After one year and seven months, Wu Aizhen returned to City A and stood before her window. In her eyes, the world of emotion and the ocean of desire had vanished. Ordinary people were doing ordinary things, yet everything was miraculous: seeds sprouted, babies smiled, flowers bloomed, the old milkman delivered the milk on time, the street sweeper swept the streets, a Buddhist placed a stick of incense into the censer. On the morning news, a presidential election in some country had ended, and the president-elect delivered an inaugural address amid cheers. The world was moving along in perfect order…
In this world, perhaps everything would change in wondrous ways, but one thing would never change—love. It rose from her heart every day like the sun, returning in endless cycles. That love came from sentient beings, from her Master, from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, drop by drop gathering into an ocean of universal love…
She no longer carried a burden on her shoulders. Instead, she carried sun and moon, one sun and one moon shining together as a single world. She had realized her own world; she abided in her own Pure Land.
The Great Compassion Mantra played in the room, and the little shramanera was chanting the diary she had once written: Namo Amitabha! Father! I hear the Great Compassion Mantra—that sound from the homeland! My wandering heart is so weary. It has lost its way in the world of emotion and the ocean of desire. I long to return. Please guide me with that compassionate light, and I will cast all hesitation aside and follow those pure Brahma tones, flying across the world of emotion and the ocean of desire.
Namo ratna-trayāya. Nama āryāvalokiteśvarāya bodhisattvāya mahāsattvāya mahākāruṇikāya. Oṁ sarva-bhaya-śodhanāya tasya namaskṛtvā. Idam āryāvalokiteśvara tava namo nīlakaṇṭha. Hṛdayaṁ vartayiṣyāmi sarvārtha-sādhanaṁ śubham. Ajeyaṁ sarva-bhūtānāṁ bhava-mārga-viśodhakaṁ. Tad-yathā: oṁ ālokādhipati lokātikrānta. Ehi mahā-bodhisattva, sarpa sarpa, smara smara hṛdayaṁ. Kuru kuru karma. Dhuru dhuru vijayate, mahā-vijayate. Dhara dhara dhāraṇī-rāja. Cala cala mama vimalamūrtte. Ehi ehi, cīrṇa cīrṇa, ārṣaṁ pracali. Vaśaṁ vaśaṁ praṇāśaya. Huru huru smara. Huru huru, sara sara, siri siri, suru suru. Budhya budhya, bodhaya bodhaya. Maitreya nīlakaṇṭha, darśanaṁ. Praharāya-mānāya svāhā. Siddhāya svāhā. Mahā-siddhāya svāhā. Siddha-yogīśvarāya svāhā. Nīlakaṇṭhāya svāhā. Varāha-mukhāya svāhā. Nara-siṁha-mukhāya svāhā. Gadā-hastāya svāhā. Cakra-hastāya svāhā. Padma-hastāya svāhā. Nīlakaṇṭha-pāṇḍarāya svāhā. Mahātala-śaṁkarāya svāhā. Namo ratna-trayāya. Nama āryāvalokiteśvarāya bodhisattvāya svāhā. Oṁ siddhyantu mantra-padāni svāhā.
“Father, I’ve come back!” she said softly.
“Child, you never left.” She heard the familiar reply in the sky of her mind.
In the mailbox, she found a letter from Keiko in Japan, mailed several months earlier. In it, Keiko recounted the string of upheavals her family had endured in recent months. First, Mayumi’s father was investigated for a political affair and bribery, and Yamaguchi Mingchuan was implicated and wanted. But he had vanished without a trace; no one knew where he was. Keiko said she had heard that someone had seen her father at a temple in Japan, and she had gone searching, but found nothing. She was now living with her grandmother. The “company” her father’s family had run for generations had been dissolved, and all its assets had been frozen and seized. Her grandmother, frantic and furious, had suddenly gone blind and was now entirely dependent on Keiko. The nanny who had raised Keiko since childhood had also died… In her letter, Keiko said that amid all these upheavals, she had never despaired because she had the Dharma. She was deeply grateful that she had met Wu Aizhen before all this happened. She said she had learned from Wu Aizhen many principles of the Dharma that she had never understood before, and now she was facing these circumstances in life with calm, growing stronger and more mature by the day. She hoped Wu Aizhen could forgive her former foolishness and the harm her father’s impulsive actions had caused. She had later learned that her father had taken Aunt Mayumi to Thailand, but she was certain that he loved her. She wrote in the letter: “Do you know, Aizhen-jie? I once saw my father kneeling before a jade statue of Guanyin, praying, and afterward his eyes were red. I knew it was the birthday gift he had given you… I can’t fathom his state of mind then, but when he asked me if I had news of you, his eyes were so sorrowful and helpless…”
“In my eyes, Father has always been fierce and all-powerful, someone no one could subdue. But when he was with you, that once fierce face of his took on a completely different radiance. I knew it was the light of love—love had finally come to Papa… But oh, I regret it so much! I was the executioner of your love! I killed my father’s love!”
“Aizhen-jie, I understand now: if a person has no love, they have nothing. Even if they possess all the world’s wealth, their heart is empty and self-abasing.”
“I’m ashamed of my once blind arrogance and willfulness, because I had no right—I didn’t understand love…”
After reading Keiko’s letter, Wu Aizhen wept. In her heart, she silently said: Keiko, you have truly grown up. I don’t blame you, and I won’t blame your father. Yamaguchi Mingchuan, wherever you are, the only thing I can do now is hope that the wisdom light of the Dharma illuminates the ocean of your heart so you can abandon evil and do good, so you can lay down the butcher’s knife. In the long, long night, may the love of the Bodhisattvas, which fills all time and space, warm you, let you see brightness and hope in the cold, and free you from fear… She took out the jade Yamaguchi Mingchuan had given her and placed it before the Buddha statue as an offering.
She contacted Ding Yiming. After finishing his studies at the Central Party School, Ding Yiming had stayed on for a temporary posting at a central government agency. When he got Wu Aizhen’s call, he took a Sunday off and rushed back to City A.
“Hey, Dr. Wu, where did you disappear to for so long? I thought that after your Master passed into nirvana, you’d seen through the red dust, fled to some deep mountain forest, and entered the gate of emptiness,” Ding Yiming said in his loud voice the moment he settled into Wu Aizhen’s living room, speaking to Wu Aizhen who was brewing tea.
“It hasn’t come to that yet,” Wu Aizhen said mildly.
“I called you several times and couldn’t get through. I even went to the farm where Master used to live, and only then did I hear from Boss Zhang that Master had long since passed into nirvana. I felt awful. You had also vanished without news. I wandered around that farm for half the day, feeling the impermanence of life. I recalled the time we went there—barely six months had passed, and the place was the same but the people were gone. Later, I heard from Zheng Meiqin that you had gone to Mount Wutai, and after that, no one knew where you were…”
“Oh! In the mountain temples, cell phones don’t get signal. After a long stay, I lost all sense of time. I didn’t contact any friends.”
“I envy you, being able to live so freely.”
“This is the calligraphy scroll Master entrusted me to give you before he passed. I’ve kept it for you for over a year now.”
At these words, Ding Yiming’s expression grew solemn. He carefully unrolled the scroll. As he looked and looked, his eyes gradually grew moist. Through that single character “De,” he seemed to see the heart of a world-transcending Mahayana Bodhisattva.
He gently rolled up the scroll and gave Wu Aizhen a melancholy smile.
“I’m ashamed! In front of Master’s calligraphy.”
“Master always places great hopes on his disciples, like parents who dream their child will rise to greatness,” Wu Aizhen said softly, as if speaking to Ding Yiming and to herself.
Ding Yiming fell silent for a while, quietly drinking tea…
“I’ve always wanted to ask you: what cause and condition led you to begin studying the Dharma? And how were you able to devote yourself to it with such wholehearted commitment for so many years?” Ding Yiming asked curiously.
“In the beginning, it was because I couldn’t grasp the impermanence of human thoughts and emotions, so I started reading philosophy. Later, I happened to delve into Buddhist studies and realized that Buddhism explained the mysteries of life more thoroughly. I believe that from childhood, the education we receive from parents and teachers is meant to help us understand the principles and standards of being human, to broaden our knowledge, and to elevate our refinement and inner quality. Further study of the teachings of sages can perfect a person’s character and help them become a more complete human being. But studying the Dharma can take you one step further: it lets you understand the principle of impermanence and change in all phenomena, which is ultimately to understand the way of birth and death. I think these three stages of learning are the needs of a person’s spiritual realm, and everyone who genuinely wants to explore the meaning of life will eventually arrive at this point. Yet among all religious traditions, only Buddhism possesses countless methods to guide people toward the ultimate truth of life, and it is the most perfect and most ultimate in theory. Personally, I believe that in this finite human life—where we come in a hurry and go in a hurry—after attending to eating, drinking, tending to the body, and sleeping, there is nothing more meaningful or more worthwhile than exploring the ultimate truth of life.”
Ding Yiming smiled, a trace of admiration in his eyes.
“Still, I’ve skimmed a few Buddhist books. I think Buddhism is a teaching that leans toward world-transcendence. For example, you need the mind of renunciation, you have to observe all sorts of precepts, and so on—there are many conflicts and contradictions with the life of a layperson,” Ding Yiming said with a furrowed brow.
“In the eyes of a Buddha, there is no distinction between transcending the world and entering it, and the same is true of the Dharma. It’s just that in cultivation and realization, because sentient beings have different capacities, some need methods that withdraw from the red dust or cut off emotion and desire for concentrated practice. Just as when we study worldly knowledge, from elementary school to university, we need more than ten years of arduous study, during which we must strictly follow the rules and regulations set by the school: no being late or leaving early, no skipping class, no dating too young, and so on. But once you graduate from university, you no longer need those school rules. Perhaps you can even increase your learning through being in love. It’s the same with the Dharma: once you truly awaken to the Buddha’s wisdom, whether you’re transcending the world or in the thick of it, everything becomes a practice ground. Eating, drinking, tending to the body, sleeping, and the ways of human emotion and the world all become manifestations of Buddha-wisdom. In fact, I believe that only someone who truly possesses this kind of wisdom can stand unshaken whether in favorable or adverse circumstances in the red dust, moving with effortless ease, calm and composed.”
“Reaching such a state would take a long time, wouldn’t it? Probably half a lifetime’s dedication,” Ding Yiming said.
“You’re almost forty now, aren’t you? Think back over these few decades—how much time and energy have you put into meaningful things? What have you achieved? Where have you invested most of your life?” Wu Aizhen smiled and handed Ding Yiming a cup of tea.
Ding Yiming didn’t drink. Instead, he smiled and fell into thought.
“There’s a saying, ‘It’s already too late to read the book in this life.’ The study and cultivation of the Dharma also involve the idea of lives upon lives. It’s possible that on the foundation of your past lives, you could quickly grasp the Buddhist principles—you might not need to spend half a lifetime.”
“That sounds a bit fatalistic. Even if we believe in past lives and future lives, who can truly know for certain that they’ve cultivated and realized the Dharma before?”
“The Dharma says that in a world where sentient beings have discrimination and attachment, the Three Periods of Time, the law of cause and effect, and the Six Paths of Rebirth are true and not false—this is the world as a Buddha sees it. You could say that in the human realm, this is the most fundamental concept of Buddhism.
“But the three studies of precepts, samadhi, and wisdom don’t ask you to blindly believe anything from the start. You can use hearing, contemplation, and practice to grasp the truth of life on your own. Buddhism allows you to doubt.”
“From what I’ve seen, Hinayana Buddhism starts right away with the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path. It describes human life as an accumulation of various miseries brought about by karmic retribution. I still remember the eight sufferings: birth, old age, sickness, death, being with those you hate, being separated from those you love, not getting what you want, and the raging blaze of the Five Aggregates. It makes sense, but thinking that way makes life seem too pessimistic and negative. To be honest, up to now I haven’t felt much suffering; sometimes I feel quite happy and joyful, and I’ve never thought about renouncing it all.”
“You remember it quite well,” Wu Aizhen said, laughing again at Ding Yiming’s words.
“The Dharma is absolutely not a doctrine of pessimism or negativity. Its ultimate purpose is to enable people to attain great Ease. But in a Buddha’s eyes, human birth and death happen in the space of a kshana, a single breath. In the red dust, sentient beings are like a small child squatting at the mouth of a tiger, stroking the tiger’s whiskers, unaware of the danger. Sentient beings don’t know suffering, just as they don’t know the fortunes and calamities that can come at any dawn or dusk. Because they don’t understand, and even when they do suffer, suffering itself is impermanent, they quickly lose themselves again in the temptations of the red dust’s myriad phenomena. They forget the pain once the wound heals, and sometimes they even fall into the same trap again. That’s why in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha compares the Three Realms to a burning house, with sentient beings like children playing inside, unwilling to come out. The Buddha had no choice but to create a cart loaded with rare treasures, exotic jewels, and toys to lure the children out—that is, the three-vehicle teachings of the Buddha.”
“Perhaps the heart that doesn’t understand renunciation, that sinks into the red dust, does indeed come from insufficient wisdom,” Ding Yiming said with earnest feeling.
“So then, if Buddhism is merely a body of knowledge for exploring the mysteries of life, a personal endeavor, and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have already realized ‘no notion of self,’ ‘no notion of others,’ and ‘no notion of sentient beings,’ why must they still emphasize delivering all sentient beings?”
“Because of Loving Kindness and Compassion,” Wu Aizhen said. But seeing that Ding Yiming still seemed uncertain, she went on: “The sun shines on all things without ever having the intention to shine on all things or to nourish them—it simply possesses that light and that energy. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are the same. One who has perfectly attained the wisdom of the Buddha-dharma necessarily embodies the quality of great Loving Kindness and Compassion as well, for it grows together with wisdom. And this quality of great Loving Kindness and Compassion must inevitably express itself in the act of delivering all sentient beings. But that is speaking from the conventional truth. From the standpoint of ultimate truth, in the eyes of a Bodhisattva there are no beings to be delivered—the deliverer is empty, and the delivered are also empty. In the eyes of a Buddha, all sentient beings have already realized Buddhahood.”
“That applies to accomplished Bodhisattvas,” Ding Yiming reflected for a moment, then asked, “But the Buddha-dharma also teaches that a Bodhisattva who has just generated the initial resolve delivers others before delivering himself. That Bodhisattva spirit is admirable, but in truth, someone who has not yet delivered himself, someone still lost in confusion—how can he deliver others?”
“‘Cultivate for the benefit of sentient beings; deliver others before you have delivered yourself’—this is the method of cultivation and realization for Mahayana Bodhisattvas within the Buddha-dharma. In this practice, both generating Bodhicitta and acting for the benefit of sentient beings are indispensable; they are the seed and the soil that bring a Mahayana Bodhisattva to Accomplishment. One could say that without Bodhicitta and without acts that benefit sentient beings, no Bodhisattva of the Ten Grounds would ever come into being. And a Bodhisattva, having attained Accomplishment, will feel gratitude toward sentient beings and repay them in kind. So that this mind of gratitude and repayment may continually arise, the Bodhisattva of initial resolve constantly contemplates that all sentient beings have been his own parents or family through life after life, and in this way prevents his love and his intention of repaying kindness from being extinguished by Afflictions, allowing them to continue unbroken through his cultivation until he attains the undiscriminating, impartial great Loving Kindness and Compassion. For the compassion of a Bodhisattva who has just generated the resolve is only the ordinary kindness or loving heart of a worldly person; it cannot yet enter the ‘mark of emptiness,’ its Merit is still meager, and because there is still a ‘self,’ it seeks return and understanding, which makes it very difficult for it to arise in the secular world.”
“Maybe I’ve drifted away from your question,” Wu Aizhen said, noticing Ding Yiming’s puzzled expression. “You were asking what practical significance someone of initial resolve, whose power to benefit sentient beings is still small, can actually have for others. In truth, many people and many things in this world are very ordinary, very simple, yet they allow us to glimpse the flashes of truth, goodness, and beauty in human nature, or the glimmer of life’s wisdom. These are not necessarily cases of expounding sutras or teaching the Dharma—things like acting heroically for justice, returning lost property, rescuing the wounded, resolving someone’s doubts, untangling emotional knots, doing charitable work, and so on. The people who do these things may not be Buddhists, and their deeds need not be elevated to the level of Buddhist theory, but what they do is already the ‘Bodhisattva spirit’ of the Buddha-dharma. Can you say that these people and these deeds have no effect on a person’s growth or on society? Sometimes this ‘Bodhisattva spirit’ of initial resolve manifests in something as small as a smile from the heart—something that lets another person, in the midst of affliction, seem to glimpse a flash of fresh green life, bringing ease to body and mind. In truth, any act that can touch the goodness deep in a person’s heart, that can awaken the loving heart within—any such act can be that ‘deliverance’ of ‘delivering others first.'”
“Oh! That’s a fresh interpretation of ‘deliverance.’ I used to think it meant you had to deliver others right into the gates of Buddhism, deliver them across to the far shore beyond the cycle of birth and death. Come to think of it, when you can barely keep your own footing, what power do you have to rescue and liberate anyone else?”
“Buddhism is a religion of vast and open heart, with the capacity to receive a hundred rivers into the sea. The monks of the Chan School even say, ‘The very word “Buddha”—I dislike hearing it,’ meaning to prevent people from becoming attached to subjective imaginings, judgments, concepts, and words about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Sentient beings are delivered in accordance with conditions; there is no attachment in it.”
“The Buddha-dharma is truly vast and profound. Its states of cultivation and realization are subtle, deep, and impossible to fathom. But as it is, I’m tangled up in worldly affairs all day long; the days fly by, and I feel no real need or urgency to study the Buddha-dharma. I’m unworthy of the high hopes the Master placed in me.” As he said this, Ding Yiming looked somber and serious.
At the mention of the Master, the two of them fell silent for a moment and simply sat there quietly…
“Forget the Buddha-dharma! Come, have some tea!” Wu Aizhen suddenly said, her voice ringing out crisp and bright.
In that atmosphere, in that moment, her words were like a bolt from the blue, landing with force deep in Ding Yiming’s heart. In an instant, his thoughts were pulled away from memories of the Master, away from all the concepts of the Buddha-dharma, and brought sharply back to the cup of tea before him. He froze for a moment, dazed, and stared at the tea, but both man and tea had vanished—the tea no longer existed in any concept or impression he held. It was not in his past thought, his present thought, or his future thought; and when the mark of tea was gone, so was the man himself. In that single kshana, a flower opened, empty and ethereal, in his heart. He immediately picked up his tea and drained it in one swallow. “Now that is one refreshing mouthful of Dharma!” he said. And then the two of them burst out laughing.
“If I were to begin cultivating now, where would I need to start?”
“First, read a survey of Buddhist history—that will be useful to you. Get clear on how the Buddha-dharma appeared in this human world in the form of a religion: its origins, its rise and decline, its schools, its transmission. That way you’ll have a general grasp of Buddhism’s overall lineage, which will help you in exchanges with others and in seeing the historical significance of a religion in a correct, objective light. Second, browse some of the more common and important texts from the sutras, the vinaya, and the treatises. I have here the Four Agamas, the Vajra Sutra, the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, the Madhyamaka, and The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment—you can take these back and look through them. You can also read collections of the recorded teachings of great masters and come to understand how the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas use all kinds of skillful means to open the way for sentient beings. Third, choose one method of practice so that you can preserve and sustain this state of realization—living in the present moment, this very mind is Buddha. If you don’t think my level is too low, I can offer you some initial guidance on choosing a practice method and on cultivation and realization. The Master once told me that I should look after you in this regard.”
“Thank the Master, and thank you, fellow cultivator.” Ding Yiming pressed his fists together in a formal salute to Wu Aizhen.
“It’s an honor to pass on some of the Master’s guidance to you. Come, let’s go on having tea.”
“Now that you’ve come back from the mountains, what do you plan to do? Will you reopen your psychology clinic?”
“No. I’ve accepted an invitation from the Hong Kong Chinese Buddhist Culture Association and the Chinese Traditional Culture Foundation to do some work organizing and disseminating Buddhist and traditional culture. I actually contacted Zheng Meiqin about this—I wanted to talk to her about this work—but she said she’s out of town and won’t be back for a while.”
“Yes, she’s terribly busy just now. She’s running children’s classics reading pilot programs in several cities around the country, so she’s often away from City A, even working overtime on Sundays.”
“How are things between the two of you now?” Wu Aizhen asked with concern.
“Not bad. We’ve talked several times; both of us drew our hearts back in. We’ve each worked on correcting our own faults, and the cracks have mended. I’m away from home now, so I can’t take care of her in any practical way. But she’s thrown herself into her work heart and soul. She’s also adopted three orphans. She said that since we don’t have children of our own, she made a vow to regard all the children of the world as her own. If she can truly have that breadth of heart, she has my admiration. And the way things look, she really is doing the work now—not like before, when it was only talk.”
“Rejoice in her Merit,” Wu Aizhen said with heartfelt praise.
“And how is everything with you?” As Ding Yiming asked, he swept his eyes around the living room. “Your apartment isn’t big, but it feels very warm and inviting.”
“I’m all right. I feel pretty good about things.” Wu Aizhen’s tone was calm and even.
Ding Yiming smiled and asked no more.
Suddenly, he drew a thick red envelope from his pocket and held it out to Wu Aizhen. “Zheng Meiqin mentioned that you’d asked to borrow money from her. I’d originally prepared this red envelope for the Master last time, but this time I’d like you to have it. I don’t mean anything by it; it’s very little money, just a small gesture from the heart. Think of it as supporting your cultivation.”
Wu Aizhen shook her head. “I haven’t worked for a long time, so yes, money is a little tight. But I haven’t used up what I borrowed yet. I won’t take the red envelope—but thank you.”
Ding Yiming reddened. He did not know what else to say. But after a moment’s thought, he suddenly flung the red envelope down hard on the table and said bluntly, “Come on, take it — no need to be polite!” Wu Aizhen was momentarily at a loss for words. She sensed that what lay inside that red envelope was no longer money, but understanding and the weighty regard between companions on the path. Silently, she accepted it.
She went into the study to pick out some Buddhist texts for Ding Yiming. Ding Yiming noticed the cultivation journals lying on her desk and asked, “May I have the honor of reading them?”
“Of course. No secrets there.” She placed the three cultivation journals together with the sutras and the mounted calligraphy scroll into a bag. Ding Yiming took it happily and said goodbye.
She also saw Ren Qingfei, again at the same small teahouse where they had met the time before. When Wu Aizhen arrived, Ren Qingfei was already seated at a tea table, absorbed in reading a book. He only noticed her when she settled into the seat across from him. He closed the book—it was a copy of the Lotus Sutra—and gazed at her quietly, smiling without a sound. But Wu Aizhen detected in his smile the same faint trace of melancholy she had felt in her own heart a year ago in Tibet, back when she had not yet emerged from her attachment to emotion. And for Wu Aizhen, the time between their parting here and this reunion felt as though she had traveled through several realms of time and space before returning—everything here felt as remote as a reunion across another lifetime.
Ren Qingfei too seemed to have grown and matured somewhat. Wu Aizhen watched as he summoned a server to brew the tea, his tone warm and gentle, with less of the teasing playfulness of before and more quiet gravity in his face and his eyes.
After brief pleasantries, Ren Qingfei said with a smile, “Now, no matter how busy work gets, I always make time to chant the sutras, recite mantras, and practice Chan samadhi. I use the power of Chan samadhi and the wisdom of the Buddha-dharma to guard that ‘root of feeling’ in me. I think that when a person has the strength to guard something within their own heart, a kind of joy arises—the joy of conquering yourself, of conquering everything. A person’s life becomes sacred because of it.”
“Do you feel your power of Chan samadhi and wisdom have reached that point already?” Wu Aizhen asked with a smile, as if she were looking at a “little Shramanera” earnestly studying the Buddha-dharma.
Ren Qingfei gave an embarrassed laugh and scratched his head. “I’ve been reading the sutras and treatises, and I’m practicing calming and insight. But I still often feel my mind is scattered and distracted, and when I sit in meditation, my thoughts are all over the place. I read that the Sixth Patriarch of the Chan School, Master Hui Neng, said, ‘Hui Neng has no tricks; he does not cut off the hundred thoughts.’ Does that mean wishing to have no discursive thoughts during sitting meditation is itself a form of attachment?”
“What the Sixth Patriarch said are the words of one who has attained Accomplishment—it is calming and insight at the stage of fruition. When the Buddha taught the Dharma throughout the Three Realms, he too dwelt in the most profound samadhi of emptiness, something even Bodhisattvas and Arhats cannot do. For one who has attained Accomplishment, all thoughts arise from the nature of emptiness and abide nowhere—this non-abiding is itself calm abiding; the mind is not disturbed by thoughts yet remains distinctly clear, and that is insight. But the minds of ordinary sentient beings follow after discursive thoughts and grow scattered; they are held in check by them, and discursive thoughts become an obstacle to entering samadhi. Therefore, when you first begin to cultivate samadhi, you must cut off discursive thoughts. The ‘calming’ in ‘calming and insight’ means cutting off all disturbances from within and without, including discursive thoughts—that is, reaching the state where externally all conditions cease, and within, the mind’s breath comes fully to rest. But when you first begin to cultivate calm abiding, you must preserve a ‘luminous, bright awareness’—that is insight. Without this ‘luminous, bright awareness,’ once calm abiding reaches a certain stage, you will enter the ‘samadhi of cessation.’ Although you may sometimes remain in this samadhi for a very long time, you may be unable to emerge from it on your own, and you will not be able to give rise to the ‘innate luminosity’ within the samadhi. Without the arising and the process of transformation of the ‘innate luminosity,’ there is no way to realize the Dharmakaya state, no way to perfectly awaken to the Buddha’s Dharmakaya realization that ‘all sentient beings are equal, all sentient beings possess the wisdom and virtue of the Tathagata,’ and no way to perfectly realize the heart of great Loving Kindness and Compassion.”
“Tell me about the method of calming and insight,” Ren Qingfei said eagerly.
“I’ve actually already touched on it. To practice calming and insight, you must first put a stop to delusive thoughts. When, in your cultivation, you feel discursive thoughts flying about in confusion, it means your calm-abiding ability is insufficient—you need to apply yourself with Vigor before you can gain that calm-abiding ability. But this ‘Vigor’ does not mean ‘being impatient.’ It means the body is vigorous while the mind grows more and more relaxed. I remember a fellow practitioner once asked a Dharma Teacher how to attain samadhi quickly. The Dharma Teacher said, ‘Let your mind become a lazy lump.’ It was a humorous way of putting it—what he meant was to do your best to minimize all those messy thoughts outside of sitting meditation. Because when someone first begins to cultivate Chan samadhi, whenever the mind tries to become vigorous, it is apt to tense up and become incapable of relaxing, settling, or remaining dispassionate—and this has something to do with insufficient wisdom as well. That is why Right View and Right Thought are necessary throughout the entire process of cultivating Chan samadhi. These are the preliminary practices for calming and insight.”
As scattered thoughts gradually diminish and calm-abiding ability gradually increases, insight becomes correspondingly penetrating and complete. That is, the wisdom of realization grows. When calm-abiding ability reaches a certain level, the mind no longer clings to dualistic distinctions. At this point, insight and the object of insight merge into one, and calming-and-insight undergoes a qualitative leap, transitioning into illuminating awareness. Some practitioners with the right faculties and capacity may at this stage see light. This light is in fact present from the very beginning of insight, but it is the light of the Desire Realm — red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, blue, violet, and other colors. Because human beings are deeply stained and bound by desire, they can at first see only these colored lights in samadhi, or may not see them at all. Upon entering illuminating awareness, the mind channels have already become extremely pure, desire has weakened, and the multicolored light of the Desire Realm begins to transform into silver or gold. As the nature of mind is further purified, the light disappears, becoming only a kind of brightness. The brightness further transforms into luminous emptiness, and the luminous emptiness further transforms into emptiness. This is what the Heart Sutra describes: Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, while practicing the profound Prajna Paramita, illuminated the Five Skandhas and saw they were all empty — the complete illuminating awareness. In this emptiness, or complete illuminating awareness, it is not a void; rather, all light simultaneously manifests again and is simultaneously understood to be entirely false. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form. One perfectly realizes and enters the Buddha’s dharma-body light and accomplishes the Dharmakaya. This is a method of cultivating the Dharmakaya practiced by Mahayana Bodhisattvas, and also the process of advancing from calming-and-insight into complete illuminating awareness. Only practitioners of the Bodhisattva Path can enter the Buddha’s Dharmakaya state and perfectly realize the Buddha’s Dharmakaya wisdom, because it requires a fundamental Bodhi Mind as its foundation, and one must cultivate to benefit sentient beings. Otherwise, one can never realize the Dharmakaya state in which the Buddha and sentient beings share the same Buddha-nature, where one flower is one world and one leaf is one Thus Come One. Moreover, one must extensively practice the Six Paramitas and Myriad Practices of the Bodhisattva Path to accumulate merit and, in the end, break down the ego-clinging and dharma-attachment within the mind one by one.
Ren Qingfei listened to Wu Aizhen while thinking. “I understand the method you’ve described. But I still need to go back and verify it gradually. Thank you for your guidance.” He looked at Wu Aizhen with genuine sincerity, and his tone unexpectedly carried a hint of gratitude.
“No need to be so polite. This is just a small insight from my own cultivation and realization. I hope it helps you…”
“But I’m still far from that state. In truth, my practice was once only on my lips, without much real change in the nature of my mind. Lately, I feel I’ve only just begun to truly study and practice the Buddha Dharma.” As he spoke, he pulled out the jade plaque hanging around his neck from inside his collar. He looked at Wu Aizhen and said, “Do you still remember it?”
“Of course. I gave it to you for your birthday.” Wu Aizhen said calmly. “It says, ‘The world of emotion and the ocean of desire, the feeling for the Way endures forever.'”
Ren Qingfei’s eyes grew slightly moist. He gazed at the words on the jade plaque and was silent for a moment.
“Bodhisattva, do you know?” Wu Aizhen started at the sound. This intimate term of endearment between the two of them seemed long absent to her.
“I once didn’t know what you meant by this ‘feeling for the Way.’ I thought it referred to the two of us coming together through the affinity of cultivating the Way. Now I finally understand. ‘The feeling for the Way’ does not contain only the feeling for one person or two people — it encompasses the feeling for all sentient beings under heaven. That is my root of feeling. To accomplish Buddhahood for the lasting peace, joy, and happiness of all beings in the Three Realms, to walk the Bodhisattva Path so that all beings in the Three Realms may be liberated from the afflictions, suffering, and endless cycle of birth and death in the world of emotion and the ocean of desire — this root of feeling is what I must guard with this life, or many lives. I have no regrets and no complaints; I will never retrogress.”
In an instant, a surge of heat seemed to roll through the depths of Wu Aizhen’s heart. At the same time, a boundless compassion arose within her, and tears glistened in her eyes.
“Little Shramanera, this guarding is itself a kind of samadhi. The wisdom of the Buddha Dharma will surely steer the speedboat of Chan samadhi to carry you to the other shore of ‘liberation from birth and death.'”
Wu Aizhen said this with certainty. Ren Qingfei smiled. The sorrow he had worn when they first met was gone from his smile, replaced by brightness, release, and confidence…
It was New Year’s Day again. Early in the morning, in that small room at the Buddhist Association, Wu Aizhen was roused from sleep by phone calls. Buddhist friends were calling to say they wanted to come by and wish her a happy new year, and to gather together while they were at it.
After hanging up, Wu Aizhen drew back the curtains and pushed open the window. A red sun was surging forth, its myriad rays of rose-tinted light dyeing half the sky. The gloomy, cold winter night had passed. Sunlight had once again graced this world, shining upon the whole earth, bringing life, hope, and warmth to all things…
A new year had begun…
End of Part I
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