(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. - Yeah, thank you very much Bodhi Naga. It is good to be home, as it were, back in Yorkshire also just very good to be here and to be able to speak to you on this theme. So, as Bodhi Naga said, I meditate on the Buddha Amitabha every day. So, to be able to speak to you all about the Buddha Amitabha does feel like a real blessing and a pleasure. And particularly just being stood in front of this shrine. One of the things I'm gonna draw out a bit in the talk this evening is the theme of beauty and the beauty of Amitabha and the beauty of the ideal. And I already feel like it's been done for me in the way that the shrine has been composed. So, thank you to whoever put this together, the team of people, no doubt we put this together. I will give a talk, so we won't just look at the shrine for the next 45 minutes. The way I'll do it, I think, is to tell stories, which, okay, there'll be words involved, but really the stories are trying to communicate what you can already see in front of you on this shrine. But that's the way I wanted to approach things this evening by telling stories and by telling three stories. So, I'm familiar you've been exploring this particular theme of the mandala of the five Buddhas. And that does require a particular type of language. So, it's not the language of lists, the language of categories and of concepts. It is the language of a symbol of myth, of poetry and of story. So, let's plunge straight in and start with the first story. So, the first one is specifically about the Buddha Rami Taba, the red Buddha that we can see on the shrine here. And the story's told in a sutra, a Buddhist sutra called the Longah Sakavati Viyuha Sutra. So, it's a bit of a mouthful. I'll say more about what it means shortly. But in this particular sutra, actually the historical Buddha, so the Buddha that we're most familiar with, he's telling a story in this sutra. And he's telling the story to Ananda, who many of you will have no doubt heard about. So, Ananda's the Buddha's cousin, his personal attendant, he's often referred to, but really great spiritual friend of the Buddha. So, the Buddha's telling Ananda a story. And the setting for this is Vulture's peak. So, this does actually exist somewhere in India. I've never been and seen it myself, but apparently the Buddha would retire there with some of his followers that would meditate there. He would give teachings there. And on this particular occasion, on Vulture's peak, Ananda notices that the Buddha's complexion is particularly bright on that occasion. So, he decides to go over and tell the Buddha that his complexion looks very bright. And when the Buddha hears this, he says, "Oh, well done, Ananda, it's good that you've mentioned this. You've seen that my complexion is particularly bright." And he uses that as an opportunity to then tell this particular story. And it's a story about the Buddha Amitabha. So, as Bodhi Nagas just said, you've already visited Amitabha on the mandalini. You've already looked at some of his qualities. So, no doubt you've heard in the previous talk that Amitabha's the Buddha of the West. He is particularly associated with meditation. So, his hands are in the deanna mudra, the meditation posture. So, very much to do with meditation, absorption. And Amitabha's wisdom is the wisdom of particularity or the discriminating wisdom. So, here's the wisdom that sees every single thing exactly as it is. He sees the uniqueness of all these different manifestations of reality. I think maybe the most striking feature of the Buddha Amitabha is that color. So, that rich, luminous, ruby-red color. And this is Amitabha, his radiation, if you like, the radiant color, red. The radiation of warmth, of love. And his element is the fire element. So, it's not just some kind of lukewarm love. It's very much fiery, passionate, even hot love. He's often associated also with the setting sun. So, it's the love that's like the setting sun, the rays of the setting sun. So, you might have heard about these different qualities of Amitabha. Actually, the Buddha in this story, he doesn't mention any of that, actually. So, a lot of that iconography comes, or is drawn out later in Buddhist history. But this sutra predates that. So, the Buddha doesn't say anything about that. His focus is on where Amitabha lives, where Amitabha dwells, and how he got there. So, that's the focus of this particular story. So, the Buddha Shakyamuni tells Ananda that Amitabha lives in a Buddha field called Sakavati. So, Sakavati means the land of bliss. That is Amitabha's Buddha field, that's where he dwells. And he starts to describe to Ananda, how this Buddha field, Sakavati, was created. So, he says that a long time ago, and by that the sutra says an inconceivably many innumerable countless aeons upon countless aeons ago. It's that long ago. There was a Buddha called Lokeshvararaja. And that means something like suffering of the world, suffering king of the world. And Lokeshvararaja, he had a disciple called Dharmakara. And one day, this disciple Dharmakara went to the Buddha Lokeshvararaja. He prostrated at his feet. He sang praises to the Buddha. And then he made what's known as the pranidana. So, he might have come across this word before the pranidana. It means the bodhisattva vow. So, I'll say a little bit more about that later, but for now he makes this pranidana. And it's a great expression of intention. So, what he intends to do. And I'll just read you a short extract of this pranidana of Dharmakara. So, he says, "The king of kings, "with all the powers of a Buddha, "whose splendor is boundless, "sheds his light in all directions. "May I become a Buddha like him, a lord of the Dharma. "I now undertake this commitment. "I will become a Buddha and protect all living beings. "My radiance will shine throughout as many world systems "as there are grains of sand in the river Ganges. "And throughout the Buddha fields they contain, "which are even more numerous without end. "This is how I will apply my energy." And he actually goes on and on and on for quite some time. Making this great expression to work for the benefit of all living beings and create his own Buddha field and become a Buddha. So, having done that, he then asks Lokesh for a Raja to teach him the Dharma. And not only that, he says, "Teach me the Dharma "and describe to me in detail all the qualities "of all the Buddhas in the universe "and all their Buddha fields." So, Lokesh for a Raja agrees to do that. And he tells him about the qualities of 81 million trillion Buddhas and their Buddha fields. That takes 10 million years. (audience laughs) Then Dharma, he concentrates all of those qualities into one Buddha field. He meditates on that for five aeons. So, we're talking long periods of time here. And once he's done that, he then starts to put things into practice. So, he then starts to try to manifest these qualities in the universe and create this super magnificent Buddha field. So, at that point, Ananda asks the question. So, you might be asking the question yourself, but Ananda asks the Buddha, "Well, did he succeed? "Did Dharmarkara succeed? "Is he still around? "Is he still communicating the Dharma somewhere?" And the Buddha says, "Yes, Dharmarkara did succeed. "He's become a Buddha. "His name is Amitabha, and the Buddha field "that he's created in which he dwells "is the Buddha field of sakavati. "And then he launches into this magnificent description "of the Buddha field sakavati. "So, we hear that there are all these amazing trees "made of different precious substances, gold, silver, "lapis, lajuli, et cetera. "We hear that there are lotuses "that are inconceivably massive. "There are rains of flower petals that come down. "I think it's three times a day and three times at night, "something like that. "But all the time, these petals raining down, "just filling the land with happiness. "And if they touch the people that dwell there, "they're just in ecstasy and in bliss. "And the description just goes on and on and on, "and it's really quite wonderful and magnificent." So, this is sakavati. This is the land of bliss, where the Buddha Ramitata dwells. The point that I just want to draw out from the story is more to do, let's to do with the description, more to do with this whole notion of the pranidana, the bodhisattva vow. So, according to the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, this is a particular, this is the route to enlightenment. This is the way to attaining enlightenment and to Buddhahood. It's to aspiring to work for the good of all living beings. So, not just for one's own sake, but actually to gain enlightenment for the sake of all living beings. So, that crystallizes in the history of Buddhism, in what's known as the bodhisattva ideal, the making of this vow, and then the putting of this vow into practice. So, that's how Buddhahood arises, according to the Mahayana tradition. It's through the making of this vow. And I guess what's being communicated is something of the essential attitude that we need in practicing the Dharma, in practicing the Buddha's teaching. The essential attitude is that there's no such thing as a private personal enlightenment. There's no such thing as a private liberation. We don't just practice Buddhism for our own sake, we practice it for the sake of everybody, of everything. That's the essential attitude that the Mahayana communicates, that this sutra communicates. So, I think here we just pause and ask a question, well, how do we relate to that? So, you may be having particular responses to that. And I think we can explore those responses and ask that question, well, what does this mean to us? Is that how we see things? It might be that it's not. And therefore, there's something to explore there. Even if it is, even if we accept that, the enlightenment is something that we aspire to for the benefit of all. Well, what are the implications of accepting that ideal? Sometimes in the texts, when somebody makes this pranidana, this great aspiration to practice the Dharma for the benefit of all, it's followed by a kind of horror or a shock. So, there's this statement, this aspiration, and then a kind of gulp, what have I done? What have I just said? So, as I say, we can have various responses to this, and none of them are wrong, by the way. It's just a case of exploring what they are and looking more deeply. So, one common response might be of a kind of cynicism, a kind of doubt, I suppose, or skepticism, that this is something that's possible. When we talk in terms of practicing for the good of all living beings, even liberating all beings, well, that's a lot of beings, isn't it? Maybe the numbers themselves just make us feel, well, that's not possible, that's impossible, that's just fanciful. So, there's that. Another response could be, okay, I'm willing to accept that and take that on board, but then we might feel kind of tense around it and anxious. So, okay, we've got to save all beings and liberate all beings, there's a kind of tension that could creep in. Another is that we accept it, and actually we don't feel the tension, but we can kind of float off a bit into fantasy land. I think if I have a tendency of any of these three, it's this one, so I'm telling myself here, but we can stray into a kind of fantasy realm where we feel that where this great Bodhisattva, where this great Buddhist superhero, and where going to save everybody and saving everybody all the time. So, like I say, none of those are wrong in themselves if they're an initial response, but maybe we can explore these different responses to the Bodhisattva ideal in turn. And that's what I'm going to try and do with the other two stories. I said we'll tell three stories, we'll hear three stories. So, looking really at how we might intelligently and seriously engage with this Bodhisattva ideal that's inherent in the story of this Buddha Ramitava. 'Cause I don't think any of those three kind of immediate responses do justice to the sublimity of the Bodhisattva ideal, and also it's subtlety. So, I think there is more exploration to do. So, the second story then that I want to tell is about the vow of Avalokiteshvara. So, Avalokiteshvara. So, there's an image of Avalokiteshvara in one of his forms to the left on the shrine there. And Avalokiteshvara is probably, you could say, if you can say this, the most famous, almost popular Bodhisattva in the Buddhist tradition. So, like the five Buddhas of the mandala that you've been exploring over the past weeks, Avalokiteshvara is also an archetypal form. So, he belongs to that archetypal dimension. He's not a human historical figure, but one of these archetypes that we see depicted in Buddhist art and iconography. And this story begins by saying that Arya Avalokiteshvara made a vow before his teacher, the Buddha Ramiitaba. So, as Buri Naga said, the different Buddhas have what are called families. And Amitavas is the lotus family. And Avalokiteshvara belongs to this family, if you like, he's a disciple of the Buddha Ramiitaba. And he makes this pranidana, this vow, before his teacher. And as before, I'm just going to read this to give you a flavor of what that sounds like. So, Arya Avalokiteshvara made this vow before his teacher Ramiitaba. May I be able to establish in emancipation all the living beings in the barbaric land of snow. That's Tibet. Where beings are so hard to discipline, and none of the Buddhas of the three times have stepped. May these beings be disciplined by me. May I be like father and mother to those who are now helpless. May I be their guide, leading them to freedom. May I burn the lamp to chase away the gloom of barbarism. In that country, may I extend for as long as possible the teachings of the Buddha. In hearing the name of the three jewels, may the many beings of the land of snow go for refuge and obtain rebirth as humans or gods. May they have the opportunity to enjoy the holy dharma. May I be able to mature and emancipate them. May that gloomy and barbaric country become bright like an island of precious jewels. So, that is the pranidana of Avalokiteshvara. And I think what we get a sense of there is the beauty. I mentioned beauty at the beginning of the talk. The beauty and the nobility of the Bodhisattva Val. And there's an interesting detail right at the beginning in that he's referred to as Arya of a Lokiteshvara. So, Arya is often translated as noble, but could also mean right, good, ideal. I asked Arya Dasa, you all will be familiar with Arya through Arya Dasa. Yesterday, how he translates, Arya, and he said noble or holy. Then he said, are you going to talk about me in your talk? And I said, well, sort of, but on an archetypal level. So, there we go, I've mentioned Arya Dasa in the talk. So, right, good, ideal, noble. So, we're hearing that Avalokiteshvara is of that nature. That's one of his or one of the ways of talking about his qualities. Then in the iconography, we get more of the qualities of Avalokiteshvara depicted. So, his pure white in colour. He's eternally youthful, so appears like a 16-year-old prince. Beautiful long hair covered in silks and jewels. So, we get a sense through that iconography and that description that this ideal is one that is beautiful. I think also the pranidana, the words that he speaks, also they reflect that beauty. So, may I be mother and father to the helpless? May I be a lamp chasing away the gloom? May the land become bright like an island of precious jewels? Just very, very beautiful poetic imagery. And I think in terms of the Bodhisattva ideal, so when we talk about practising for the benefit of all beings, I suspect that we all intuitively feel moved by that. Maybe there's an intuitive, positive response to that notion. So, all right, doubts might creep in, questions might creep in about its possibility. But I wonder if for most of us, if not all of us, there is a kind of intuitive response just to the beauty of the ideal. Just as when we look at the shrine, we can be kind of immediately struck by beauty. So, in that case, maybe we can put aside any cynicism or any tendency to dismiss this and just look again, just be drawn to that beauty or open to the possibility of being struck by that beauty. So, then the story goes on. And Avila Kateshvara adds another element to his pranidana, to his veil. So, he says, "Until I relieve all living beings, "may I never, even for a moment, "feel like giving up the purpose of others "for my own peace and happiness." So, he's been very specific. "If I should ever think of my own happiness, "may my head be cracked into 10 pieces, "like the Arzarka plant." I'm not sure what that is. Maybe a Verdonianus. "And may my body be split into a thousand pieces "like the petals of a lotus." So, he's been so specific, he's saying, "Even if a single thought crosses my mind "about my own peace and happiness, "may I be obliterated, basically. "May my head split, may my body break into a thousand pieces." After that, he then goes about putting this vow into practice. So, we're told in the story that he travels throughout the six realms of Sanghsara, travels throughout basically the whole of conditioned existence, communicating the Dharma, trying to relieve people of their sorrows, trying to bring people to happiness. He goes to the land of snow, he goes to Tibet, and when he looks out upon the people there, he just sees an ocean of fire and people burning in suffering. So, he promises that he's gonna do all he can to help them and to save them. And he goes into deep meditation for a long time, then he cultivates love and compassion, he goes throughout the land and he does all that he can to help them, and then again goes into meditation. And when he looks out upon the people, after all of this effort, he sees that he hasn't been able to help even 100th part of the people in the land there. He hasn't been able to help even 100th part of the population reach the bliss of liberation. And he gets seized by a bitter sorrow. And just for an instant, just for an instant that thought crosses his mind, what's the use? What's the use? I can't do anything for them. It would be better just to concentrate on my own happiness and my own peace. So that thought just crosses his mind. And of course, at that moment, his head cracked into 10 pieces, his body split into 1000 parts, like the petals of a lotus. So I think there are many layers of meaning to that. So I can try to talk about it now, but maybe it's something, an image that we can contemplate in meditation as much as through discussion. But I think there are specific things that can be drawn out that we can learn from this. So I think one point to note is that have a look at Tesh for a fails. So there is a falling short of his ideal. So despite the beauty of it, the nobility of it, despite all his efforts, when he looks, he hasn't made much of a difference. Seemingly, he hasn't made much of a difference. And that thought occurs to him, what's the use? So I think we can learn quite a lot just from that element of the story, which is just to put it quite starkly, we will fail. I don't mean that kind of absolutely, but we will fail. There's a kind of inevitability about it, that if we aspire to love others, be generous, help them in all different kinds of ways, reach out to people, even communicate the dharma, at some point and in some way, and it might be a small thing, it might be a bigger thing, but in some way, we'll make a bit of a hash of it. There will be times where we'll mess up, we'll make a mistake, we'll even feel like we've failed. It's such a high ideal, and we come to it with such a weight of conditioning, of habit, pulling us in different directions, but I think there is an inevitability that we will fall short at some point. So I think what this tells us is that we shouldn't take this story literally. As I said before, if we start to think, okay, I'm the super bodysapper, getting really anxious about it, or really puffed up and proud about it, we will fail, we will fall short of that, so we can't take it literally. The positive of that is we can relax a bit, we can take on this ideal, but actually just add a bit of a relaxed attitude towards it. I don't mean in terms of slacking off, but just holding it lightly and loosely, even playfully. So often the bodysapper, one of the qualities of the bodysapper is said to be Leela. So play, playfulness, kind of a lightness of touch. And I think it's also inviting us, this part of the story, to look in a different kind of way. So in fact, not even looking at it in terms of success and failure, in terms of liberating beings, but actually transcending our whole notion of what success might look like and what failure might look like. So after, this comes out more in what happens next. So after Ava Lucketesh for a split into a thousand pieces, he cries out in agony to the Buddha Amitabha. He cries out to his teacher. And Amitabha then appears to him in the sky, blesses him and transforms his head into 10 different faces. And his body also he blesses and transfigures his body into a thousand arms. And each of the hands of those arms has a wisdom eye in the palm. And on the crown of the 10th-faced head, Amitabha places his own head and then radiates boundless, inconceivable light. That's what's happening next. Out of those pieces, this glorious, thousand-armed, 11-headed figure emerges. So it's quite weird, isn't it? It's not the average image that we see. Now, I know when I first saw this image of the thousand-armed Ava Lucketesh for I was just confused. I wasn't sure what it was trying to depict and had to get quite close to actually work out what was going on. But I think this part of the story is really crucial. It can really help us to get an understanding of what's being communicated here. I think it makes us ask a particular question, a really important question, whenever we explore this area of the Bodhisattva ideal, it's the question, well, what is compassion? That's the question for us. What actually is compassion? 'Cause we hear it all the time, don't we? Particularly in the Buddhist tradition. We read books, we hear about compassion, we hear that that's what we should be trying to bring into the world, what we should aspire to. But what actually is it? I think there are lots of misunderstandings about what compassion is. So often, I think it can lead into a kind of sentimentality. I met up with Mark Chipp earlier, who, no doubt many of you know, and he said when he hears the word compassion, he thinks it's time to get the hankies out. And I quite liked his way of expressing it there, but there can be a tendency to think of compassion in kind of sentimental terms. So I think we need to avoid that. Or we can think of compassion in terms of do gooding and kind of dispensing something to the poor people who need it. So we need to kind of avoid those superficial ways of looking at compassion. So what is it then? If it's not those things, what is compassion? I think there's an excellent answer to that question in one of Bante's poems. So Sander hatched his poems, the founder of our order of movement. So in the poem "The Unseen Flower," he essentially gives us a very poetic definition of what compassion might be. So I'll read you the poem. Compassion is far more than emotion. It's something that springs up in the emptiness, which is when you yourself are not there. So that you do not know anything about it. Nobody in fact knows anything about it. If they knew it, it would not be compassion. But they can only smell the scent of the unseen flower that blooms in the heart of the void. I'm gonna read that again because I like it. Compassion is far more than emotion. It's something that springs up in the emptiness, which is when you yourself are not there. So that you do not know anything about it. Nobody in fact knows anything about it. If they knew it, it would not be compassion. But they can only smell the scent of the unseen flower that blooms in the heart of the void. So a compassion then, the poem seems to be communicating to us. Ultimately, it's a mystery. Compassion is a mystery. Nobody knows anything about it. If they knew it, then it wouldn't be compassion. So that is something, isn't it, to say? I think in a sense, it's saying, actually, it's nothing to do with us. It's much bigger than us. It's much greater than us. That's the sense you get from the poem. It's much greater than us. It blooms in the heart of the void. That's another way of saying it blooms in the heart of reality. Compassion streams out of the depths of reality itself. Yeah, and that reality being, as we know through our study of the Buddhist tradition, reality is said to be ineffable, indescribable, indefinable. That's where compassion ultimately comes from. So it comes from a reality that's beyond all words, beyond all concepts, beyond all sense of, of I, of me, of mine, beyond all sense of a self and an other. Compassion flows out of that kind of vision of things, that insight into the nature of reality. That's why you'll often find compassion and wisdom always mentioned together. So if there's no wisdom there, if there's no insight into the true nature of things, then it can't be compassion. And actually vice versa. Without compassion, there's no wisdom. So I think this is what Amitabha symbolizes in this story. So it's his wisdom, it's his light, it's his love. If you like, Amitabha is the unseen flower in this story whose scent comes down in perfumes, the broken pieces of other locatesphora, and then flows through the reconstructed thousand armed, 11-headed, other locatesphora. So yeah, compassion then has something much bigger and greater than us, symbolized in this form of the thousand armed avallocatesphora, something more than us as an individual, but also something more than us collectively. I think this is an important point too. Often we talk about the thousand armed avallocatesphora as a symbol for spiritual community. So Sangarach to Bante, he talked in those terms. So said that the thousand armed avallocatesphora, that the order was a manifestation of the thousand armed avallocatesphora. That was a symbol for the order, a myth for the whole order and movement. So yes, we are part of something much bigger and more effective. We can be one of the hands of avallocatesphora. It's a very helpful image, very helpful metaphor, I think, for what we're trying to do. It's not about just me, it's about all of us here and the way we live and the way we practice. But don't forget that it's more than that too. So it's not just about quantity. It's not just about winning converts and having the biggest group of people that we can. There has to be a particular quality amongst us. And that is the quality of coming from something beyond the sum of our parts, if you see what I mean. Okay, so I think if we explore the story in that way, look at the story in that way. We can avoid those extremes. I mentioned a lot of feeling anxious about trying to be of benefit to others or falling into pride and being puffed up about how great we are in terms of working for the good of others. In a sense, if we slip into those things, which we will do, because as I said, inevitably we'll fail, what we do is we block the light of Amitabha to put it poetically when our task is to allow that light to shine. Okay. So hopefully that story, that second story, that helps us to see how the Bodhisattva ideal can be of inspiration to us, can be lived out without falling into wrong views about it. So so much for the story of Avala Kateshvira. I wanted to tell a third story. When I was preparing the talk, I realized that a third story is necessary because even the story of Avala Kateshvira as inspiring as it is, as powerful as those images and symbols are and the archetypes are, it can still feel a little bit distant to us. It's still about pure white figures with a thousand arms and here I am in a brown jumper with two arms. You know, it's hard, I can relate to it, but it's hard to see the kind of concrete, practical way in which I can give expression to the content of the story. So I wanted to tell a third story that's definitely historical, historical and human and practical. And lots of you will know this story. It's a popular sutter from the Pali canon and it's the story of kiss or go to me. So kiss or go to me was a woman living at the time of the Buddha and her name apparently means something like skinny, which wasn't a compliment in ancient India, skinny or scrawny. So definitely kiss or go to me, not regarded as being beautiful or in any way special. Despite that kiss or go to me, married and gave birth to a son and this son was said to be beautiful. So she gave birth to a beautiful boy and back in ancient India, having a son giving birth to a son was deemed something fantastic or something that did give you some kind of status. She became special in the sense that she was the mother of a beautiful son. But then tragedy struck quite soon in kiss or go to me's life. So as the young boy was out playing, he tragically died, accidentally died. And kiss or go to me was just so stunned, so shocked by this. As you can imagine that she couldn't accept the reality of the death of the boy. And she picked up the corpse and carried around this corpse of her dead son. And she would just ask people, does anyone have any medicine for my son? And eventually somebody taking pity on her, told her to go and see the Buddha who was staying nearby. And again, she asks the Buddha, I've heard that you're a holy man. Can you give me something? Can you give me some medicine for my son? And what the Buddha says is quite surprising. He says, I can help you find me a mustard seed from a house where nobody has died. So kiss or go to me thinks, well, great, something's happening. There is a way to remedy this tragedy. So off she goes into the village and knocks on the first door of the first house, asks if there's a mustard seed, the person says yes. Then asks, but is this a house where nobody has died? And the person says no, the living here are few, but the dead are many. The living are few, but the dead are many. I do not remind us of our grief. So kiss or go to me goes on to the next house, knocks on the door. And the same thing happens. The house is one in which people have died. So she goes to the third house and the fourth house and so on and so on, looking for this special magic mustard seed. Until eventually she realizes that she's not going to find it. She realizes that even if she goes to every house in the village, she will not find a mustard seed from a house where nobody has died. She's struck by or sees the truth of impermanence. And seeing this, she can finally accept the death of her own son. And so she takes the body of the son to the channel ground and then after that goes back to the Buddha and the Buddha asks her, did you find the mustard seed? And she says the story of the mustard seed is done. And at that point, she receives another teaching from the Buddha and decides to become one of his disciples. So she is said to very shortly gain stream entry. So irreversible insight into reality becomes a follower of the Buddha at home, this wandering follower of the Buddha. And again, very shortly gains enlightened. So just very briefly now, what does this story communicate to us about everything else I've said? So what does it communicate to us about the Bodhisattva ideal, live in the spiritual life of the benefit of all others? How does it relate to our little Kiteshva? How does it relate to Amitabha? I think we get two important impressions. So the first is what the Bodhisattva ideal looks like perfected. So we see that in the person here of the Buddha. So how he responds to Kisugo to me, it's really quite incredible, isn't it? I was speaking to somebody recently and they said, when they first heard the story, they thought the Buddha was going to perform a miracle and the heart sank. They thought that the Buddha was going to revive the dead son or something like that, but he doesn't, what he does is quite incredibly. He doesn't dismiss her as being mad like everybody else was doing. He doesn't indulge in the delusion. He gives her exactly what she needs. He really sees her and he responds to her so skillfully by giving her what she needs, which is helping her to see the reality of the situation. So I think we've got a supreme example here, as I said before, how compassion flows out of wisdom? How the two are conjoined? So the Buddha with his wisdom is able to have that kind of response. Incidentally, you could say this is Amitabha's wisdom. So this is the wisdom of the particular really seeing Kissego to me and what her situation is, not just doing the stock response that might have worked in the past, but actually seeing exactly what's needed and giving it. I think the second impression we get, the second image we get is what the Bodhisattva idea looks like in process, so in its development. And we see that in the person of Kissego to me here and her deepening understanding, her witnessing of others and how that gets rise to altruism. So we could say that whereas Avalokiteshva breaks into 1,000 pieces, that's a poetic image, breaks into 1,000 pieces like the petals of a lotus, Kissego to me in a sense breaks into 1,000 lives. She sees from another's perspective time and time again, it's almost like, to my mind anyway, there's two images seen too much. So Kissego to me splits into 1,000 other lives in the failure to get medicine for her dead son, that she's still attached to. She is seeing others, is breaking into the lives of others, relating to others, connecting with them, empathizing with them. You can imagine it, can't you, just going house after house, hearing the stories about other people's loss, puts one's own loss into perspective. So she's going out to others, into the lives of others and that obviously has a profound effect on her. I think this process of developing and the developing connection, seeing the lives of others, it's so important in the Buddhist life. I've got a quote here from Shelly that Bante quotes in the ten pillars about the ten precepts. So Shelly said, "The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful, which exists in thought, action or person, not our own. A man to be greatly good must imagine intensively and comprehensively. He must put himself in the place of another and of many others, the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own." So we're going out of oneself, into the lives of others and it seems like that's what's happened four kiss a go to me. We get this in Shanti Deva's, well, the great eighth century Indian Buddhist monk who talks about how just as we protect the hands and limbs because they're part of a single body. So also we should protect others because they're part of the same universe. That's his logic. So we're going out with ourselves and our own concerns and into the lives of others. So it gives us a real clue of how to actually practice the Bodhisattva ideal, how to put an altruistic aspiration into effect. The first preset, practicing deeds of living kindness, cultivating meta through meditation, are all the things that we do regularly. Last thing to mention about this story, I think it's striking as well, how after having done that, kiss a go to me then can really see the Buddha. So she goes back to the Buddha and sees what he offers, not just in terms of his teaching. It's not a transaction, but he embodies something that she sees as beautiful, that she sees as a possibility for herself. So she aspires to become like him and does become like him. So perhaps we can say that like Avalokiteshvara, she places the Buddha on her head, as it were, takes the Buddha as her teacher and that has a profound effect on her. And a reminder again that love for others is taken to its fullest, fulfilled in all its potential, is far more than in emotion, just to go back to Bante's poem, far more than in emotion. It's more than just an individual feeling of compassion. It's what springs up in the emptiness when we're not there. It's what springs up when we're spread very much so into the lives of others. When we've dropped our self-consciousness, our self-referencing, we've stopped even distinguishing between self and other. We're just fully identifying with others. And what flows through us then is a great mystery, the greatest mystery embodied in the person of the Buddha. Or poetically speaking, it's the light of the Buddha, the light of Amitabha, that boundless, inconceivable light. Okay, so there are the three stories that I wanted to tell this evening. The story of Amitabha and Sakavati, the vow of Amitabha Kiteshvara, and the story of Kisako to me. And I said at the beginning that the first story is specifically about Amitabha. I think actually all of the stories in a sense are about Amitabha. Inasmuch that Amitabha is a symbol of ultimate reality, is a symbol of enlightenment and of the enlightened mind. All the stories show that that reality, whether it's described in terms of Sakavati, whether it's described in terms of the thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara or the story of the Buddha Shakimuni and Kisako to me, that reality is the same in all those stories. And it's present, it's here, it's here and now, waiting to be manifested, waiting to be realized by us. And in order to discern it, these stories tell us that we have to live in a particular way. So we have to live like Bodhisattvas. At least we have to aspire to live like Bodhisattvas. In our own language, we're going for refuge, must develop an altruistic dimension. So free of cynicism, free of anxiety, free of self-conceit and pride, and has this identification with all others. And I think if we can do that, if we can make the aspiration, practice the Bodhisattva ideal in this way, free of those things that undermine us, that can carry us beyond what we are now, individually and collectively. We'll be playing our part, I think, in perfuming the world with the scent of the unseen flower. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhastaudio.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
