The Greatest Pain Comes from Being Separated from Love

Love is like this: different people understand love differently. When you mention love, everyone imagines romantic love between men and women, or something else. Because you are sentient beings, you listen to reality with a heart full of emotion and desire, with a samsaric heart concerned with life and death. Whatever the expression, there is a problem, you know? No expression is ultimate, but any expression will do.

You say compassion isn’t a kind of love? Compassion is also a kind of love. You say the sun shining over all things—is that love? Is it compassion? The sun shines over all things.

People cannot understand that kind of love without a self. Sometimes compassion is used to express love without a self. But compassion always contains seeing through many aspects of reality. When you have not seen through them, when you cannot see the truth, you cannot be compassionate, you know.

The presence of a self is because you are illusory. All love in the human Saha world is built on the self. When there is a self, you cannot see this love clearly; with a self, you can never figure out what love is. So for thousands of years, people have kept talking about love, and to this day no one has explained what love is.

Then, why can’t we see it clearly? Because the self is illusory. Human love, love in this world, is all built on the self, like building on a mirage. So it changes unpredictably. People can never explain love or define it, because it is built on an illusory foundation.

Only after breaking through the self do you know what love is. But when there is no self, what is that love? When there is no self, only love remains—nothing else. Only love remains, right? Whatever remains can be called emptiness, love, compassion, or wisdom; any of those is fine. It doesn’t matter.

Why do I say that you are it? Because when there is no self, you know that you and others are one: loving yourself is loving others, and loving others is loving yourself. Because you are one; there is no separation. You cannot be separate, and only then can you understand what love is. When there is no self, you are everything.

Where does the problem lie? Our pain comes from emotion. We originally had no self, but then acquired one; as we break through this self, we suffer less. When we have a self, we have something we can cling to, you know.

If there were a self, and the love built upon it were not illusory, perhaps we could have exclusive love, you know. But precisely because there is no self, this love is impossible to grasp. You don’t change, someone else changes; maybe he changes, maybe she changes—someone is always moving.

It has to sway; its foundation is not firm. As soon as circumstances shift even slightly, it changes; it is swaying. There is no self within it. So this love… this is our pain: unreliable; its foundation is illusory.

The self’s greatest… Actually, our greatest pain comes from being separated from love. That is to say, we are sentient beings; every one of us is a sentient being. But because of the self, we have been separated from this great family.

This kind of separation is hard. You think you don’t love sentient beings; you think you hate this one and that one. In fact, you love this world very much—everyone does. When you love one point, you are loving the whole world; you cannot separate yourself from it.

This separation makes you increasingly empty, increasingly lonely, increasingly isolated—increasingly desperate. You suddenly jump out of that great family, like a drop of water leaping out of the sea; that drop of water reaches the shore. You were originally part of the sea, but you are like a wave that leaps onto the shore; sooner or later you dry up—dry out, just like that.

The pain lies in our separation. We think there is a self, but this is all a misconception. This misconception takes us farther and farther from that great love, and makes us suffer more and more. In the end, the self becomes despair; despair becomes giving up, and finally we give up everything.

That is why it is so hard to understand. Buddhism has always said that Shakyamuni Buddha did not really discuss why sentient beings, who were originally Buddhas, became deluded. He did not discuss this. He said: you use a heart of emotion and desire, a samsaric heart, to probe the Buddha’s ocean of perfect awakening. This is impossible; you will never understand it.

This is why you will never understand the knowledge and vision of the Buddha. Whenever people mention these romantic feelings, these words, they forever look at you with a heart of emotion and desire, using that view of theirs to judge and infer what you are thinking, to speculate about your conduct, your level of realization and your conduct, and to speculate about what belongs to the Buddha.

We cannot understand—not because we are not smart enough, but because there are still defiled things in our minds. We use those things to look at the Buddha’s things, so we can never figure them out.

But in the process of cultivation and realization, you must begin with the highest view; do not validate it. So setting aside conceptual cognition within your understanding is a method of practice—a method of cultivating from high to low. Reject it at layer after layer of concepts: as soon as you validate something, there is attachment; once you validate that you have something, breaking it is extremely difficult—you are already cultivating from the bottom upward. Just start from awareness—just awareness—and take it slowly.

You have not taken a wrong turn; it is just that you have a heap of habitual tendencies and desires. Sometimes they pop out before you know it—pop out before you know it. You set obstacles for yourself. Every single one of your problems is an obstacle set up by your own mind; no one is affecting or disturbing you—it is your own mind disturbing itself.

This space is very pure. In other words, no matter how many people are sitting here, it is actually just you alone. It is very pure, really; everything is produced by your mind. You cling to appearances, constantly create problems and contradictions, then create obstacles that hinder you from attaining enlightenment.

If one day, no matter whether there are thousands or hundreds of people sitting here, you can sit here as peacefully as if you were alone; your mind is clear and bright, completely as though you were sitting here alone. Everyone else is here, but it has nothing to do with you. Then you are getting close; you have some samadhi.

(Is that the Tathāgata’s samadhi of true emptiness?)

No. The Tathāgata’s samadhi of true emptiness is seeing through reality. It has no state—not a state of sitting there empty and blank—but being in samadhi whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down.

But you still have to persist in meditation; you must persist in sitting meditation. Sitting practice does help you develop samadhi and see some things clearly. But if you really do not want to sit, and your mind feels clear and still, you can sit there and think about some things.

The body also has to move through the energy channels; cultivating through the energy channels works too. Whether it is empty or full, moving through the energy channels is also right. Practice standing meditation, throw a few punches, exercise a little, perform some full prostrations. If some part of your body, some organ, is not well, when that section of the energy channels passes through it, there must be attachment there; where there is attachment, it is hard to break through.

Mind and energy are one: when you transform the mind, that energy becomes unblocked. When you adjust the energy, that knot in the mind is transformed, but you will certainly set up an obstacle there. This world is nothing more than an appearance. That is to say, whichever appearance you rely on, you set up an obstacle on that appearance; your obstacle is here with you.

That is to say, suppose you can enter the Three Realms and Six Paths of Rebirth. You will see your organs; when it reaches some dimension, you can know which level’s obstacle it corresponds to. Sometimes you cannot resolve those things.

Actually, cultivation is a good thing—really, it is quite good. When your lives are free from pressure, set aside time for cultivation; I think that is very good. This truly is the most worthwhile thing to do in a lifetime.

You say you are under pressure—you have to support your family, with elders above and children below for you to support; you are under pressure and have to work. That really is… the lot of someone with little good fortune. But you—none of you are married; you are single, and you do not have to ask a wife for leave to go into retreat, nor ask a husband for leave. You are truly amazing; your good fortune is immense. Then, after you attain enlightenment, you can do whatever you want. Really, really good.

It is hard, though. Sometimes everyone else is generally getting married, having children, living their lives, going about their days, while you seem to be single, and you also have many emotional attachments and many other things; it is hard. But you must break through these things—everyone must. Attaining enlightenment is necessary; otherwise, will you come back for another lifetime? If you are not complete, will you come back for another lifetime?

Then whatever part you have not broken through is homework left over from a previous life. Whatever you did not settle in the previous life, settle in this one. If you cannot settle it in this life, you still have to work on it. So it has to be settled eventually. Grit your teeth and settle it in this life. Stomp your foot, grit your teeth—you are all so capable, so just settle it. Whatever part you did not do well in whatever life, do it again in this lifetime.

This is your choice. However you want to struggle, even ride a cloud doing somersaults—that works. However you want to do it, do it. Yes, you can even find a way not to struggle within the struggle. A place of practice can also become defiled—very purely defiled, without your noticing.

Even a place of practice—say you set it up with many people and many things—you will, without noticing, discover that the desire for fame and gain has arisen. That very pure desire for fame and gain is not impossible to see; it quietly shows itself without a trace, and then its tail sticks out; it all comes out.

Take an axe and chop, chop one another. When you chop one another, everyone suddenly jumps out: those with one foot sticking out, those with a tail showing, all slip out; all their tails are exposed. As soon as they enter the Zone of true emptiness, swish, swish, swish, they all hide; once they come out, everything is exposed.

(Is there a good environment, teacher (guru) …?)

There is no such environment. That is how this world is. As for this environment, I have weighed it this way and that and decided it is acceptable. It is not the best; comparatively speaking, it is free from defilement and can still stir you a little. You are not too pure, not too attached, and not too caught up in the teeming mundane world. You are not too… I’m not saying it leaves you feeling stifled; it is about right—the Middle Way.

You still have to do everything that needs doing. When you first begin cleansing, cleanse first; once you’ve finished, stay busy a little longer and do some things. When you first begin, your eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are all dirty, and the six sense faculties are dirty too—are you going to listen to the Dharma? Are you going to listen to the Lotus Sutra too?

Cleansing for a year is already considered very little. When the six sense faculties are not pure, there are clumps and clumps of defilement; all of this is defiled. Being defiled is nothing to fear; but in some cases you can clearly see that kind of poison inside—the poison in the energy channels, that kind of poison in the six faculties. That is trouble; cleansing it is very difficult.

If it is only some defilement, no problem; it will be washed away quickly, though it is uncomfortable while being washed. But once you are poisoned, rescuing and drawing it out is very difficult. Look at that poison in the energy channels: it does not look dirty, but turns round and round. Then it is hard for you, and hard for him, to give rise to right mindfulness; to rescue it, great power is needed, the kind of powerful Bodhisattva who can rescue and draw it out. Very difficult—defiled, clinging to appearances.

(It is hard for me to see myself clearly now.)

You cannot see clearly because you are changing; you cannot see clearly what you are. You keep changing, so no one can see anyone clearly, because everyone is changing. Tomorrow we will be different from today, so how can you see clearly? Precisely because it changes, it is illusory.

(I also hope that when I follow, I can keep up and not fall behind. It passes in an instant; at one turn of the head, a hundred years…)

You definitely won’t fall. Where would you fall? Where could you fall? Could you fall outside the Dharma Realm?

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.