Altruistic Action Is the Beginning of Breaking Ego-Clinging

(You must break ego-clinging to truly return to emptiness. Once you cling to appearances, my problems, my marriage… the problems never end.)

Yes, you keep transmigrating, lifetime after lifetime; your problems can never all be solved. As long as there is a self, the problems are there and can never be solved.

How do you break ego-clinging? From the highest view in Buddhism, ego-clinging is inherently illusory. But recognizing ego-clinging as illusory is very difficult, because this self is illusory. Buddhism says there is no self, you know. All your sense of self is established in relation to external circumstances.

Your self is illusory from the outset, so you have to build it by relying on all kinds of sensations, all kinds of joys and sorrows, and all kinds of cognitions from the outside world, you know. Yet many of your cognitions are mistaken perceptions, so the self you build is mistaken—those selves of yours.

How do you break ego-clinging? From the highest perspective, it is illusory, but you still cannot treat it as illusory, because sensations, habitual tendencies, desires, and greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, and doubt are pulling you along. This pull makes you feel that you are an individual.

In the end, there are many methods to help you break free from this realm of desire—for example, meditative concentration and the Bodhisattva Path. In particular, the Bodhisattva Path has the Six Paramitas. The Buddha has given you six tools: giving, upholding the precepts, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom—that is, the six paramitas—which let you use these six tools to free yourself from the illusion of self. These are the six tools of the Mahayana Path; relying on these six tools, you free yourself from this illusion of self.

Ultimately, you gradually and fully realize that whether it is called self, non-self, Buddha, Tathagata, the Way, self-nature, or mind—whatever you call it—it is just a name. Yet you are complete, everywhere, containing everything.

The source of all your problems is your relationship with this world—with other people. It is a problem between people, isn’t it? You cannot have a problem with an object; objects are just things circulating among people, passed back and forth. So it is a problem between people.

But you will discover that, in the end, you are everything, everyone is you, and you have no problems. All things, down to a mote of dust, are contained in the wholeness of emptiness. In the end, it does not matter whether it is called emptiness, self, or Buddha; it is just a name.

Ultimately, you realize that you are everywhere, that everything is complete in you, and that everything is you. By breaking through this self, you become free from sensations, from desires, and from the small self; finally, you recognize the fullness of everything.

Finally, when you have a “complete everything,” the last thing you must break is an empty self: you think there is a self, that you are everything—this is emptiness. But at that point the self is still there. You think you are formless and without appearances, yet you contain the whole universe; this is the realm of Mara.

Because you contain everything and everything is born from you, this is Brahma Heaven—or whatever it is called. If it is sometimes evil, it is the realm of Mara. Everything appears within the luminosity of your Dharma-nature. This is an empty self: an empty self that is empty and contains everything. In the end, this empty self must be broken.

When you contain everything, you must see Buddha-nature in everything—you must see that everything is exactly like you—then you can be free from this empty self. In the end, you see that everything you contain, all the things you bring forth, are originally all Buddhas.

If you think you are very, very vast, and you contain everything, then there is still a you who gives birth to all things; there is still Brahma Heaven. Many religions attain this point but cannot go beyond it. They are already formless and without appearances, like God, who has given birth to everything.

At that point, you know, when cultivation reaches this stage, you are formless and without appearances; you are no longer a small self. You are formless and without appearances, yet in your state of cultivation and realization you are a field of light, like empty space, with everything appearing within your empty space.

But in the end, you must let go of this empty self. You must see that every thing you bring forth is originally equal to you; you must be free from this empty self. In Buddhism, this counts as realizing emptiness, you know.

This emptiness then returns and manifests in this world, in the human realm. This all-pervading emptiness ultimately has to return, back to ordinary life and back to the human realm, because you are in the human realm.

In this realm, when you manifest, you manifest without clinging to appearances and without attachment. Outwardly, perhaps, you are no different from anyone else, but in your nature of mind you are completely different. You have gained freedom; existence and nonexistence, gain and loss—you see all these things completely clearly. This is the whole process of breaking ego-clinging.

In Buddhism, the final return is the Chan School; the path is Chan. But there is no sect here—you do not need to bind yourself to any sect. The whole process of breaking the self happens layer by layer.

First, step out of the sensations of self. Because you cannot understand the illusory nature of the self, you are trapped and believe that there is a self. So first step out of your sensations and your desires. What you want and do not want, what you choose and reject, what you want and do not want anymore—these are all expressions of the self. Restrain yourself within these choices, and then cultivate the Bodhisattva Path.

Why is the Bodhisattva Path needed? The first is giving. Giving means benefiting others; it means giving away what you like and what you possess. The path of giving comes first, because altruistic action is the beginning of breaking ego-clinging.

All the problems of this life are caused by “I” and “mine,” by the existence of a self and what belongs to me. So benefit others—benefit others first. The Bodhisattva Path means benefiting others with every thought; whenever a thought arises, first consider the matter from the other person’s standpoint. Benefit others first, first understand their difficulties, and so on. Benefit others first, without considering yourself.

This is not asking you to suffer. It is because altruistic action gradually lets you learn to cultivate and realize, to break through your self and ego-clinging. Altruistic action is the beginning of breaking ego-clinging; your attachment breaks open.

Thus there are giving, upholding the precepts, and patience. At first it is still difficult. When people say this or that about you, it still feels difficult. But once you begin practicing patience, and you know that the self is illusory, then under this view it is no longer really patience. Gradually, there is no person to endure and no thing to endure; everything is empty. The one enduring is empty, the one insulting you is empty, and the matter itself is empty. In Buddhism this is called the emptiness of the three wheels.

Actually, at the beginning of cultivation, the hardest thing to break is the self. The hardest things are your sensations, desires, and habitual tendencies, because you are trapped tightly within them.

At first it is not a matter of “What is the Buddha’s view?” The Buddha continually tells you about the Buddha’s wisdom and the Buddha’s scriptures. We study the Sutras and enter through theory because your habitual tendencies and attachments cannot be cut off all at once. But through the Buddha’s wisdom, you know that even when they have not been completely cut off, you can already move forward. It can guide you, because it has a beacon; you know that this way is right.

Your habitual tendencies and desires may not yet be exhausted, but you can already move forward. Otherwise, trapped in the desires and habitual tendencies of the self, you would not know where the road was.

The Buddha has also told you that it is illusory. If we believe that there is a self there, a self at the level of the consciousness-body, we can never finish breaking it, because the self actually contains everything. How could you break all appearances, all the appearances of the universe?

The Buddha also tells you that all appearances are empty appearances, all appearances are illusory. You are fighting empty space, you know. Breaking the self is fighting empty space; you will have no strength. If you say you are fighting yourself, you are fighting empty space. Since there is nothing there, you cannot exert any force, you know.

So the more you try to break it, the more painful it gets: it feels as though something is battling you every day and you are killing yourself. The Buddha is not asking you to do this; he is asking you to benefit others, which is how you break your self. You are not supposed to sit there fighting yourself every day; you benefit others. This is the Bodhisattva Path.

The Buddha said that there is no one… Every person, as long as they believe in the Dharma, abide in the Bodhisattva Path, and practice according to the Bodhisattva Path—there is no one who cannot become a Buddha. These six are simply their tools: the Six Paramitas.

The Buddha has already summarized it for you, and summarized it better than we could. For thousands of years, he has summarized it as the Six Paramitas. Follow these Six Paramitas, hold on to these tools, and you will return. It is that simple. It is not so difficult. You do not need to struggle endlessly over concepts; just do it.

When practicing the giving paramita, giving means giving away everything you like, when others need it. It does not mean that you have to go bankrupt and give away everything you have.

Mahayana teachings are about the mind: have you let go of greed for material desires, and greed for fame, gain, and material desires? Have you let go of these attachments in your mind? If you have let go, then you can—these things do not matter.

It is not about how much money you give. If you still place great value on money, you have not let go, so your giving is not enough. Suppose you give ten million, but still think that money is truly the best thing in the world, and money is still what you love most: your giving will never be enough; you have not fulfilled it.

Or if the thing you give still occupies a very important place in your mind, your giving paramita has not been fulfilled. It has merely become charity in the human world, you know. You give something, which amounts to a charitable act; you do it and offer it away, but you still love it and like it very much. Then that thing merely accumulates good karmic results for you; it cannot let you realize emptiness.

All appearances are empty. Money, fame, gain—all of it—is merely a tool, a tool for you to survive in this world. There is nothing that, deep in your heart, you absolutely must care about, cling to, or remain attached to; this is what it means to realize emptiness. Then perhaps giving a little is enough.

For the benefit of others, you can let go of things of your body and mind; you can even attain awakening through direct experience, restraining and overcoming your own desires and habitual tendencies. This too is the giving paramita. Give away your habitual tendencies: “I really want to play, but for the sake of accomplishing…” In fact, giving ultimately means giving to yourself, returning to yourself, returning as merit.

Upholding the precepts is very simple. The second is upholding the precepts. At the very least, everyone knows the Five Precepts. There are many precepts in Buddhism; the most fundamental are the Five Precepts you receive when you take refuge: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and alcohol—do not kill living beings.

Not killing living beings does not mean being vegetarian. In Mahayana teachings, not killing does not mean eating vegetarian food. “I recite the Buddha’s name and eat vegetarian food. When I see sheep and chickens being killed outside, tears stream down my face—this is not killing.” No, it is not.

If you have hatred, if you have jealousy, you have a killing mind. For example, if you are jealous because your husband has become involved with someone else, you wish that the lover would die; the killing mind arises at once. When you have jealousy and hatred, the killing mind lies dormant there. It is not that eating vegetarian food makes that killing mind disappear. The Mahayana Path speaks of the nature of mind; this is the precept against killing. Once that killing mind arises and you wish that person would die, you have already broken the precept against killing in your mind.

Stealing—the stealing mind remains. Everyone wants to possess everything in this world that they like. Wanting to possess it—this is the stealing mind. It is not merely taking other people’s things; this is what Mahayana teachings mean.

If you take other people’s things or steal something, of course that is also stealing; you cannot say it is not. You have also violated the precept against stealing. But the most important thing is that inwardly you want to possess everything you like: whatever you love and like, you want to make your own. This is the stealing mind remaining.

Do we not have possessiveness? Every one of us does. So every one of us has a stealing mind, and counts as having broken the precept against stealing. Thus Buddhist cultivation and realization is meant to make you aware of your inner mind, not to have you perform a little outwardly and pretend. That is how it is. If you want to become a Buddha, if you want to return to the complete breaking of ego-clinging, you must be aware of and observe every arising and movement of thought.

Sexual desire, killing and stealing, sexual misconduct. What is sexual misconduct? It is failing to use a right consciousness to guide your sexual behavior; your intention is wrong, and the level of your consciousness is wrong. For example, prostitution—and eating, drinking, prostitution, and gambling are of course included. This is the outward form; everyone considers it improper. Because that kind of sex is merely a monetary relationship, these things are prohibited by the Buddha’s precepts.

More importantly, you may be captivated by the appearance of your sexual partner. For example, many men and women—this is not saying it is everyone; everyone is very proper, so to speak. You go outside, a woman is dressed revealingly, and your eyes immediately fix on her. You will find that people caught in sexual misconduct gradually develop lustful, lewd eyes—that kind of look.

Because you become tainted—but I am not saying this about those people—we are simply speaking from the standpoint of human morality: we are easily captivated by appearances. In fact, everyone clings to appearances. Do not think that everyone is a true gentleman. Everyone clings to appearances… But you must understand that the moment that mind arises, it is already within the category of sexual misconduct. It is not about what you have done with that person. Your eyes have clung to an appearance.

The Mahayana Path is about the mind, not behavior. The Mahayana Path does not speak of behavior; this is the precept of the mind. The Mahayana Path takes gathering the mind in as the precept; the Mahayana Path is about the mind. Gather your mind back and do not be heedless; this is upholding the precepts.

So it is like this: you see, we also break precepts. We steal and break the precept; “I’ll take that thing back.” With sexual desire, you see an attractive woman or man, this or that, and your mind is moved; then you are captivated by that person’s appearance. You do not understand that person at all. All of this is sexual misconduct; every one of us has a mind capable of sexual misconduct.

False speech is of course very simple: do not deceive others. You should know that when you are selfish, when you have a self, this not-deceiving exists only by degrees. One day, for the sake of your own interests, you will definitely deceive someone.

Because you have a self there, and the selfish thing is there, it is just that you are not worth deceiving; most things are not worth lying about. If you feel that your greatest interests have been touched, how could you not lie? You will certainly lie.

So in the end, your mind is still wrong; the self is there, and the selfish thing is there. When, at the beginning, we cannot see the truth of this self, the Buddha established these precepts to break the things in our minds—greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, and doubt. Because these things are there, greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, and doubt arise.

The precept against alcohol is a little different, because in the Buddha’s time it was also a provisional precept. What is a provisional precept? It can be broken when appropriate—for example, at a social occasion—and then you can make amends again. In other words, it is not a fundamental precept.

The precept against alcohol was because, at that time, Buddhism emphasized meditative concentration. Alcohol can disturb the mind and make it difficult to attain concentration. But drinking a little to open the energy channels or treat an illness is still permitted; it is all right.

If you have a high tolerance for alcohol, and one or two drinks are like drinking plain water to you and do not affect you, that is also permitted; it is not a fundamental precept.

Giving, upholding the precepts, and patience are all ways of practicing the Bodhisattva Path. Bodhisattvas must liberate all sentient beings, and most Bodhisattvas are laypeople. They do not require you to leave emotions and desires behind; they do not require you to leave home and be ordained.

But as a layperson, in the process of liberating all sentient beings, some people will not understand you. You want to carry out work that benefits sentient beings; many people around you misunderstand or slander you, or disagree with you, and so you must practice patience.

Others do not understand, and there is no return. Giving does not mean that because you are good to someone, they must repay you. There is no return; a little understanding would be enough, but people do not understand you, do they? So sometimes good intentions bring no good result. This is practicing patience; it is practicing patience on the Bodhisattva Path.

Because you know that all your cultivation and realization are for returning to your self-nature, and sentient beings are all Buddhas, all Tathagatas. A Bodhisattva who practices patience treats every adverse or favorable circumstance as a condition for attaining the Way. Thus they grow in adversity, and they continue to grow in favorable circumstances; all Bodhisattvas are like this.

What is diligence? Giving, upholding the precepts, patience, and diligence are the Six Paramitas. Diligence means that your mind remains settled on the Way at every moment; you make cultivation, attaining the Way, and returning to the source your priority, rather than making worldly fame, gain, emotion, and desire your priority. This is true diligence.

In other words, you value the work of the Way at every moment; this is a truly cultivating person. Regardless of what industry they spend the rest of this life in or what they do, in this life they have made a vow: they will attain complete and perfect awakening; they will become a Buddha. So they organize everything around attaining the Way; everything returns and converges on this one endpoint. They want to go back, to return to the source, the source of life.

As for meditative concentration: we are still deluded, and many things prevent us from seeing the truth clearly. We still have joys and sorrows, right and wrong, distinctions between good and evil, purity and defilement, and so on. We make distinctions, thinking that people are selfish, evil, and so on. These choices and distinctions become: “I want this; I do not want that.”

Then all kinds of sensations and desires arise, and we become restless within them, unable to practice the Way peacefully, so we practice meditative concentration. Meditative concentration is a kind of capacity to endure. A person with concentration has Mount Tai collapse before them without changing expression. No matter what people around you say or do in this world, you remain unmoved; your mind can stay steady.

Then there is wisdom. Wisdom means that you should study more Sutras and read some books. The Buddha is like a lighthouse pointing the way; you know what your destination is. Although you may not yet have experienced the freedom of that destination, you know that it is what you ultimately want. You gradually open your mind and awaken; wisdom and theory guide you, and you gradually come to know the true nature of life.

There is entry through principle, and entry through practice. This is hearing, reflecting, and cultivating through theory, continually thinking and reflecting: What is the meaning of life? Where did I come from? Why am I alive? What kind of life do I ultimately want?

This is the Buddha’s Six Paramitas, simply explained. A detailed explanation would be too much. These are the six tools—the six tools for practicing the Mahayana Path and breaking the self.

Of course, if you have great faculties and enter reality directly, then you directly realize that Form and emptiness are not two. Once you are empty, you do not need meditative concentration; you do not need anything. As he said: “Whether anyone loves me or not, it does not matter. I am free; either way is fine. It is fine if there is someone, and fine if there is no one. Okay.”

Then you do not need meditative concentration to endure things. Some people have concentration naturally: no matter what others say, they remain unmoved and feel unconcerned. That is something innate. It does not mean they did not cultivate in past lives; perhaps they did. That is cultivation and realization.

Note: This text was prepared from a teaching video by Yang Ning. If it differs from the video, the video takes precedence. Watch the video.