U ltimate truth transcends words; / Not thought about or talked about, you ought to advance with haste. When you find a path leading to the unsurpassed, right, equal, and proper enlightenment and understand the true meaning of “Originally Bodhi has no tree; / The bright mirror has no stand. / Originally, there is not a single thing: / Where can dust alight?” you will find that none of these can be conceived of with the mind, and any discussion of them is just empty talk. Thus we should not hesitate, but advance vigorously in quest of Prajna wisdom and Dhyana concentration.

W ith great and small destroyed, with no inside or out, / It pervades every mote of dust and encompasses the Dharma Realm, / Complete, whole, and perfectly fused, interpenetrating without obstruction. In the state of samadhi, since all parts of the universe are closely related and connected, the small universe encompasses the entire great universe. At the same time, it is also a part of the great universe. This is exactly what Geoffrey Chew, the leader of a group of physicists who advocate the theory that “each grain of sand is a Dharma Realm,” says in his book Bootstrap Hypothesis, “One proton encompasses all protons and is also a part of all protons.” Every proton enfolds within it the conditions of all protons. Once the conditions are ripe, the latent power will develop into the entire substance. A Western proverb says, “Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.” The difference between great and small disappears (is destroyed), and both inside and outside and proper and deviant are gone. Thus great and small are perfectly fused; they are interwoven in a net and are mutually non-obstructing.

The Prologue to the Avatamsaka Sutra describes in extensive detail the secrets of mutual inclusion and the perfect, unobstructed fusion of the one and the many. Even a drop of seawater is replete with the taste of the great ocean and is inseparable from the rest .

...like Lord Shakra’s net of pearls, so arranged that if you look at one pearl you see all the others reflected in it...

“Vastness enters the unintermittent [subtle and fine], dust and hair [the smallest] encompass all [the greatest], and there is nothing outside. [In this state, there is no distinction of outside and inside.]” This is called, “Sitting in a fine mote of dust and turning the great Dharma wheel.”

....like mirrors and lamps, the lights reflecting each other in layer after layer. Buddha after Buddha, they are infinite. In each flower petal, limitless oceans of Buddhalands manifest. In each ocean, there are motes of dust. Within those motes of dust, there are again oceans of Buddhalands....Thus, layer after layer, it goes on without end.

The English mystic, poet, and artist William Blake (1757-1827) had also contemplated in the deep Chan of poetry and “recollected” the Buddhist principle of the perfect, unobstructed fusion of great and small:

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower.
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

W ith two clenched fists, break to pieces the covering of empty space. / In one mouthful swallow the source of seas of Buddhalands. Two fists symbolize courage, while the covering of empty space refers to ignorance and illusory appearances. The sea represents space, of which time is the fourth dimension. The very source of the overlapping of time and space is the voidness of the myriad things. “White Universe” concludes here, and its true meaning is revealed. With vigor and courage, shatter the illusory awareness and attachment that are produced by ignorance; with the extensive energy of swallowing the ocean of all Buddhalands in one gulp, approach and return to our original true self, which is the truth that “I am the universe, and the universe is me,” and “I am the Buddha, and the Buddha is me.” These lines of this poem carry the unrestrained energy of youth, the attitude of vigor and courage. The Master said this poem, which he wrote some twenty or thirty years ago, is his favorite.

W ith great compassion rescue all, / Sparing no blood or sweat, and never pause to rest! Since living beings are all within the same body of great compassion, all people are brothers and all creatures are our kin; thus we all share the same fate. Those with high wisdom transform themselves into the energy of great kindness and compassion to universally save all living beings. There is a Western saying which goes, “The sun also shines on evil people.” And Earth Store Bodhisattva said, “I vow to certify to Bodhi only after all living beings are saved; I vow not to accomplish Buddhahood until the hells are emptied.” For this vow, he endures hardship without sparing any blood or sweat.

Ziegler, a winner of the Nobel Prize of literature, used different words to express the same wonderful idea that human beings never change:
Love, honor, compassion, self-esteem, sympathy, and sacrifice.

When the United States and Iraq were engaged in a bloodbath and the air was filled with smoke and fire, I recall that the Master was seriously ill, yet he refused to see doctors. Was it just a coincidence in timing, or was the Master undertaking the sufferings of the people in this world upon his own flesh body?

I n Buddhist philosophy, the whole universe is one identical substance of great compassion; it is a peaceful and harmonious substance in which great and small are mutually inclusive and one and many are mutually non-obstructing. The small universes inside are a string of active nets in which the multi-layered and overlapping rhythmic movements are incessant. Thus there is not a single moment in which an independent entity can be called the self. The so-called individual is but an “event” or “process” in the jargon of modern physicists, or the temporary aggregation of causes and conditions in the language of Buddhism. The occurrences and transformations of affairs are merely the automatic adjustment of the force of karma so as to maintain the rhythmic balance of the greater universe.

Western philosophy and religions have tried to take apart this harmonious substance. On a larger scale, they separate people from God. In this two-element separation, people bow down at the feet of God in the relationship of master to servant (while in Buddhism’s motto of “I alone am honored,” the small self and the great self are perfectly fused.) On a middle scale, countries and people stand in opposition and annihilate each other with troops and weapons. And human beings want to conquer nature, slaughter animals, and spoil the natural ecological balance. As a result, the air, the oceans, and people’s minds have all been polluted, and the ecological system is thrown off balance. On a small scale, the spirit of regarding all men as brothers and all creatures as kindred has been lost. No one dares to help the victim of the car accident lying by the side of the road, for fear of being sued by the victim’s lawyer. This kind of separateness leads to the stiffening of our kind and compassionate natures. Mother Teresa bought a dilapidated building to house the homeless in The Bronx, New York City. In the end, because the government insisted on the installation of $100,000 elevators and other unreasonable requirements, the loving care could not reach the needy. As a result, the money was scattered and spent on sandwiches and hot soup for these helpless refugees drifting in the sea of suffering. (Taken from the new book The Death of Common Sense.) Modern lawyers are practicing the same “pot-fixing principle” which characterizes the “philosophy of shamelessness and darkened conscience”: first they make the crack bigger before mending it. All their efforts are motivated by money.

Earlier we mentioned the two interacting forces of the electrons and the nucleus. Centripetal force and centrifugal force are the basis for all the myriad phenomena of the universe. They can also be regarded as the collective subconsciousness of the universe. The subconsciousness of mankind, the Buddha-nature, naturally and intuitively seeks for the goodness and beauty of the original truth. People took a wrong turn, however, and at some unknown time the pure and true ideal of an Arcadia was quietly replaced by the modern Utopia. Arcadia is a society in which people are closely connected in their care and concern for one another. In the modern Utopia, although people claim to be searching for the perfect lifestyle, in fact the pursuit of material satisfaction far outweighs the spiritual quest. People mind their own business, and they turn into a bunch of lonely hard-shell beetles (people driving automobiles.) The Russian religious thinker Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) suggested, “...maybe we should start a century in which all well-educated people would dream to escape the realization of Utopia...less perfection means more freedom.”

Human beings on this planet seem to have lost their sense of direction and are at a crossroads, wondering which way to go; it’s wrong if they do things at will, and it’s also wrong if they pursue perfection. However, the darker the times, the more the latent Buddha-nature of living beings will be able to emit light. The following examples are proof of this fact.

Example I
In a small town in the midwestern United States, the people used to hold an annual get-together. Everyone would take his guns and allotted numbered cages of pigeons. Once the pigeons were released from their cages, people would shoot while being timed, so that later they could brag about their heroic actions. One year, just before the shoot was to start and after the live television broadcast had already begun, a few Boy Scouts opened the cages one by one and set the pigeons free. Under the pressure of world condemnation, the town has never held another pigeon shoot.

Example II
Two years ago in Australia, under the watchful eyes of the world through CNN television, over a thousand compassionate students, teachers, and prominent public figures very carefully and patiently pushed several beached whales back into the sea. This incident became the hottest and most talked about topic of the global village. When the last whale was successfully pushed back to the ocean, people were so overjoyed that tears were streaming down their faces. Those tears are the kind and compassionate water of the great compassion of identity in substance.

In the “Guanshiyin Bodhisattva Universal Door Chapter,” there is a passage: “If there are living beings who should be saved by a Buddha, Guanshiyin Bodhisattva will then manifest as a Buddha to speak Dharma for them; for those who should be saved by a young boy, young girl, or a layperson, Guanshiyin Bodhisattva will manifest as a young boy, young girl or a layperson to speak Dharma for them.” This passage aptly explains the above two examples.

To return to the original, pure source, we have to go back to the great compassion of identity in substance. The Greek word for “health” carries the connotation of wholeness. When human society is sick, people want to “yoga” (rejoin) with wholeness, great compassion. The crumbled and separated society can be re-integrated. The imbalance between national and international economy can also be improved according to E.F. Schumacher’s Buddhist economy (described in his bestseller Small Is Beautiful.) No matter how confused we human beings are, the original hidden Buddha-nature has never left us. It is like a small “fire-seed” (for example, a match), waiting for the right time to come. The fire-seed is like the formula e = mc2 (energy = mass times the square of the speed of light) in that it will give off limitless light and heat. The precious gems which ignite the fire-seed so that it can produce great light are the Buddhist Eightfold Path and the Six Perfections. They will enable us to awaken the inherent mind of kindness and compassion, the Buddha-nature possessed by all living beings.

Here, when we contemplate the spirit of saving all with great compassion in connection with the Master’s name To Lun (“ship of salvation”), we realize that the Master practices the giving of courage (part of the Six Perfections) and uses his great ship to save the helpless beings in the sea of suffering, by day and by night, sparing no blood or sweat and never pausing to rest. He also practices the giving of Dharma to cross over Easterners and Westerners alike. Most of his disciples can communicate in English, and some can translate Buddhist Sutras into English. At a meeting held in Berkeley, a library specialist from the Graduate Theological Union said that in the United States, Dharma Realm Buddhist Association is virtually the only organization that is translating and publishing the Buddhist Sutras into English. Let us follow the Buddhist principle demonstrated by the Master of sailing to the other shore and aspire to realize the Master’s childhood dream of “widely benefitting Westerners and leading them into Buddhism.” We, these small boats, can try our best to “save those with whom we have affinities at the crossroads.”

Sail! Sail! Sail to the other shore,
When everyone arrives at the other shore,
The heart is filled with bliss!

GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE
BODHI SVAHA!