Lecture
with the Buddhist Studies Group
at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
15 December 1961
Translated by Roderick S. Bucknell
Suppose we want to see or reach the
"Buddha". If a person looks without, he may identify a Buddha image as
the Buddha, which is a mistake; or he may think of that compassionate human
being who lived in India over two thousand years ago as the Buddha, but that
would still be a mistake. The Buddha strongly condemned that kind of ignorance.
He said, "To see the Dhamma is to see the Buddha; to see the Buddha is to
see the Dhamma." To see the Buddha it was not sufficient just to see his
physical body walking about. Even among contemporaries of the Buddha, people
born right in the same town, Kapilavastu, there were a great many who never saw
the real Buddha. They saw only the outer shell of the Buddha and did not
recognize the real Buddha. This is why a great many people became the Buddha's
enemies and sought to harm him.
Becoming the Buddha's enemy is the unfortunate
result of not looking at things the right way. There are many of us like this,
and we pass our wrong views on to our children and those less educated than
ourselves. Just what is the level of university undergraduates in this respect?
This is a question you might do well to think about. Ought we to look for the
man who lived and moved about in India all those years ago? We must look for him
in the condition of voidness, in the condition of being void of "I"
and "my," in the condition of perfect purity, enlightenment, and
peace, in which the mind of the Buddha constantly dwelt - that is, in the Dhamma.
"To see the Dhamma is to see the Buddha; to see the Buddha is to see the
Dhamma."
As for the "Dhamma", if we look within,
we are in a position to perceive the Dhamma, which is a source of joy to the
mind. If, however, we look without, we lose ourselves in the books and
manuscripts of the Tipitaka (the "three baskets" of Buddhist
scripture); or in the sound of monks chanting and preaching, which is thought of
as the sound of the Dhamma; or in the rites and rituals, the outward poses of
Dhamma practice. Even the practice of insight meditation is usually a kid of
pose. We lose ourselves in the poses of Dhamma and fail to penetrate to the
Dhamma itself. This happens to many people. How well are we succeeding in
penetrating to the Dhamma? The essence of the Dhamma, the real Dhamma, is the
condition of freedom from "I" and "my," the condition of
complete purity, enlightenment, and peace, identical with the mental condition
attained by the Buddha himself.
Considering the "Sangha", if we look
without, the Sangha is people, someone's son or grandson ordained at this or
that monastery and having this or that title. Worse than this is to see
only the yellow cloth and identify that as the Sangha. There are some people who
do identify the Sangha with men dressed in yellow robes. This is just the shell,
but there are a great many people who grasp at the shell in this way. For
example, some people take a dislike to certain monks and then try to make out
that the entire Sangha is the same. This is just ignorance and it is the worst
form of slander against the Sangha, because the Sangha is not to be identified
with yellow robes or with people who ordain as monks. The real and genuine
Sangha is the Dhamma: the condition of freedom or near-freedom from
"I" and "my," the condition of complete or nearly complete
purity, enlightenment, and peace. The true Sangha is identical with the essence
of the Dhamma, the Dhamma that exists in the mind of the Buddha.
So anyone who has looked deeply and perceived the
real truth of the matter knows that the real Buddha,
Dhamma, and Sangha are not three different things; they are one and the same
thing. Outwardly there may be three different things, but these are just the
shell. The real kernel and essence of them is one simple thing- namely, the
condition of freedom from selfhood, the Dhamma which consists in purity,
enlightenment, and peace, totally uncontaminated. This is what we call "voidness".
Even in the scriptures we find statements such as, "In terms of externals,
Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha are three different things; in terms of absolute
truth, in essence and real nature, they are one and the same thing."
HEAVEN & HELL
"Heaven" and "hell" are
usually viewed in physical terms. People are interested in hell as it is
depicted on temple walls with its various kinds of torments. In fact these were
originally nothing other than the thirty-odd forms of punishment meted out to
criminals in India at the time of the Buddha. You can read about them in the
history books. At least at the time of Asoka (c. 250 B.C.) these forms of
punishment for criminals were still in use, so people depicted the worst of
these forms of punishment in their illustrations of hell. This is the
superficial view of hell. This is hell as seen by people looking without. Some
people who are a little more perceptive identify hell with prison, but this is
still hell without. It doesn't burn the mind like the hell within. The hell that
is within is stupidity, greed, and anger; delusion, desire, and hatred; fear,
worry, and anxiety. They are a kind of hell that is much more to be feared, a
kind of hell that is much more difficult to avoid. The kind of hell that is
depicted on temple walls is easy to be bold and unconcerned about; we think that
no matter what we might do, we would never fall into it. But no one can be bold
and unconcerned about the real hell, the hell within that I have just spoken
about. If we look within and truly examine it, we find it is something really
terrible. It burns us without there being any sign of fire; it ties us up
without appearing to; it binds and ensnares us without out knowing. This is the
real hell, the hell we see when we look within. Seeing this we become frantic,
desperate, and start seeking a safe refuge from it; and that refuge is easy to
find and easy to put into practice. But if we go on foolishly looking only at
the hell without, we just go on forever lacking a refuge.
It is the same with heaven. The real heaven is
contentment, that state in which we are content with what we get and with what
we have, the state in which we have Dhamma. When we are content with what we
have, that is heaven. As for the heaven that is depicted on temple walls, that
is just another case of addiction to external forms, sounds, odours, tastes, and
tactile sensations - total subjection to sense objects. Celestial beings are
smarter than we human beings, and millionaires have the means to do more than we
poor people. At each level we think that the level above must be heaven, owing
to our limited understanding. But all this is the kind of heaven that burns us
with anxiety. It is all the kind of happiness that cooks us till we are
well-done. [Here the original has an untranslatable pun on
the homonyms suk (well-done, cooked) and sukh (happiness).]
It boils, grills, roasts, and bakes us till we are well-done. There is nothing
peaceful and satisfied and pleased with what we have and what we get. To have
this is to have real riches, to be really in heaven. A person who doesn't know
how to be content with what he has and with what he gets is in hell; he is a
perpetual pauper. Even if he is a millionaire, with millions or hundreds of
millions in the bank, he is the poorest of paupers, because he suffers from
chronic and incurable thirst. So let us not go looking for heaven in the wrong
place. Let us seek it intelligently and with right understanding.
NIBBANA
Now we come to the word "nibbana". We
often hear old people say that they want to be reborn after death in the Land of
Gems, or in the Land of Immortality. They think of nibbana as a land of gems,
having seven levels, and so on, because that is what they have been told it is
like. They think that nibbana is a land with a definite location. Sometimes they
confuse nibbana with the western paradise of the Hindus and Mahayanists. Some
people think of nibbana as similar to heaven, but ten times, a hundred times, a
thousand times better. They think that if you multiply heaven by 10, by 100, by
1000, that is nibbana. They are materialists infatuated with sensual pleasures.
They take nibbana to be one and the same as heaven. This is what comes of always
thinking of nibbana in terms of outward things, thinking of it as something
objective. In reality, as we said before, this thing called nibbana is voidness,
the epitome of purity, enlightenment, and peace, because it is the absence of
all mental defilements, of all mental suffering.
RELIGION
This brings us to a word that we very often
misunderstand: the word "religion" (sasana). In Buddhism, as in any
other religion, older people always have in mind the physical side of it. They
identify religion with temples and with rites and rituals. But these are all
just outward forms, just fragments of the tangible, material side of it. They
are not he real religion, not what the Buddha meant by religion. The word
"religion" as used by the Buddha referred to three things: knowledge;
practice in accordance with that knowledge; and the purity, clarity, and calm
that come as the fruit of that practice. These three together are religion. In
Pali they are called pariyati-dhamma, patipatti-dhamma, and pativedha-dhamma
(theory, practice, and experience), the three components of religion. It is to
this religion that we must penetrate and attain; whether for the knowledge, or
for the practice, or as a refuge, you must realize this religion. And what I
have just said is true in a very broad sense; it is true of all religions.
Now we come to some miscellaneous matters, an
assortment of concepts which are nevertheless very important. There are things
that are very important to us as human beings, because they are the very basis
of suffering and happiness. Consider beauty, goodness, truth, and justice. Just
what is beauty? What is goodness? What is truth? What is justice?
