Todayand#8217;s Dharmabyte is on and#8220;The Buddhaand#8217;s Gratitudeand#8221; discussing the importance of gratitude for the spiritual life, even for the Buddha following his Enlightenment. The talk, and#8220;Looking at the Bodhi Tree,and#8221; given in 1975 by Sangharakshita, is as relevant today as it was then.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
The Buddha’s Gratitude
[music] Dharma Bites 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. Today, I'm going to speak about another episode. One that occurred quite early in the seven-week period, immediately after the Buddha's attainment of supreme enlightenment. According to at least one traditional source, it took place during the second week. So what happened? What happened during that second week? According to the source I've mentioned, the Buddha stood at a distance to the northeast of the Bodhi tree, and remained for one week, gazing at the tree with unblinking eyes as a marker gratitude for sheltering him in the attainment of enlightenment. That's what the text tells us, or one of the texts tells us. And centuries later, a stupa was erected on that very spot, the spot where the Buddha had stood, gazing at the Bodhi tree. And it was known, as stupa, as known as the stupa of unblinking eyes. And Eun Trung, the great Chinese pilgrim, saw this stupa in the seventh century of the common era. And he has described his visit, he's described the stupa in his memoirs, a memoirs which he dictated back in China to his disciples in his old age. And Eun Trung says, on the left side of the road, to the north of the place where the Buddha walked, is a large stone, on the top of which, as it stands in a great fihara, is a figure of the Buddha, with his eyes raised and looking up. Here in four times, the Buddha sat, he says sat, but the text from which I read a minute ago says stood. The Buddha sat for seven days, contemplating the Bodhi tree. So why did the Buddha look at the Bodhi tree? Why did the Buddha gaze at the Bodhi tree? Perhaps he didn't gaze literary for seven days, but we may take it that at least he gazed for a very long time. And the quotation from which I read, previously, makes it clear why. He looked at the Bodhi tree out of gratitude. He was grateful to the Bodhi tree for having sheltered him in his attainment of enlightenment, grateful to it for having sheltered him. And it's about the significance of this looking at the Bodhi tree that I want to say something today. I want, in fact, to speak about gratitude, gratitude. So far as I remember, I've not spoken on this particular quality before. I'm told that I've given many, many lectures, hundreds, even thousands of lectures, and I'm also told that there are 18 million words of seminar on tape. And that's an awful lot of lectures, it's an awful lot of words. And it's all indexed, I'm told. But so far as I can remember, I've never spoken on this quality of gratitude. Anyway, that's rather strange, but even if you talk in public as much as I've done, well, perhaps you can't get around to talking about everything. But if the Buddha demonstrated so soon after his attainment of enlightenment, the importance of gratitude, then surely we ought to pay some attention to that particular quality. Gratitude, surely, should be a quality that Buddhists should be trying to develop. So let's look at it a little this afternoon on this Wesak day. The Buddha also demonstrated gratitude in other ways, according to the scriptures. I'd refer to the episode of Brahma Sahampati's request. His request that the Buddha should teach the Dharma here discovered out of compassion and a result of that request, yes, the Buddha decided out of compassion to teach what he had discovered. But who should he teach? The scriptures represent him as thinking in the first place of his two old teachers. The teachers under whom, according to some accounts, he learns to meditate not very long after leaving home. Of course, he'd found their teaching inadequate insufficient, he'd left them. But they had been helpful to him at a particular stage of his career. And it's as though he wanted to repay a sort of spiritual debt to them after his attainment had been enlightened. But he quickly realized that they were dead, so he couldn't do anything about it. And he then thought of his five former companions in asceticism. You may remember those of you who've read any account almost of the Buddha's life, but after leaving those two teachers, he started practicing very extreme self-mortification. He practiced it in the company of five friends who became, as it were, disciples of his. And to admire him, who looked up to him very greatly because he went further in his self-mortification than anybody else at that time. And of course, eventually, the Buddha had realized the futility of self-mortification realized that that was not the way to enlightenment. Gave it up, started taking solid food, and these other five ascetics, of course, left him in disgust. They said the Samana Gautama has returned to luxurious living because he took a few handfuls of rice to sustain himself. So, after his enlightenment, having realized that his two old teachers were dead, the text represents the Buddha as reflecting. The five ascetics would have great help for me when I was practicing the penances. I wish to preach the dhamma to them. And this is what the Buddha did. He winced them, he taught them, and eventually, they too realized the truth that he had realized. And he did this out of gratitude. So, the newly enlightened Buddha, we may say, was a grateful Buddha. Now, we don't usually think of the Buddha in this way. We think of the always Buddha, we think of the compassionate Buddha, we think of the resourceful Buddha. But, as far as I know, we don't usually think of the grateful Buddha. But the Buddha was grateful, and one of the very first things he did after his attainment of enlightenment was to show his gratitude to those who had helped him. He was even grateful to a tree. And this alone should give us quite a lot of food for thought, food for reflection. That the Buddha, after his enlightenment, showed his gratitude to the tree that had sheltered him. In the Buddhist scriptures, there are quite a number of references that show that the Buddha and his disciples didn't regard trees and stalks and stones just in animal-dead matter. They regarded them as living things. They could have even a relationship with them. They could talk to a tree. They could talk to a flower, because, yes, there was what they called a David Tower, a habit in it. And I have said in the past, and this was years and years ago when I was living in India, it's much better to be an animist, a primitive animist than to think that trees and flowers and rocks and stones are just dead matter. So the Buddha certainly didn't think in that way, and it was because he didn't think in that way that it was possible for the Buddha to be grateful, actually grateful, even to a tree. And it's therefore not surprising that this quality, this virtual gratitude, finds a place in the Buddha's ethical and spiritual teaching. You've probably all heard of the Mangala Sutra, the Sutra of blessings, or the Sutra of auspicious signs, as it can also be translated. This particular Sutra, which is very short, and is found in the Pali Canon, is often regarded as summarizing the whole duty, as we call it, of a serious-minded Buddhist. And it mentions gratitude. It enumerates gratitude as one of the auspicious assignments. If you practice gratitude, if you're grateful, then it's a sign that you are making spiritual progress according to the Mangala Sutra. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [music] [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]