Bodhisattva: Master, do people come into this world because of desire?
Master: They come because of love.
Bodhisattva: So the meaning of life is to seek love?!
Master: Yes.
Bodhisattva: Then what kind of love can truly satisfy a person?
Master: Selfless love!
Bodhisattva: What kind of love is that?
Master: Great loving-kindness and great compassion!
Bodhisattva: How can one attain it?
Master: Every person’s Buddha-nature is complete and sufficient!
Bodhisattva: Then why has everyone lost their way again?
Master: By clinging to the world of emotion and the ocean of desire, falling into emotion and desire.
Wu Aizhen asked the Master nothing more. She sat quietly alone on her meditation cushion and reflected. “Bodhisattva” was the elegant nickname her current boyfriend had given her, and he called himself “Little Shramanera.”
She understood that the Master’s answers always corresponded to the state of her mind at different times, guiding her, leading her, and breaking a particular attachment. As for this “great loving-kindness and great compassion of No-Self,” she had pondered and realized something of it through the Master’s usual teachings, through reading the sutras, and through her own cultivation and realization. She believed it was a wisdom and a quality that flowed from the body and mind of one who had broken through ego-clinging, built upon the actual realization that all sentient beings are equal. The forms, such “love”, manifested in the human world, its blessing, and its power to draw in and transform the beings of the Three Realms—these were all inconceivable. A mere ordinary person could not gauge it with a heart of passion and desire.
From there she gradually began to reflect on her own feelings. She felt that now, even if she could set aside sensations and not seek to possess or to care about receiving anything in return, at the very least she still needed to be understood.
Her first boyfriend, with whom she had been in love for four years, had fallen for someone else and left her. After the breakup, she had also sat alone on this same meditation cushion, weeping silently. In the wake of her pain, she said to the Master, “Master, I want to leave the world behind and become a nun. I feel that no one can understand me.”
The Master smiled at how deeply lost she had become. The Master said, “Child, every human heart is the perfect heart of the Dharma Realm, and should originally abide in a world without discrimination and without opposition, where mind and matter are one source. But the human world is a world of discrimination and opposition. Spirit and matter are separated, and it is very difficult for people to unify them. Therefore, the ‘love’ between two people is also not a purely spiritual emotion; it must also include a physical side. Only then can it be considered perfect in this world and truly win the recognition of a person’s ‘heart.’ For example: the meeting, communication, and union of a man’s and a woman’s hearts satisfy the spiritual side of love, while sexual union is its physical side. Only when both dimensions are fulfilled will both hearts acknowledge that their ‘love’ is complete. But even this love between two people remains a castle in the sky in daily life. A person’s existence in this world is not an isolated thing. From birth one is bound to all kinds of social ties and to the responsibilities that come with adulthood—family members, relatives, friends, the obligations to one’s household, and one’s duties to society. A person’s way of living, together with the sum of these social relationships, makes up the life dimension of one’s existence in this world. This is the third factor that cannot be ignored when the ‘love’ between a man and a woman returns to life, returns to reality. Only then can this love, which originally happens just between two people, lay a relatively stable foundation in the human world. Therefore, in the human realm, to speak only of spiritual love or to have only its physical side—neither is perfect in terms of the recognition of a person’s ‘heart,’ because the heart is perfect. But the human world is a world of imperfection. So the complete unity of spirit and matter, which the heart deeply craves, can never be fully achieved on the surface. However perfect a love may be, there may be a brief satisfaction, a feeling of having everything, but everything in the human world changes without stopping for a single kshana, and the human heart continually clings to the appearances that have already changed. It is very hard, amid ceaseless gain and loss, to maintain lasting contentment and happiness.
“And you have long dwelt in the state of Chan samadhi, where spirit and matter are unified. In that state, all your wishes come true. When you return to the red dust of the world, whenever the physical side of love comes up, you think it is too vulgar. But in the human realm, love stripped of its physical side is a flower blooming in empty space. The gods can have that kind of love, for gods can have whatever material things they need simply by wishing for them, but humans cannot.
“You have spent long periods away in retreat, cultivating and realizing, and you have even said that if love between two people is lasting, what need is there for morning and evening together? But this kind of feeling—which sets aside the physical side of love and yet, from beginning to end, achieves heart-to-heart resonance—is the bond between master and disciple, the one you yourself have known. It is not worldly love.
“Born a human being, you have not lost yourself in the world of emotion and the ocean of desire of the human realm; instead, you have lost yourself in the emotional bonds of the spiritual path. You have blurred the distinction between those bonds and the ‘love’ between people, and you use the thinking of your samadhi state to demand things of the people and affairs of this world. You complain that your boyfriend does not understand you—but do you understand the ‘love’ of this world? The purely spiritual feeling you want is not realistic in this world.
“Child, come back to the human world, come back to the red dust. Let your ‘heart’ return to this world of discrimination and imperfection. Deeply experience the helplessness, the pain, and the loss felt by all sentient beings. Find the swift path to liberation from the clinging and confusion within the world of emotion and the ocean of desire, and lead sentient beings back into the Dharma Realm. This is a Bodhisattva’s duty and mission—and it is also a Bodhisattva’s great loving-kindness and great compassion.”