The Great
Love
In spite of its famed doctrines of emptiness and nonattachment,
says Zen teacher Lew Richmond, the heart of Buddhism is the compassion we feel
toward all beings and the love we bring to all our relationships.
If, as the
Buddha taught, the nature of the self and of other beings is insubstantial, impermanent
and fundamentally "empty of own-being," then why and how should we love
one another? Or to put it more simply, what is the role of love in Buddhism? Vimalakirti,
a householder with a wife and children, talks about this in the Vimalakirti Nirdesa
Sutra. He begins by describing to Manjushri, one of the great luminaries, the
insubstantiality of beings:
Manjushri, a bodhisattva should regard all living
beings as a wise man regards the reflection of the moon in water, or as magicians
regard men created by magic. He should regard them as being like a face in a mirror,
like the water of a mirage, like the sound of an echo, like a mass of clouds in
the sky, like the previous moment of a ball of foam, like the appearance and disappearance
of a bubble of water . . . like the track of a bird in the sky . . . like dream
visions seen after waking . . . like the perception of color in one blind from
birth . . . . Precisely thus, Manjushri, does a bodhisattva who realizes ultimate
selflessness consider all beings.
When we first encounter this kind of teaching,
it may feel quite maddening: if people are like bubbles of water or balls of foam,
why should we care about them? Are Buddhists people who wander through life seeing
other people as nothing more than dreams or mirages? What does this mean for us
in terms of our daily life and ordinary human relationships? Manjushri helps us
frame our questions when he says to Vimalakirti, "Noble sir, if a bodhisattva
considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love
toward them?"
Like Manjusri, when we hear Vimalakirti's description of
living beings as balls of foam, a serious question should immediately arise for
us. We should ask, "How can this be, that living beings are like clouds or
foam? My whole life involves other people. They seem completely real to me. My
relationships with them depend on that. So what is Vimalakirti talking about?"
If
we fail to ask this question, then we might jump to a nihilistic conclusion: "Well,
living beings are quite insignificant after all, like clouds in the sky. I shouldn't
have any particular feeling about them; they're all just insubstantial."
We may think we shouldn't care about other people. But, like Manjushri, we know
intuitively that compassion is the essence of the dharma. We know that not caring
cannot be the right understanding.
Vimalakirti says, in response to Manjushri's
question, How does a bodhisattva generate great love?:
Manjushri, when a bodhisattva
considers all living beings in this way, he thinks, "Just as I have realized
the dharma, so should I teach it to living beings." Thereby, he generates
the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings.
If we're alert, we
notice the abrupt shift in Vimalakirti's point of view. He has just finished saying
that living beings are as insubstantial as a ball of foam. But when he's challenged
to explain how we could love them, suddenly he begins talking about "living
beings" in a much more conventional way. In other words, people are back!
As Kumarajiva, an early translator of this sutra, points out, living beings
feel real to themselves-they have "the living-being feeling." So, as
bodhisattvas who want to help them, we immediately inhabit that realm-we go back
into that "living-being feeling" too. In Vimalakirti's words, we generate
the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings.
Vimalakirti continues:
Thereby, he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings;
the love that is peaceful because free of grasping; the love that is not feverish
because free of passions . . . the love that is nondual because it is involved
neither with the external nor with the internal; the love that is imperturbable
because totally ultimate.
Before, when he was likening living beings to balls
of foam, Vimalakirti was talking about the understanding of a bodhisattva. But
in this passage, with its description of various kinds of spiritual love, we are
clued in to the feeling of a bodhisattva. So this hints to an important terrain
of practice that has to do with our emotional life, with establishing a purified
sense of radical openness and compassion. In this passage and the one that follows,
Vimalakirti evokes how a mature dharma practitioner actually feels.
Thereby,
he generates the love that is firm, its high resolve unbreakable, like a diamond;
the love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature; the love that is even,
its aspirations being equal; the Tathagata's love, that understands reality; the
Buddha's love that causes living beings to awaken from their sleep; the love that
is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously; the love that is
enlightenment because it is unity of experience; the love that has no presumption
because it has eliminated attachment and aversion; the love that is great compassion
because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance; the love that is never exhausted
because it acknowledges voidness and selflessness; the love that is giving because
it bestows the gift of dharma free of the tight fist of a bad teacher; the love
that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings; the love
that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time; the love that
is without formality because it is pure in motivation.
Each of these phrases
represents some commentary or teaching about the emotional transformation of a
realized person. They are clues begging us to ask, "What is the quality of
our emotional life? What is the quality of our feeling for people?" They
also help us recognize what qualities we should be looking for in a teacher.
Now
let's examine just a few of these phrases more closely.
The love that is enlightenment
because it is unity of experience; the love that has no presumptions because it
has eliminated attachment and aversion.
This provides a clue about how our
way of encountering others is transformed through practice. It says that an awakening
to the insubstantiality of beings and things-a "unity of experience"-actually
opens us up emotionally. We might think it would somehow distance us from living
beings, but it actually does the opposite. Or, as Vimalakirti says, we feel the
love that has no presumptions because it has eliminated attachment and aversion.
In ordinary people, attachment and aversion are constantly confusing us. So when
these are cleared up, there is no sense of separation between ourselves and others.
In that realized state, at last we can truly love without confusion.
My teacher,
Shunryu Suzuki, liked to talk about how Dogen, the thirteenth-century Japanese
Zen master, loved plum blossoms. Dogen would watch the plum blossom budding in
early spring. He would gaze at them, appreciating their beauty. An ordinary person
might see the plum blossom with "attachment and aversion"-attachment
to the plum's beauty, aversion to its impending fading away. Dogen's way was "detachment,"
Suzuki Roshi said-it was an attitude that has no presumptions.
"Detachment,"
Suzuki Roshi continued, "means to live with people the way you see beauty
of the plum: if you want to appreciate the living flower-or the living being-you
cannot be selfish. Your mind should be instead in a state of selflessness."
Often I'm asked, "What is this detachment thing in Buddhism? It sounds
cold and hard." Actually, as Suzuki Roshi explains, detachment in Buddhism
means just the opposite of cold and hard. The plum flower in spring is opening
very slowly and steadily, but at the same time it's dying. To fully appreciate
the plum blossom-to love it-we need to give up our sense of wanting the flower
to be beautiful, or wanting it to linger-both of which are involved with our own
ideas and desires. We need to appreciate the way the flower actually is. So detachment
means love in its true sense-love, as Vimalakirti says, which has eliminated attachment
and aversion. We see the plum blossom and tears come to our eyes: it's beautiful,
and it's dying. We're completely one with that.
It infuses the Mahayana with
radiance.
Usually, love is thought of as being something passionate, something
we have to struggle to control. But, as Vimalakirti says, through the realization
of emptiness, love is transformed into the love that is great compassion. Why
is that? Because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance. A teacher mature in dharma
radiates. You can see it, and you can feel it. It's very much like the radiance
of falling in love, but it's not the ordinary falling in love where we're still
involved in attachment and aversion; it's a radiance that is imperturbable because
totally ultimate.
Earlier in the sutra we learned that Vimalakirti is able
to take his consummate wisdom anywhere. He goes to racetracks to enlighten gamblers;
he goes to bars to enlighten drunkards. He's a businessman among businessmen;
he participates in government. He goes to schools to educate the children; he
goes to hospitals to care for the sick; he goes everywhere. So Vimalakirti embodies
that level of practice in which, not only is he imperturbable wherever he goes
and whatever he does, but there's a kind of radiance about him.
Without the
radiance, Buddhism can seem rather dry. Manjushri is an example of that: in this
passage he comes off as a little dry in his understanding; he's not completely
opened up emotionally. He doesn't radiate the way Vimalakirti does.
The love
that is without formality because it is pure in motivation.
The best teachers
teach as the situation presents and requires; they don't stick to some formal
method. I'm reminded of a story that Ed Brown, a fellow student of Shunryu Suzuki,
tells in one of his books. There was a beautiful rock in front of the office at
Tassajara Zen Monastery-everybody loved it; it was a great rock. Ed didn't have
a stepping-stone for his own cabin, and so getting into his place was often awkward.
One day, though, Ed went to his cabin and the beautiful office stone that everybody
loved was there, now as a stepping-stone for Ed's cabin. He asked around and found
out that Suzuki Roshi had ordered it moved there.
When Ed asked Suzuki Roshi
about it, Roshi said, "Oh, well, you needed a stone." Ed was embarrassed,
and said, "But Roshi, that's the office stone. Everybody loves that stone."
Suzuki Roshi replied, "Oh, we can get another stone for the office. I wanted
you to have this one."
It's that quality of noticing. Think how cared
for, how loved, Ed must have felt at that moment. The thing that mattered to Suzuki
Roshi was taking care of Ed, his relationship to Ed. He was not so concerned about
the stone that everybody liked so much. The plum blossom of Ed was right in front
of the teacher, and so the teacher acted without formality. It wasn't as though
there was a big ceremony around it; he just moved the stone.
The love that
is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time.
Is there some proper
time for attainment? Let's take a look at one of the classic Zen koans, the one
about wild geese.
Ma Tsu and Bai Chang were standing together and some geese
flew over. Ma Tsu asked, "What are they?" and Bai Chang said, "They're
wild geese." Ma Tsu continued, "Where have they gone?" and Bai
Chang said, "They've flown away." Ma Tsu reached out, then, grabbed
Bai Chang's nose and twisted it. He said, "They've been here from the very
first."
Bai Chang had a spiritual realization at that moment.
This
is Bai Chang's enlightenment story, one of the best known in Zen. It sounds very
wonderful, quite spontaneous. But actually, these two people have been intimate,
in a teacher-student sense, for a long time. Both of them know each other well.
This moment of the geese comes, and it looks like an "opportune time."
But we should not think of this "moment" as a moment in the ordinary
sense. The moment that happens between Ma Tsu and Bai Chang is a timeless moment-it
has "been there from the very first." A commentary to this passage in
the Vimalakirti Sutra about "attainment at the proper time" says, "It
causes attainment at the proper time because it is always the proper time."
Every moment is the proper time, but usually we can't see it.
There is a term
in Buddhism-"self-secret." It means there aren't actually any secrets.
It's all completely open to us right now. The problem is, we create the secret
through our attachment, through our inability to see through things, our hesitation
to open up. So, practically speaking, the dharma appears to be a secret. But it's
a secret only because we make it so.
"Self-secret" is a very accurate
term to describe what's going on in this sutra. We get the sense that when Manjushri
questions Vimalakirti about the bodhisattva's great love, it's a bit of a self-secret
to him. Manjushri doesn't quite get it because it's not something you get-it's
something you have to open up to, that you feel.
Children of a certain age
like to play a game where they put something over their head and then think they're
invisible. They put a bag on their head and say, "You can't see me!"
Well, actually, we can see them, it's just that they can't see us. Self-secret
is something like that. We walk around with a bag over our head and we think there's
some secret we have to discover so that we can see. Sometimes we're desperate
to find out that secret. And all that's required is to take the bag off our head.
The love that is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously.
This means "it's always available." We can lift the bag off of our
head any time. The geese fly over every day, all the time. Any time is a good
time for things to open up for Bai Chang. And who is Bai Chang in the story? Bai
Chang is you or me.
The moment of opening up is the so-called "opportune
moment," but it is always there. Every day there are geese, every day they
are flying by, but how can we really see them just as they are, the way Dogen
saw the plum blossom? When we notice the geese afresh we realize, as Ma Tsu says,
they've been there from the very first.
This passage helps us remember that,
in the end, practice really isn't about getting something we didn't already have
from the very first. We might say to ourselves, "I'll be different once something
big happens to me-I'll be better, happier, more OK." This understanding is
not wrong, exactly, but it is a little narrow. That way of thinking is still inside
the self-secret, some mumbling from inside the bag.
The love that is nondual
because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal.
Once
the bag comes off, we're opened up and can experience the love that is nondual
because it is involved with neither the external nor the internal. In an ordinary
state of consciousness, our love is conditional-it has presumptions. We think,
"I'm here and you're there." That's the sense of "internal and
external." We fall in and out of that kind of love. The love that is nondual,
however, doesn't have a sense of "I'm here and you're there." The love
that is nondual embraces living beings unconditionally.
From our ordinary
point of view, hearing Vimalakirti describe living beings as balls of foam or
clouds in the sky may seem like a putdown, but actually it's the opposite. It's
a celebration of livings beings as they actually are-each of them wonderful and
beautiful like Dogen's plum blossom, opening in the early spring sun, expanding
into its fullness as a flower, and starting to wilt and fall even before we know
it. Yes, plum blossoms-living beings-are insubstantial and always changing. But
that is precisely what makes them beautiful, and why we want to help them. That
is why we generate the love that is truly a refuge for them.
Manjushri's wisdom
is good, but until it's opened up emotionally with the great love-the great metta-that
Vimalakirti evokes, there's something incomplete about it. It's only when we have
this kind of sparkling care for living beings that we can be complete and open
in our relationships with other people. And then the dharma comes alive-not as
something to understand, but as something to live, wherever we go, whatever we
do.
Chikudo Lew Richmond, an ordained disciple of Suzuki Roshi, leads the
Vimala sangha, based in Mill Valley. He is the author of three books, including
A Whole Life's Work: Living Passionately, Growing Spiritually.