on how we look, what we wear, the value of that. And it just kind of made me think, well, yeah, I mean, it's quite a nice analogy. You look a million dollars in it. But it also made me think, well, we're looking in the wrong places for value, meaning, and contentment. So we've been looking at impermanent things to give us lasting happiness. So this begins to lead me on a little bit more to the actual title of the tool in the Lotus. So the jewel is a kind of solar symbol, you could say. And the Lotus is more of a lunar symbol. So the Lotus represents a process of unfoldment of development. It can refer to the universe as a whole or an individual. And a Lotus has got many layers of petals, soft tender petals which gradually unfold. It's organic, subtle, but even changes imperceptibly. On the whole, you can't really see a flower opening. We haven't literally seen these lilies opening, but they have been opening over the last few days. Sometimes we can't see ourselves progressing. We are opening, but if we look over time, we can see that great change does and has taken place. And you've all changed in the time you've been here. Sometimes it's hard to see that from the outside. But the other thing I really like about the Lotus symbolism is that the Lotus means that we can all grow differently. We can grow up with different color lotuses. We don't all have to grow in the same way. So the jewel and the Lotus come together and they form-- well, the jewel and the Lotus I will say something actually about this particular hand gestural mudra which the fingers are the Lotus and the two thumbs are the jewel. So actually, the fingers are separated like the Lotus and the thumbs are together to make a jewel. So when we salute the shrine, whenever you hold your hands like this, you could remind yourself that there is a jewel, an enlightenment potentiality in you and in all other beings. However far you and they may be, from that at this present moment. The jewel in the Lotus is also part of a mantra or a sound symbol for enlightenment. Or mani padme hum, which is probably the mantra that most people have heard of. It's the mantra that's written on many stones into bed. It's the mantra that people into bed usually are chanting when they use their prayer wheels. And it means on jewel in the Lotus or hail jewel in the Lotus. And it's the mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion avolo catetteful. His name means the one who looks down with compassion and the one who listens. So I'm just going to talk briefly about two of his forms. So there is an 11-headed, 1,000-armed form. He holds the bodhicifted jewel to his heart and his other hands reach out to all beings. And each hand holds a different implement, which demonstrates his measureless resource forms, which is able to respond and help all. So every figure, you could say, is a guide or a gateway to a state of mind. What state of mind does this figure evoke? To help us understand it a bit more fully, I thought I'd just look at the legend of this particular birth of this form. So avolo catetteful. You could say, well, he's in the same family as Amitabha. So Amitabha's like his teacher, if you like. And avolo catetteful vows to establish all living beings in happiness. He really wants to stop suffering. And he says, until I do this, he says this to Amitabha. Until I do this, may I never even for a moment feel like giving up the purpose of others for my own peace and happiness. If I should, may my head be cracked into 10 pieces, like the adzarka plant, and my body be split into 1,000 pieces, like the petals of a lotus. So he goes to the land of Tibet, and he teaches, he teaches beings, he gives them this mantra on manupadmihan, and then he enters into a deep meditation. He goes out over the land, and he sees, he's not helped even 100 of the beings in Tibet. And he sees by a bitter sorrow, and for an instant, the thought arises, what is the use? I can do nothing for them. It is better to be peaceful and happy myself. And at that moment, his head cracks into 10 pieces, and his body splits into 1,000 pieces. And in his agony, he cries out to Amitabha, and Amitabha appears. And what Amitabha does is he kind of says, because you have this really strong intention, and you said it before all these buddhas. You know, what you've said, you know, you've said what happened, has happened in a sense. But what Amitabha does as well is he fashions him together, and he puts himself on top of his head. I find that that really something about this bit in the story, where he actually faces his own head above these 10 heads of Avila catastrophe, and he radiates light. So the figure is a symbol for consciousness that has been completely transformed by this bodhicitta duel. It's a consciousness whose only wishes to help beings in an infinite number of ways. So Avila catastrophe has so much love for the world, and two arms could not embrace it, or two eyes weep enough for its suffering. But the figure you could say is more of a symbol for a spiritual community, more so than an individual. And in fact, Sankaratcha has said that it's a very good symbol for us as in the Western Buddhist order to think of in terms of what we're trying to do. So each person reaching out in their own way, offering their skills and talents. And at the same time, all guided by this brilliant bodhicitta duel. The second form of Avila catastrophe is a forearmed one. He's still got more than two arms, he's got four arms. And I'm just going to read a little description of him. So he emerges from the vast blue sky. He is seated on a throne of jewels. Which blazes brilliantly. On top of the jewel's throne is a lotus flower with a moon mat on top of it. Avila catastrophe sits on the moon mat. He is the color of snow on a mountain or a conch shell. He is adorned with jewels and crystals and silks. He has long dark hair. He wears a five jeweled crown. He is handsome and smiling and his eyes are gentle. He has four arms. The innermost hair casts the wish for filling jewel placed to his heart. It is his greatest treasure. In his outer left hand he holds the lotus flower. And in the outer right hand a crystal gnoll. Each bead a living bead. Above him sits an retarder. Buddha of love and compassion. He is the jewel in the lotus of the world. This is just a little more description of him. O you whose eyes are clear, whose eyes are friendly, whose eyes betrayed, distinguished with the knowledge, whose eyes are compassionate, whose eyes are pure. O you so lovable with beautiful faith, with beautiful eyes. Then it goes on to say, think of him, think of him without hesitation, or vivelucatestral, that pure being, in death, disaster and calamity, he is a saviour refuge and recourse. As he who has reached perfection in all virtues, he looks on all beings with pity and friendliness, who is virtue himself. A great ocean of virtues. As such, avlucatestra is worthy of adoration. So avlucatestra is the jewel in the lotus. But I think it's also possible for us if we, not exactly just if we contemplate him, but it's possible for us and our world to become a bit like, it's possible for us to become the jewel and our world to become the lotus. And if we manage that, then we do become the jewel in the lotus. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhastaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]