It’s a cool Saturday morning here in Nonthaburi where I live. I would like now to present a chant of the long mantra of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Here is the whole text of the chant in Sanskrit:
Namo ratnatryaye namah aryajnana sagar vairocana vyuharajaya tathagatayah arhate samyaksambuddhayah;
namah sarva tathagatebhyah arhatebhyah samyaksambuddhebhyah;
namah arya avaoliketshvaraya bodhisattvayah mahasattvayah mahakarunikakayah;
tadyatha: om dhara dhara dhiri dhiri dhuru dhuru itiye vitiye cale cale pracale pracale kusume kusumvaraye ili mili cetam jvalam apnaye svaha.
The text is chanted in the style of Chinese music. May all sentient beings attain the status of Avalokiteshvara, one who is full of great compassion!
Those of you who attended the conference on “Embracing Society with Love and Compassion” last weekend and would like to watch the video about the trip to Tibet last July by Kris and others can watch it now online by going to Khun Hiab’s post here.
Kunga Sangbo Rinpoche came to the Foundation House on Ladprao Road yesterday evening to give a talk on “Meditation on Love and Compassion”. But before that he asked everybody who attended to try to get rid of their anger for a specific period of time. He said that he was very concerned with people’s getting angry because that’s a sure way of destroying all the positive merits one has accumulated through the eons. He asked each of us to give him a promise not to get angry for one month, one year, or for the rest of our lives. Well, I did give him a kind of promise for the rest of my life, but it is certainly likely that there will be some time I will get angry. If this happens, he suggested that we pray the one-hundred syllable mantra of Vajrasattva to purify the negative karma.
Then he went on to the main teaching on love and compassion. He said that since our parents are so kind to us, we feel naturally inclined to love them and to care for them. In fact it is our duties to care for them in return for their infinite love that resulted in our having this bodily form at the present moment, form which alone enables us to attain Enlightenment. Then he asked us to consider the other sentient beings. Since samsara is does not have any beginning, there will be times where any random sentient being was our mother (or father, or … ) sometime in the past. So any sentient being used to be our mother before. Thus, since we need to take care of our mother in this life, we also need to take care of that sentient being who used to be our mother too. And since every being used to be our mother, we then need to take care of *all* beings. This is called the universal attitude, or bodhicitta.
So toward the end he gave us a teaching on how to do the meditation. First we recite the prayer for taking the Teacher and the Triple Gems for refuge. Then we take up the correct posture for meditating (sitting cross-legged, straight back, and so on). Then we visualize our father and mother very vividly. We fully appreciate their love and kindness toward us. We hold them very clearly in front of us. We are fully aware of our need to pay them back with gratitude. Then we expand the attitude to all the sentient beings who used to be our parents in the past too.
In the practice of generating compassion toward sentient beings, Deshung Rinpoche teaches that we need to distinguish among three kinds of compassion. in fact they all go with one another and to focus on only one or two would not be complete.
The context is meditation on the need for compassion and on how to generate compassion. This is the beginning and end point of Mahayana Buddhism and in fact all Buddhism, because without compassion it becomes very difficult to go any further on the path of a practitioner.
As is perhaps well known, compassion, or karuna in Sanskrit, is the desire to rid sentient beings of their sufferings. We feel compassion when, for example, we perceive a suffering being and feel the same pain as it does and wishes to help free it from the suffering. If we can do it, certainly we will do it, such as when we see an insect being drowned or other situations. However, the most effective way of all is to generate a thought, a sincere wish out of the bottom of your heart, so that not only some beings here and there, but ALL beings there are in the six realms, be free from suffering. This is the beginning of the meditation on compassion.
Now we are entering into the three kinds of compassion mentioned earlier. The first kind is the compassion that naturally arises when you perceive the beings who suffer. There are so many beings around; the text says that they fill the entire space, and all of them do suffer. Now no one wants to suffer; everyone, every sentient being wants to be happy. We also want to be happy and don’t want to suffer. We keep on thinking of these beings and feeling the same feeling that they are having. We recognize their sufferings.
Now the second stage of compassion occurs when we realize that the reason why these beings do suffer is their illusory belief that there exists a self. Each being suffers because of this erroneous belief. It is the root cause of all sufferings in samsara. We survey all the suffering beings, and all of them do suffer because of this belief. How good it would be then for these beings to be free from the shackle of this belief!
So we contemplate during this stage on the root cause of suffering, which is the illusory belief that there is an existing, enduring self, and keep on doing this until this stage of compassion becomes our nature to the very bones. Now we enter the third stage of compassion, which Deshung Rinpoche calls “objectless compassion.” This is the awareness and understanding that in the ultimate reality there are no beings, no suffering, no meditator, nothing to be compassionate to. Beings do not realize this, instead they think that things have their inherent characteristics and their independent beings; that is why they continue to suffer in samsara. We meditate on this too.
Among all the practices in Buddhism, meditation on compassion is among the most powerful. This is a sure path toward true realization of non-self and emptiness. Emptiness and compassion do go with each other and cannot miss each other. You have genuine compassion when you realize emptiness, and you do appreciate and realize emptiness when you have the three stages of compassion described here.
Last night Phakchok Rinpoche delivered a very clear lecture on “The Great I”. The key message was that it is our attachment to the ego that is the root cause of sufferings and wanderings in samsara. This is the heart of the Buddhist teaching, and Rinpoche delivered the talk in such a lively and forceful way that the message was pushed to the hearts and minds of the more than 300 people who gathered in the ballroom of the Tawana Hotel.
The event was one of the series of the Dharma events organized by the Tawana Hotel itself. I saw a lot of people who must have been coming on a regular basis, and my hunch was confirmed when it was announced that the event last night was the 39th the series of Dharma talk practice sessions that have taken place here. Rinpoche’s talk was preceded by a prayer and meditation session led by Phra Rajapatiphanmuni from Wat Prayuravongse. There is a close relationship between Wat Prayoon and the Tawana Hotel as both are very close to the Bunnag family.
After the prayer and the meditation, Rinpoche went up on stage to deliver the lecture. He asked us to consider the sufferings that we all have. It could be jealousy, hatred, anger, depression, anxiety, whatever, but since there was an answer from the audience that anger mattered for them most Rinpoche focused on it. He asked us not to repress anger; that would only make us more susceptible to serious diseases, he said. Repressing anger does not make it go away; it merely increases the pressure. But to let it all out every time is not advisable either, because if you do that too often then it becomes an ingrained habit so you always overtly express anger every time, and then it could well become destructive.
The key is to let it happen and we then examine the anger or other negative emotions as they arise. We see how it stay for a while and then naturally we see them subside. Anger is but part of the overall nature of things. It arises; it stays and it goes. During the meditation we need to be aware of the goal of what we are doing the meditation for, which is to eliminate causes of sufferings. We could not eliminate everything at first, but we can chip away at it, bit by bit. We could watch the anger and see it as waves on a sea, or clouds in the sky. The key point is that we neither embrace the anger nor reject it. But we merely look at it as it happens. This sounds easy, but to some it may sound difficult. At least you have to try, said Rinpoche.
So the talk went on for about an hour. The audience were thrilled. I was fortunate to be a part, so did Krisadawan, as one of the interpreters of the talk. More will follow.
When my father died a little more than three years ago, I translated the Medicine Buddha Sutra in order to dedicate the merit to him. He was a medical doctor and a professor at Chula and other universities and had devoted all his life for the benefits of others, especially his students. He started out as a neurologist but then after a while became really interested in medical education and medical humanities and ethics. So we had quite a lot in common and we usually discussed together how to improve the quality of education not only medical students but other students as well. I remember that he sometimes asked me all of a sudden: How to teach students so that they know how to think? Well, I was kind of having nothing to say to that. I answered something like — you have to let the students express themselves and not feeding information all the time. He seemed to like that.
When my family was preparing for the funeral, I thought the Medicine Buddha Sutra would be an appropriate gift for those who came to his funeral. This is Thai custom. When you come to a funeral, especially during the cremation, it is customary to give small presents, which are usually Dharma books. This is to remind those who are living that they will one day die too so they had better start studying and practicing the Dharma. Since my father was a professor of medicine, he was both a doctor and a teacher. So the Medicine Buddha Sutra was a very appropriate text to give as present. At that time Krisadawan and I had already established the Thousand Stars Foundation, and we agreed that the Foundation should publish this Sutra, translated into Thai, as a way of making merit for him and for all sentient beings.
The key message of the Medicine Buddha Sutra is that there is a Buddha who lives in a Buddha-field (Bob Thurman prefers to call this a “Buddhaverse” ) in the east. His name is “Bhaisajyaguru Vaiduryaprabha.” This means “The Teacher of Medicine, Whose Light is that of Lapis Lazuli.” When he was still a bodhisattva, he made twelve vows that he was intent on realizing when he achieved Buddhahood. One of these vows is that he will heal all those who are suffering from all kinds of illnesses and establish them in the path to eventual Buddhahood.
This is why he is called the Medicine Buddha. He specializes in curing illnesses. These are not merely physical and mental illnesses, but he also cures “spiritual illness,” which is an illness that happens when one undergoes sufferings and wanders around in samsara as a result.
It is mentioned in the Sutra that one who recites the name of the Medicine Buddha intently and with devotion and single-pointedness of mind will never be reborn in the lower realm, he or she will achieve all the results and will eventually achieve Liberation and Buddhahood. An explanation of how this is possible is that when you recite the mantra, your mind will be automatically be focused and free from all distracting thoughts. So reciting the mantra is one way of doing meditation. And if you recite the mantra and visualize Medicine Buddha with the sincere intention to liberate all beings out of samsara, then the meditation will be really powerful. The Sutra mentions that doing this will result in better health and freedom from illnesses.
I just watched a video where Matthieu Ricard was talking about all these beneficial results of meditation and compassion. Here is it:
In the video (it is quite long, almost an hour), Ricard, who is a monk who has an extensive scientific background, talked about the beneficial aspects of meditation, especially meditation on compassion and loving kindness. He talks about the works being done, among others, by Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at University of Wisconsin who has achieved world wide fame through his groundbreaking work on the physiological effects on the brain of meditation. Basically the message is that meditation is very good to your health.
But that has been the message of the Medicine Buddha Sutra all along. The Sutra tells us that one who recites the name of Medicine Buddha or his mantra (see my earlier post) will achieve beneficial results one of which is better health and freedom from illnesses. Moreover, one who recites the mantra while visualizes that Medicine Buddha stays inside himself and send out rays of loving kindness and compassion to all sentient beings will achieve the results more effectively.
This is because the mind is meditating and is staying focused and single pointed when it is reciting the mantra and visualizing. The mind is not just wandering around aimlessly as it tends to do in our everyday’s life. According to the recent studies, meditation proves to be very beneficial to health, and the Medicine Buddha Sutra also tells us that the meditating mind focusing on Medicine Buddha will be free from illnesses too.
It is mentioned in the Sutra that Medicine Buddha, when he was a bodhisattva, made twelve vows that he was intent on realizing once he achieved the incomparable Buddhahood. One of the vows was that he would eliminate all kinds of illnesses and diseases from each and every sentient being. So we can imagine that the blessings flow from Medicine Buddha himself to us who are doing to the meditation. The most important thing is that we need to keep in mind that we are doing all this not for our own benefits alone, but so that we will achieve the status of a Buddha since only a Buddha is capable of helping all sentient beings in the world. But the irony is that the more we do things for others, the more benefits we get for ourselves
I hope that by producing another Thai version of the Medicine Buddha Sutra (in fact the text has been translated into Thai before) the work will inspire readers to come to realize what is actually there in the Buddha’s original teachings all along — the mind and the body are intimately interconnected, and it is indeed the mind who is the boss, the leader. So my father’s death kind of became an occasion for a contribution to this realization.
Yesterday I listened to a podcast by Robert Thurman. He talked about a Sutra where the Buddha turned himself into a blue figure. He was not turning himself into Medicine Buddha, whose body is also blue. But he is about to perform a miracle. What he did was to send out very bright light rays from his urna, which is a tuft of hair between his eyebrows. The light was sent to all corners of the universe. Everyone was touched by the light, and when that happened, they were suddenly able to see all their past and future lives in all their entirety. Suddenly everybody could see who they were in their immediate past life and in all the lives in the past. They could also see what they will become in the future, they can see all their future lives. What is amazing is that all the sentient beings could see their future lives all the way to their eventual becoming Buddhas.
Thurman said that everyone could then see themselves having the life of a Buddha. They will see that they will be born a prince, living a protected life by a doting father, seeing the four signs of birth, sickness, old age and death, heading for the renunciate’s life and attaining Buddhahood.
Listening to Thurman’s account of the Sutra (I happened to forget the name of the Sutra, but it is not too hard to track it down), I was struck by the power of it. If the Buddha could open our eyes and let us see all our past and future lives, what would happen? If I were able to see all my lives, what would I do? What would I become?
Let us think about it. Thurman said that the reason why most of us are not able to see our past lives is because they are too traumatic. Each one of us used to be every kind of sentient being in the universe before taking on our present lives. The Buddha said that if all the bones of all the animals and beings that used to be us were to be piled up, its height would exceed that of Mount Sumeru. Or if all the tears have have been shed because of the immense sufferings that the beings that we used to be were poured down, the entire world would then be flooded deeply. This is how many and how countless our past lives are. We would then see that we used to be eaten by lions countless times, chased down by wolves countless times, suffering hunger as hungry ghosts countless times, being burned in hell countless times, enjoying the pleasures of the heavens countless times, suffeing the intense angst of no longer able to enjoy these pleasures countless times, and so on and on. THere does not seem to be an end to it. In the future the same fate will happen to us again, and again, and again, until in the long while we attain Buddhahood.
So this is the point of the Sutra. On the one hand, it shocks us to see all our past and future lives. So we don’t need to have trained ourselves so that we could actually see them, Due to the power of the Buddha in the Sutra, we can see them now. In fact this is not so hard as it might look. Since all of samsara is beginningless, there is no being at all that we did not use to be. Pick one being, an insect perhaps, it is we that used to be that particular insect. So the insect in a real sense is us. Thus, all beings in samsara are all connected to one another. Every being then used to be our mother, our father, our friends, our enemies, our colleagues, our partners, etc. etc. in the countless number of revolving lives in samsara.
So what is the point of all this? The catch is that the Buddha let us see that there is the end to the story. Everyone of us will one day become a Buddha. This is reality. Why? Because sooner or later we will become so bored with this unending cycle. We will see with our own very eyes how pointless the whole thing is. We will want to find a way out. That is, we will become Buddhas.
Furthermore, seeing all our past and future lives lets us realize that our own sense of individual self is a mere chimera. It is purely illusory. Time itself is also illusory. The sense that there is our *self* that is separated from all others is also illusory. All of us used to be a woman, a man, a grandmother, a husband, all kinds of animals, all kinds of pretas, all kinds of hell beings, all kinds of gods, all kinds of goddesses, and so forth. So what we think of as our *self* is only what appears if we hold on to the sense that there is something to hold on to, that this particular life is something different, something unique among all others. But that is totally a false conception. The reason why all beings are still wandering around in the endless cycle of samsara is that they do not see this Truth. Seeing all this, an acute sense of compassion is aroused in the Bodhisattva. He or she sees the pointlessness of all this and is resolved to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all beings.
This is where I post my thoughts, which are usually about Buddhism. I also post occasional pieces about politics and other things. As for Buddhism, it is mainly philosophical and concerns more the Mahayana tradition.
) in the east. His name is “Bhaisajyaguru Vaiduryaprabha.” This means “The Teacher of Medicine, Whose Light is that of Lapis Lazuli.” When he was still a bodhisattva, he made twelve vows that he was intent on realizing when he achieved Buddhahood. One of these vows is that he will heal all those who are suffering from all kinds of illnesses and establish them in the path to eventual Buddhahood.
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