The Buddha’s Simple Elegance

This short blog post is to celebrate the times of the great miracles, the first full moon of the lunar Tibetan New Year, commemorating Shakyamuni’s display of wonders in Shravasti.

When we read the Buddha’s words in the sutras, if we are receptive, they will appear so multifaceted… diamond-like, never fixated, never freezing anyone or anything, making them static or lifeless.  Everything is described in precise detail, yet retains its essential & non-substantial openness.

Thus, the beauty of the Buddha’s teachings or any kind of writing or teaching truly informed by its one all-liberating taste, lies in the fact that rather than narrowing our focus by increasingly hardening it through conceptualization, they open the doors of perception to pure appearances. They let everything be as rich, as many-faceted, yet as simply being itself as it primordially is – and allow our heart to be touched by this inconceivable, precious longing for such ungraspably ’unreal’ yet ‘real’ reality, including our phantom tangible bodymind, which embraces, actually IS the goodness and benefit of all.  I know, I know, this is a mouthful of a sentence, but when you read it slowly, it makes sense. 

You just can’t nail it down, even though Tilopa did with his famous ‘six nails’, bringing it all home by pointing out how to relax into what is.  

The Buddha’s teachings are never one sided.  Although the classification of certain kinds of teachings as belonging to the lesser, greater or diamond vehicles may be helpful from the point of presenting them to or targeting them for a particular audience, when you actually connect with them on a visceral level they remain and essentially are all of one taste – that of liberation.   They are spoken to help set free those who believe that they are trapped and thus suffering.

Like in this instance, in the fifteenth of the questions that bodhisattva Mahamati asks of the Tathagata in the Lankavatara Sutra, here quoted in Red Pine’s superb translation from the Chinese.  Mahamati asks if purification happens by degrees or at once, and rather than giving an abstract answer, Shakymuni answers in eight metaphors, four for the gradual and four for the ‘sudden’ approach. 

The first four metaphors describing the gradual purification of beings’ mindstreams are easy to understand.  They much relate to our own situation in life when we cannot harvest the fruits of our efforts right at the moment of sowing the seeds.  Everything takes time to mature, likewise the efforts on the path of liberation.

The second four metaphors are more complex because they also describe the terms and conditions, so to speak, that need to be fulfilled for purification to manifest instantaneously.  So, the answers are never simple, even though they are put forth in simple words.  They address the whole situation that comes into play.  The listener or reader is invited to explore and intuit the meaning by exploring one’s own life through listening, contemplation and meditation.   That is the general approach after all.  Without it, how could “personal realization of Buddha knowledge illuminate and dispel erroneous views and projections regarding the existence or non-existence of dharmas and their characteristics?”  Thus celebrating and enacting complete freedom from conditioning.

The Buddha always engages everyone at whatever level of understanding is given.  And he does so in utmost simplicity and elegance.

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“In order to purify the stream of perceptions of his own mind, Mahamati Bodhisattva once more asked the Buddha, ‘Bhagavan, how is the stream of perception of beings minds’ purified? By degrees, or all at once?’”

“The Buddha told Mahamati, “By degrees and not all at once.  Like the gooseberry, which ripens by degrees and not all at once, thus do tathagatas purify the stream of perception of beings’ minds by degrees and not all at once.  Or like a potter who makes vessels by degrees and not all at once, thus do tathagatas purify the stream of perception of beings’ minds by degrees and not all at once.  Or like the earth, which gives birth to the living things by degrees and not all at once, thus do tathagatas purify the stream of perceptions of beings’ minds by degrees and not all at once.  Or like when people become proficient in such arts as music or writing or painting by degrees and not all at once, thus do tathagatas purify the stream of perception of beings’ minds by degrees and not all at once.’”

“’Or just as a clear mirror reflects formless images all at once, tathagatas likewise purify the stream of perceptions of beings’ minds by displaying pure, formless, undifferentiated realms all at once.  Or just as the sun and moon illuminate images all at once, tathagatas likewise reveal the supreme reality of inconceivable wisdom all at once to those who have freed themselves of habit energy and misconceptions that are perceptions of their own minds.  Or just as repository consciousness distinguished such different perceptions of one’s mind as the realm of the body, its possessions, and the world around it all at once, nishyanda buddhas likewise bring beings to maturity in whatever realm they dwell all at once and lead practitioners to reside in akanishtha heaven.  Or personal realization of Buddha knowledge likewise illuminates and dispels erroneous views and projections regarding the existence or non-existence of dharmas and their characteristics.’”