Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;The Wisdom Hearerand#8221; is an extract from the richly rewarding talk The Sound of Reality exploring the place and function of sound in Buddhist practice and history, as well as within Padmavajraand#8217;s own spiritual life. Beginning with Hakuinand#8217;s verses of Awakening, Padmavajra very beautifully explores how hearing and#8211; really hearing and#8211; can lead us to Insight.
Talk given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, 2004
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] So this brings us to the wisdom hearer. There's a beautiful story of the great Japanese endmaster, Harkwyn. And Harkwyn describes in one of his autobiographical writings how he was on retreat in an old abandoned temple in the mountains. And one night he was sitting late and long into the night with the snow falling all around, falling on pine and bush, falling on the roofs of the temple, flake after flake in the deep steel night. Suddenly, as he sat, there was an awakening, a profound breakthrough into an entirely new level of realisation. And out of the depths of this awakening, he wrote the following awakening verse. This is one of Harkwyn's most profound moments. If only I could share it, the soft sound of snow falling late at night from the trees at this old temple. So you can sense, even in translation, the profoundly receptive state Harkwyn was sitting in. He hears, really hears, hears the way things are. The utter purity, tranciency, ungraspability. Harkwyn's verse gives us, I think, a way into how hearing can lead to wisdom, insight into the true nature of things. When you meditate, after you've developed calm, concentration, positive emotion, listen, at the end of your morning practice or the afternoon practice, do some listening. Listen to the sounds around you, listen to the people shuffling in the trine room. Just hear it, listen to that car going down the road. Hear the birdsong, hear the bird making its nest outside the door in that scrabberly way. Hear the heating going on and off. And notice how utterly impermanent the sound is. It arises and passes, it's utterly insubstantial. You can never grasp it, you can never hold it. It arises and passes, notice that. Every sound sings impermanence in substantiality, which is the nature of everything. You will never find the essence of that sound. Listen, without bringing anything to it, without bringing craving or aversion. If it's a nice sound, I don't know, a pleasant tune you might hear or something like that, you can listen and get sort of caught up and start planning a whole thing about how you're going to go down to the CD store and get that tune or something like that. And then you get lost in mental confusions. You're taken away from the moment, from your purpose. If it's a nasty sound, there's very likely to be a version and anger. You hear the car belting up the lane here, cars, damn cars, petrol, oil, the Iraq war, George Bush, Tony Blair, and you're lost, you're confused. But of course it's just a sound, just be with that sound. There's nothing actually behind that sound. It just arises. It passes. In fact, as it gets mysterious, the sounds you hear don't even arise. Bullish tradition says that everything is in fact birthless, unborn. Sound, hearing, is actually memory. By the time the sound reaches you, it's gone, it's passed. It's previous, and if it's passed and previous doesn't exist, the past has no place. You won't find it. It's gone. There's no arising. It's already gone. And this reflection leads to liberation. If you can really notice this, dwelling this, it leads to freedom from all imprisoning conditioning. You experience the joy, the bliss of liberation. This reminds me of a story from the 17th century Chan master, Han Shan. It was who's different from the cold mountain poet, by the way, quite a bit later. Han Shan was a great meditator, scholar, teacher of the Dharma, organizer of the Dharma. He brought about a revival in Chinese Buddhism in his time. But he used to do these long solitary retreats. And one day he went off for a retreat in a mountain fastness in the snowy peaks. Everything frozen, doing days, weeks of meditation, just sitting all day long in meditation. Completely alone. And then everything started to thaw. So the mountain rivers just turned into these roaring, raging torrents. He says this was very disturbing. So was this the end of this solitary retreat? If we went on to a solitary retreat and somebody started up repairing a motorbike next to us or something like this, we'd probably get all upset and go home. Not for Han Shan. He remembered a teaching in the midst of all this roaring sound. He remembered a teaching from a famous Buddhist sutra, hugely influential in China, the Shurangama sutra. And in this sutra it said, "Whoever hears the sound of water, without using the discriminating mind for 30 years, will achieve the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshras, all-pervading wisdom. So Han Shan went to the roaring torrents. He went to where it was noisiest. He went and sat on a wooden bridge every day above this roaring torrent. And he sat listening. But without using his disability, he went to where it was noisiest. He went and sat on a wooden bridge every day above this roaring torrent. He sat listening. But without using his discriminating mind, he went, if you like, right into the sound. He didn't let his mind proliferate, not setting up all sorts of craving and aversion, not setting up self and other, grasp and grasp, not setting up past or present or future, just listening to the raging waters as they were in themselves. And he noticed that the sound of the roaring water would get loud when thoughts surged in his mind, but faded and dissolved into silence when there were no thoughts in the discriminating mind. When he was in the sound, there was silence. One day, suddenly, as he sat, he felt himself vanish into emptiness and into all-pervading silence. And later, he says, there was only a great brightness, round and full and clear and still, like a huge round mirror reflecting the whole scene, mountains and rivers, the great earth just as they are. And he composed his own verse of awakening when in a flash the mad mind halts, the senses and all outer objects are perceived as they are, as the summer-sorting body hits and shatters space, the rise and fall of things are viewed without concern. So, this is the wisdom that can come from hearing. You begin to view the rise and fall of things without concern. This isn't indifference, but this is a state of freedom and equanimity. You're at ease and still, not just in your meditation, but in relation to everyday life as well, the sound of harsh and foolish words addressed to you, for example, just pass you by. They rise and pass away, they're just sounds, just vibrations. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. 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