With the arrival of Mahāyāna, however, comes the idea that the distinction between nirvāṇa and saṁsāra —“the round of being,” the round of rebirth—is a dualism, and the two are, in fact, one: nirvāṇa is here, this is it. There is a total transformation of consciousness, and images of the Buddha appear. Images of everything appear, because they are all Buddha things.
The word saṁsāra refers to the torrent of time, to our participation in the Dionysian passage of time with all things coming and going. Time explodes forms and brings out new ones, and you are one of those forms. In so far as you identify with your body, you think, “Oh, my God, here I go!” You live in life; you die; and, depending on your life, you go either to a hell or a heaven, and from there you come back to the next life. In the Oriental system, this is all saṁsāra, the round of being. nirvāṇa goes past that. We are but reflections on the wall of the cave. From where do they come?
The word nirvāṇa means “blown out,” the breath that enlivens the world has been blown out of you. In Jainism, another Indian philosophy, nirvāṇa is thought of as death. But in Indian there is reincarnation, so you cannot truly die until you’ve achieved release from life.
The Buddha is the one who stresses the psycholog-ical aspect of this “dying.” You can stay alive, in action, but be disengaged from desire for, and fear of, the fruits of your actions. This psychological disengagement of your passions from the events of your life is nirvāṇa.
With the Mahāyāna, then, comes the simultaneous experience of these two attitudes toward the one thing which is life. So, you can be alive, in samsara, but acting without passion—that’s nirvāṇa. That’s also the idea in the post-Buddhistic Bhagavad Gītā, 563–483 B.C.
The Bhagavad Gītā says:
“Get in there and do your thing.
Don’t worry about the outcome.”
Recognize sorrow as of the essence.
When there is time, there is sorrow.
We can’t rid the world of sorrow,
but we can choose to live in joy.
The term bodhisattva, “one whose being (sattva) is enlightenment (bodhi),” had been employed in the earlier vocabulary…to designate one on the way to realization but not yet arrived: a Buddha in his earlier lives, a Future Buddha. In the new vocabulary…the term was used to represent the sage who, while living in the world, has refused the boon of cessation yet achieved realization, and so remains a perfect knower in the world as a beacon, guide, and compassionate savior of all beings.106
The Bodhisattva voluntarily
comes back into the world
knowing that it’s a mess.
He doesn’t come back
“only if it’s sweet for me.”
The Bodhisattva
participates joyfully
in the sorrows of the world.
”The great Mahāyāna Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara is a personification of the highest ideal of the Mahāyāna Buddhist career. His legend recounts that when, following a series of eminently virtuous incarnations, he was about to enter into the surcease of nirvāṇa, an uproar, like the sound of a general thunder, rose in all the worlds. The great being knew that this was a wail of lament uttered by all created things—the rocks and stones as well as the trees, insects, gods, animals, demons, and human beings of all the spheres of the universe—at the prospect of his imminent departure from the realms of birth. And so, in his compassion, he renounced for himself the boon of nirvāṇa until all beings without exception should be prepared to enter in before him—like the good shepherd who permits his flock to pass first through the gate and then goes through himself, closing it behind him.”—Zimmer107
The Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, with a woman’s earring in one ear and a man’s in the other, represents mercy, or compassion. The name Avalokiteśvara is a difficult word to translate, but the sense of it is “he who looks down on the world with mercy.” Avalokiteśvara is frequently pictured as a male flanked by two female figures called “Tārās,” personifications of the tears of mercy that flow from the Bodhisattva’s eyes: one from the right eye, the other from the left. The word tārā is related to our word “star” and to the verb “to strew.” The Tārās strew out mercy to the world, which is, to me, one of the most darling notions.
When this tradition went to the Far East, to China and Japan, Avalokiteśvara’s feminine aspects were accented and this Bodhisattva became female, represented in the character of Kuan-yin, Kannon in Japanese, for the female form was thought to be a more appropriate manifestation of the fostering of self-giving compassion than the male, which usually represents discipline.
Peace is at the heart of all because Avalokiteśvara-Kannon, the mighty Bodhisattva, Boundless Love, includes, regards, and dwells within (without exception) every sentient being. The perfection of the delicate wings of an insect, broken in the passage of time, he regards—and he himself is both their perfection and their disintegration.108
In another manifestation, Avalokiteśvara has a thousand hands surrounding him like a halo, and in the palm of each is an eye that is pierced by the sorrows of the world, as Christ’s hands were pierced by nails. They are equivalent symbols. Christ is a Bodhisattva. Buddhists have no problem accepting Christ, but they don’t accept him as a unique manifestation and the only way.
Mahāyāna Buddhism and Christianity grew up simultaneously. The two systems are of the same dates and developed fifteen-hundred miles apart on a military road that was built by the Persians.
When the Bodhisattva teaches, we have been told, he assumes the outward forms of his auditors; but his message is addressed to the Wisdom-Self within each, to wake and call it to life.109
When the Dalai Lama, the incarnation of Avalokiteśvara, first came to New York, there was an interesting event. At his first reception, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral—where there were Roman Catholic clergy, Eastern patriarchs, Jewish rabbis, and, I suppose, even psychiatrists—what he said was, “All of your ways are valid ways to expansion of consciousness and illumination.” Of course, Cardinal Cook had to get up and say, “No, we’re different. Our religion is not to be confused with these other ways.”
I was also at the next event, a Buddhist event at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. About fifteen-hundred people from various Buddhist communities or societies in New York gathered in the big nave of that cathedral and had a real Tibetan ceremony, with monks chanting and all. The Dahli Lama gave a brief talk in Tibetan and a young man instantly translated his intricate theological Tibetan into English. What a fantastic performance!
What the Dalai Lama said was, “Now you are on the Buddhist way. Keep up your meditation, as there is no instant illumination. The mind moves slowly into this. Do not become attached to your method. When, in the course of your meditation, your consciousness will have expanded and been transformed, you will then recognize that all the ways are valid ways.”
The rational mind
stresses opposites.
Compassion and love
go beyond pairs of opposites.
The Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī is shown with a sword known as “the sword of discrimination.” Discrimination has to do with discriminating between the mortal and the eternal. The mortal is that which you see. When you see yourself in the mirror, that is the mortal. The eternal is that which you are. So, discriminating in your life between the eternal and the mortal is the essence of this figure.
The sword is usually
a benevolent instrument
which clears the way.
When you are desiring things and fearing things, that’s mortality. The three temptations of the Buddha—desire, fear, and duty—are what hold you in the field of time. When you put the hermetic seal around your-self and, by discriminating between the mortal and the enduring, you find that still place within yourself that does not change, that’s when you’ve achieved nirvāṇa. That still point is the firmly burning flame that is not rippled by any wind.
When you find tha
t burning flame within yourself, action becomes facilitated in athletics, in playing a musical piece on the piano, or in performance of any kind.. If you can hold to that still place within yourself while engaged in the field, your performance will be masterly. That’s what the Samurai does. And the real athlete.
Watch a professional marathon runner: he is not concerned with his showing the way somebody who is running his first race is. You win, you lose, you run the race. The race is what counts, not the winning or the losing. Running the marathon is itself the event. Everybody wins. Whether you win or place is a secondary matter. This is participation without engagement.
But if you lose that still point, you are all in the world. If, for example, you go into the race as a front runner, thinking you are going to have to win, and you are concerned that you don’t quite have the capacity to do so, then you won’t be participating in the marathon. Nietzsche says one must act with only three-quarters of one’s power. That’s the discrimination.
Anything you do has a still point.
When you are in that still point,
you can perform maximally.
Where are you between two thoughts? If you identify yourself with certain actions, certain achievements and failures, those are thoughts. That’s you in the field of time and experience. Where are you otherwise?
If it weren’t difficult to get to that still point, there wouldn’t have to be so much talk about it and all this sitting in postures trying to get there. And then, when you get up from the posture, you are right back where you were. So, you go back to the posture to see if you can get there again. It’s not easy; yet, it’s very easy. It’s like riding a bicycle: you keep falling off until you know how to ride, and then you can’t fall off.
It’s a perspective problem. Running through the field of time is this energy which is the one energy that is putting itself into all these forms. By identifying with that one energy, you are at the same time indentified with the forms coming and going. If you see the two modes—involvement and the still point within you, samsara and nirvāṇa—as separate from each other, you are in a dualistic position. But when you realize that the two are one, you can hold to your still point while engaging. It’s the same world experienced in two different ways. You can experience both ways at once.
Sri Ramkrishna was devoted to the Goddess Kālī. Kālī, the word means “black” and also “time,” is that black abyss of mystery out of which all things come and back into which they go. That’s Kālī. Her principle image is that of dancing in the burning ground,the place where corpses are burned. This is dissolution. She is dancing on the body of her god, Śiva, her husband. Your god is the final obstacle to get past.
Any idea, any concept, any name, is a final obstacle. The one preached in the church in any religion is the final obstacle. The only Western teacher I have found who gets it is Meister Eckhart, who says, “The ultimate leave-taking is the leaving of God for God.” All of our religions hang onto the image. None has gone past its god. The still point is going past the god. Goethe says, “Everything temporal is but a symbol.”110 Nietzsche says, “Everything eternal is but a metaphor.” They are saying the same thing. “Everything” includes God, heaven, hell, the whole works. So as long as you are living to get to heaven, you won’t find that still place.
One has to go beyond
the pairs of opposites
to find the real source.
In Buddhism, those who attain nirvāṇa are said to have “achieved the yonder shore”; that is to say, they have crossed the river from the normal experience of life to the yonder shore of nirvāṇa, beyond all pairs of opposites, beyond twoness. Heinrich Zimmer gave this amusing anecdote to help us understand Buddhism:
Let’s say you’re living in San Francisco, and you are simply fed up with San Francisco. You have heard of Berkeley: the wonderful people there and these councils of sages. There are domes that suggest temples. You’ve never been to such a place, but you have heard of it. It seems that this Berkeley would be a great escape from San Francisco, and so—in the old days before the bridge—you go to the shore, you look across, and you think, “If I could only get away from this place—saṁsāra, the world of pain and effort—and go to Berkeley, I would be saved.”
Well, one fine day, you see a ferryboat set off from the yonder shore, and it comes right to where you are standing. There’s a man in the boat who says, “Anyone for Berkeley?” This is the Buddha in the Buddha boat. And you say, “I.” And he says, “Well, get aboard, but remember: this is a one-way trip. It takes great effort. There’s no coming back to San Francisco. You will give up everything: your career, your family, your ambitions. Everything.” You say, “I’m fed up with every-thing.” “Okay,” he says, “you are eligible.”
This ferryboat is known as the “lesser vehicle.” It’s for “Little Ferryboat” Buddhism, Monk Buddhism. To board it, you have to be ready to become a monk or a nun and give up the whole thing. In India, the saffron robes the monks wear are the color of the garment put on a corpse. These men are dead. Are you ready to put on the garment of a corpse? You are? Get on the boat.
Sri Ramakrishna says,
“Do not seek illumination
unless you seek it
as a man whose hair is on fire
seeks a pond.”
The ferryboat starts out, and it suddenly comes over you what you’re leaving, but you are already on the boat. You’re a monk or a nun. You’re a sailor. You love the sound of the waves slapping on the side of the boat, you learn how to lift sails and bring them down, and you use a different vocabulary: you call the right side, the “starboard” side, and the left side, the “port”; the front is “fore,” the back, “aft.” You don’t know any more about Berkeley than you did before you got on the boat, but people in San Francisco you’re now calling “fools.” You thought it would be a short trip, but
it may continue for three or four incarnations.
This is the monk’s life. This is the student’s life. This is obeying orders. Life is reduced to pushing beads here and there and chanting OM. You have reduced life to something that is a pretty simple affair. You would not want that to end. It’s like a situation I’ve seen in art studios: the student is working on a piece of sculpture, and the master looks at it and says, “Continue.” Of course, the disaster would be if he said, “You’ve got it, you’re finished.” “Oh no, I don’t want to leave school.” The last thing you want is not to be a monk or a nun.
Finally, after several incarnations, the boat scrapes ashore, and you think, “This is it: rapture, nirvāṇa!” You go ashore. There are explosions: LSD and the whole goddamn thing—but it’s not the goal at all.
The Buddha, in the conversations known as the “Medium-length Dialogues,” says, “Oh, Monks, supposing a man, wishing to get to the yonder shore, should build himself a raft, and by virtue of that raft, achieve the yonder shore; then, out of gratitude for the raft, he picks it up and carries it about on his shoulder. Would that be an intelligent man?” The monks reply, “No, Master, that would not be an intelligent man.” “So,” says the Buddha, “the laws and experiences of the order of yoga have nothing to do with nirvāṇa. The vehicle of the doctrine is the way that you get to the yonder shore, and having attained it, you cast away the raft and forsake it.”
So, you are on the yonder shore, and you think, “I wonder how San Francisco looks from Berkeley?” You turn around and…there is no San Francisco, there is no bay, there is no boat, there is no Buddha.
You thought there was an opposition. You were still thinking in terms of pairs of opposites. The place you have left is exactly where you are. It’s simply your perspective that has been changed. This is the point of view of the so-called “Great Ferryboat,” or Mahāyāna tradition, where we realize that all things are Buddha things, we are on the Great Ferryboat, and the ferry-boat is already there. Furthermore, since the first doctrine of Buddhism is “no self,” there is nobody on the boat! The real self
is that transcendent life and Buddha consciousness of which we are all just visionary moments. This is the Mahāyāna.
So we hear next, “Delight is yoga.” The life you are living is your yoga. As Ramakrishna put it, “The little nephew that you love is your God.” The irony of this wonderful discipline is that it teaches that you, who were bored, are in exactly the same place, but in rapture, simply because you’ve shifted your level of consciousness. You’ve given up thinking things should be the way they are not, and you realize, “This is it. This is it. This is it.” And you get to saying “This is it” by first saying, “This is not it.” That discrimination forces you into a different level of consciousness. What “isn’t it” is the way you’re looking at it.
The Buddha is the one whose eye
of full consciousness has opened.
This is the journey that comes through worship, because a deity represents a degree of power,a degree of consciousness of knowledge and love that is on a level not immediately apparent to the eyes. The Tantric saying “to worship a god, you must become a god” means you must find in yourself the level of conscious-ness and love that the deity epitomizes and symbolizes. When you do, you are worshiping that deity.
It doesn’t matter what name you give the deity. People say, “Oh, we are Christians: Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and the Virgin Mary.” But if you can’t get into yourself on the level of the Christ within you, you are not a Christian. And depending on the level of awareness you have reached, your worship will be different from that of people in the same church who aren’t at the same level. Saying you are a member of this church, that church, or the other is a social notion, a sociological phenomenon that has nothing to do with religion.
A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living Page 15