CH'AN CULTIVATION
con. (from previous issues) by Professor Yu Kuo K'ung
4. SIMILARITIES AND DISSIMILARITIES
From the experiment or the rubber band, we have learned the most important notion
--the self nature. There are many
similarities between a piece of rubber band and a human
being as far as their
relations to environmental
disturbances are concerned.
Now let me point them out so that we can easily understand the doctrines of Ch'an.
Eq.(3-l) can be rewritten in a general functional form:
=
=
(
Mathematically
is a function which maps the domain of
to the range of
. The
domain is the totality of causes and
the range
is the totality of the effects. They
are simply referred to as cause and
effect. The function which maps
onto is
called a dharma in
Ch'an. The cause, response,
and dharma form a single notion, not
three, because a function
has no real meaning
without a domain and a range.
It is noticed from Eq.(4-l) that,
for (
0, =0) if and only if k
= 0.
This
statement explains an important
notion in Ch'an: Dharmas are not produced
apart from the self nature. Outside the mind,
there is no dharma. It is also noticed
that, when
0,
0 implies k
0. Therefore, from the afflictions and
human responses (
0), we can be
certain
that we have human nature. Since there is
no dharma outside the self nature, just
trace the root of the affliction and other
human responses and find that the root is
the self
nature.
After realizing the existence of
the self nature (k
0), we observe
the following
conditions:
A) (dharma) 0 if
(cause)
0.
B)
is independent of the nature
k.
C)
(dharma) = 0 if (cause)
= 0.
These three conditions correspond to
an important statement in Ch'an. That is:
A) Dharma is
produced from the cause in
one's mind. B) Cause has no nature. If one
sees just his nature,
the cause is
empty.
C) When the cause is empty, the dharma is empty.
Eq.(4-l) has an inverse which can be expressed in the following general form:
(
In this equation,
is the cause and the effect. Therefore, a cause
(effect) of one dharma
is the effect (cause)
of another. That is, cause is effect and
effect is cause. The causes
and effects
are woven into a dharma net. A human
being lives in this dharma net which he
knitted for himself from
beginningless time. This is a fundamental law
of Ch'an: No dharma
is isolated.
Eq.(4-2) is the inverse of
Eq.(4-l) . It is interesting to notice that the
mathematical requirement for the inverse
to exist is that k
0. This is another
verification for the existence of
the self nature. To put it in a common
language, it means
the following: If a cause
is an effect and the effect is a cause,
then it ensures the
existence of the human self nature.
For a given
applied on a rubber
band, there is a corresponding
because of
the existence of the elastic nature.
From this environmental disturbance
(, ),
the
nature of the elasticity is
determined. In other words, without
the disturbance, the value
of the spring constant k (self nature), cannot be
obtained. It is similar for human beings.
To the environmental influences, we have
human responses: happiness or sadness,
acceptance or
rejection. Without these
human disturbances, we have no clue to
realize the intrinsic self
nature. For
this reason, the Platform Sutra says,
"Affliction is Bodhi (self nature). The
root cause of purity is the lust nature,
for rid of lust, this is just the pure
nature
body. Each of you, within your
natures, leave the five desires. In a
flash, see the nature -
it is true."
Therefore, a cultivator should neither attach
to nor be afraid of afflictions or
any
other human responses, since realizing their
root cause is seeing one's self
nature.
Hence, affliction can be just an
affliction or it can be the road to enlightenment.
The
difference depends on how one
uses one's human freedom.
We have observed the
similarities, there must be at least one dissimilarity. Otherwise,
the human being becomes
just a piece of rubber band, which we know is
not the case. The
differences are many. I will
point out the essential one: freedom. It is
this freedom that
differentiates a
human being from other insentient material
things. For a given rubber band,
the relation between the influence and the response is
a fixed or dead one. In other words,
for a given value of , there corresponds a
fixed value of . For simplicity in
comparison, let k = self nature,
= environmental influence, =
human response.
We have
realized that human beings have self
nature, hence k
0. If
0 , then the
corresponding can not be zero for an
elastic rubber band. However, for human
beings, both
the cases = 0 and
0 are acceptable. These two cases separate
the human beings into
two groups: the
enlightened and the confused. It does not imply
that the enlightened and the
confused are
different in nature, but only that some see
the self nature and the others do
not.