by Jack Kerouac
“As soon as this one sense perception of hearing is returned to its originality and you clearly understand its falsity, then the mind instantly understands the falsity of all sense perceptions and is at once emancipated from the bondage of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking, for they are all alike illusive and delusive visions of unreality, and all the three great realms of existence are seen to be what they truly are, imaginary blossoms in the air.
“As soon as the deceiving perception of hearing is emancipated, then all objective phenomena disappear and your Intuitive Mind of Essence becomes perfectly pure. As soon as you have attained to this Supreme Purity of Mind-Essence, its Intrinsic Brightness will shine out spontaneously and in all directions and, as you are sitting in tranquil meditation, the mind will be in perfect conformity with Pure Space.
“Ananda! As you return to the phenomenal world, it will seem like a vision in a dream. And your experience with the maiden Pchiti will seem like a dream, and your own body will lose its solidity and permanency. It will seem as though every human being, male and female, was simply a manifestation by some skillful magician of a manikin, all of whose activities were under his control. Or each human being will seem like an automatic machine that once started goes on by itself, but as soon as the automatic machine loses its motive power, all its activities not only cease but their very existence disappears.
“So it is with the six sense organs, which are fundamentally dependent upon one unifying and enlightening spirit, but which by ignorance have become divided into six semi-independent compositions and conformities. Should one organ become emancipated and return to its originality, so closely are they united in their fundamental originality, that all the other organs would immediately cease their activities also. And all worldly impurities will be purified by a single thought and you will attain to the wonderful purity of perfect Enlightenment. Should there remain some minute contamination of ignorance, you should practice the more earnestly until you attain to perfect Enlightenment, that is, to the Enlightenment of a Tathagata.
“All the Brothers in this Great Assembly, and you too, Ananda, should reverse your outward perception of hearing and listen inwardly for the perfectly unified and intrinsic sound of your own Mind-Essence, for as soon as you have attained perfect accommodation, you will have attained to Supreme Enlightenment.
“This is the only way to Nirvana, and it has been followed by all the Tathagatas of the past. Moreover, it is for all the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas of the present and for all in the future if they are to hope for Perfect Enlightenment. Not only did Avaloki-Tesvara attain Perfect Enlightenment in long ages past by this Golden Way, but in the present, I also, am one of them.
“My Lord enquired of us as to what expedient means each one of us had employed to follow this Noble Path to Nirvana. I bear testimony that the means employed by Avaloki-Tesvara is the most expedient means for all, since all other means must be supported and guided by the Lord Buddha’s Transcendental Powers. Though one forsake all his worldly engagements, yet he cannot always be practicing by these various means; they are special means suitable for junior and senior disciples, but for laymen, this common method of concentrating the mind on its sense of hearing, turning it inward by this Door of Dharma to hear the Transcendental Sound of his Essential Mind, is most feasible and wise.
“Oh Blessed Lord! I am bowing down before my Lord Tathagata’s Intrinsic Womb, which is immaculate and ineffable in its perfect freedom from all contaminations and taints, and I am praying my Lord to extend his boundless compassion for the sake of all future disciples, so that I may continue to teach Ananda and all sentient beings of this present kalpa, to have faith in this wonderful Door of Dharma to the Intrinsic Hearing of his own Mind Essence, so surely to be attained by this most expedient means. If any disciple should simply take this Intuitive Means for concentrating his mind in Dhyana Practice on this organ for Transcendental Hearing, all other sense organs would soon come into perfect harmony with it, and thus, by this single means of Intrinsic Hearing, he would attain perfect accommodation of his True and Essential Mind that does not pass away.”
Then Ananda and all the great assembly were purified in body and mind. They acquired a profound understanding and a clear insight into the nature of the Lord Buddha’s Enlightenment and experience of highest Samadhi Meditation Ecstasy. They had confidence like a man who was about to set forth on a most important business to a far-off country, because they knew the route to go and to return. All the disciples in this great assembly realized their own Essence of Mind and purposed, henceforth, to live remote from all worldly entanglements and taints, and to live continuously in the pure brightness of the Eye of Dharma.
Thereupon the Lord Buddha, in conclusion, advised the following rules of Discipline to those who most surely wished to attain to the stage of Great Wise Being (Bodhisattva-Mahasattva) in this life.1. Concentrate the Mind
2. Keep the Precepts
3. Practice Dhyana
“Concentrate the mind” means to stay wise and pure, continuously, to see things as they are and not to be fooled into believing in their respective “realities” and so to cease to grasp at them. It is like a man who wakes up in the middle of the night to the supreme and final truth and nods with satisfaction, saying, “Everything is the same thing.” He wakes up from a dreamless sleep of perfect unified void in which there was no such conception as “perfect unification” and he sees that all created things are the same as emptiness, that they are surface manifestations in a perfectly empty sea of Single Reality, that they are not individuated parts but one whole Is-ness, all the Same.
“Keep the precepts” means to adhere strictly to the four principal rules of purity, so that by so doing the disciple being free from the intoxicants, becomes free from suffering, and therefore he is free from Sangsara and all its polluting, tristful, illusionary conceptions of death and rebirth. The Precepts are based on kindness to all living creatures, and are self-purifying. “O Monk, empty this boat!!! if emptied, it will go quickly; having cut off passion and hatred, thou wilt go to Nirvana.”
The Four Precepts are:-1. Wake up, cease sexual lust, sexual lust leads to multiplicity and strife and suffering.
2. Wake up, cease the tendency to unkindness toward others, unkindness is the murderer of the life of wisdom.
3. Wake up, cease greediness and stealing, you should look upon your own body as not being your own but as being one with the bodies of all other sentient beings.
4. Wake up, cease secret insincerity and lying, there should be no falsehood in your life, there is no hiding anything in a shattering dewdrop.
“Practise dhyana” means to make it a regular practice to meditate in holy trance so as to attain to Samadhi Meditation Ecstasy and Samapatti Spiritual Graces and Powers which are the states of liberation from this Sangsaric world as pointed out by all the Mighty Awakened Ones in the past, in the present, and to come.
As the Lord Buddha finished his instruction, recorded in the Surangama Sutra, there was great rejoicing in the hearts of all those present, bhikshus and bhikshunis, lay disciples of both sexes, Great Wise Beings, Practising-Buddhas, Saints, Arhats, and newly converted mighty Kings. All made sincere and humble obeisance to the Buddha and departed with grateful and joyful hearts.
Devadatta became notorious in later days by attempting to found a new sect of his own with severer and stricter rules than those prescribed by the Buddha. He acquired great skill in magic of a worldly kind, including hypnotism. This he practiced on the young Prince Ajatasutru, son of pious Bimbisara, bringing him to a determination to murder his father. Becoming king of Magadha, Ajatasutru had a special monastery built for Devadatta. Devadatta prevailed and induced the new king to help him oust Gotama from the leadership of the Sangha Brotherhood, claiming that old age had overtaken the Blessed One.
Buddha, ignoring this folly, said of his cousin:- “He is as one who seeks to pollute the ocean with a jar of poison.”
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sp; Seeing that his plot to wrest power from the Blessed One had failed, and not realizing that the Blessed One did not think in terms of “power” or “weakness,” Devadatta proceeded to plot against his life. Bands of cutthroats were set up to kill the Lord, but they were converted as soon as they saw him and listened to his preaching, won over by his loving and dignified bearing. The rock hurled down from the Gridhrakuta hill to hit the Master split in two, and luckily both pieces passed by without doing him much harm. A drunken elephant was let loose on the royal highway just at the time the Blessed One was coming along that path; the savage and spiteful behemoth, beholding Buddha, came to himself at once, and bending, became docile in his presence, for, like St. Francis of Assisi, the Blessed One had a strange power over animals. With lotus hand the Master patted the head of the beast, even as the moon lights up a flying cloud, and said:-
“The little elephant breaks down the prickly forest, and by cherishing him we know that it can profit men; but the cloud that removes the sorrow of the elephant old-age, this none can bear. You! swallowed up in sorrow’s mud! if not now given up, lust, anger and delusion will increase yet more and grow.”
The elephant called Dhanapalaka, his temples running with pungent sap, and who is difficult to hold, does not eat a morsel when bound; the elephant longs for the elephant grove.
—DHAMMAPADA
To his disciples the Buddha said:- “Silently I endured abuse as the elephant in battle endures the arrow sent from the bow; for the world is ill-natured. They lead a tamed elephant to battle, the king mounts a tamed elephant, the tamed is the best among men, he who silently endures abuse. Mules are good, if tamed, and noble Sindhu horses, and elephants with large tusks; but he who tames himself is better still.”
Thus the Blessed One was equally minded to Devadatta, the conspirator, and to Rahula, his own worthy son. Devadatta was regarded by the members of the Order as a typical “fool.” Each enlightened Bhikshu understood and believed that Devadatta will come again as a Buddha, knowing that all things are the same in Supreme Reality of Anuttara-Samyak-Sambodhi (Highest Perfect Wisdom).
Young King Ajatasutru, seeing the dismal failure of his foolish heretical hero, suffering greatly from the pangs of conscience, sought peace in his distress by going to the Blessed One and learning the way of salvation.
Jealousy rose in the hearts of other heretical leaders owing to the Master’s massive popularity and the gifts which pious laypeople were bestowing on the disciples of the Buddha. These leaders sought to drag the Blessed One’s reputation through the mud and discredit him in the eyes of the people. A false nun belonging to a heretical sect was persuaded to accuse the Blessed One of adultery before the entire assemblage. Chincha’s callous lie was exposed. The heretics made another attempt to blast the Master with calumny. They got a woman called Sundari to spread a rumor that she had passed the night in the bed-chamber of the Teacher. This slander was also repudiated, but meanwhile the conspirators had Sundari killed by a band of drunks bribed for the purpose. The vicious fools threw the corpse in the bushes near the monastery in the Jeta Park. The heretics wanted it to look like an attempt on the part of Gotama’s followers to cover up a scandal, and that they had lost their heads in so doing. Consequently loud voices were raised demanding legal steps to be taken against the Lord Buddha. But the drunken murderers fell out and began fighting in the tavern, accusing one another and so the secret leaked out. They were arrested that night and brought before the king’s tribunal. On questioning, they admitted their guilt and revealed the names of their employers. On still another occasion, Narasu writes:-“The heritics instigated Srigupta to take the life of the Master by poisoning his food and misleading him into a pit of fire, but by pity and calm forgiveness the Holy One saved Srigupta from spite and crime and showed how mercy conquers even a foe, and thus he taught the rule of forgiveness sublime, freeing his followers from the woe of the world.”
Elated and believing, perceiving the serenity, the moral earnestness, the sweet reasonableness of the Master, more and more disciples joined the Brotherhood. Of his Twelve Great Disciples, 500 years before Christ and His Twelve, the Blessed One said: “Save in my religion the Twelve Great Disciples, who, being good themselves, rouse up the world and deliver it from indifference, are not to be found.”
One day while staying in the southern district the Buddha visited the Brahman village of Ekanala. A wealthy Brahman, cane in hand, was overseering his laborers who were sweating with oxen in the field. The Buddha, begging-pot in hand, calmly approached the harassed and vexatious squire. Some of the humble laborers came to the Blessed One and made obeisance with palms pressed together, but the millionaire was annoyed and rebuked the Holy One with these words: “O you Quiet One, I plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat; it would be better if you were in like manner to plough and sow, and then you would also have food to eat.”
“O Brahman,” replied the Blessed One, “I too plough and sow, and having ploughed and sown, I eat.”
“But,” said the Brahman, “if you are a farmer, where are the signs of it? Where are your bullocks, the seed, and the plough?”
Then the Teacher answered: “Faith is the seed I sow; devotion is the rain that fertilizes it; modesty is the plough-shaft; the mind is the tie of the yoke; mindfulness is my ploughshare and goad. Truthfulness is the means to bind; tenderness, to untie. Energy is my team and bullock. Thus this ploughing is effected, destroying the weeds of delusion. The crop that I harvest is the Ambrosial fruit of Nirvana, and by this labor all sorrow is brought to an end.”
Whereupon this Brahman, ignoring his servant who stood beside him, himself poured milk-rice into a golden bowl and handed it to the Lord Buddha saying: “Eat, O Gotama, the milk-rice. Indeed, thou art a farmer; for thou, Gotama, accomplishest a ploughing, which yields the fruit of immortality.”
To the assembled pious clan of Likkhavi princes the Blessed One said:- “To gain the end of wisdom first banish every ground of ‘self ’; this thought of ‘self ’ shades every lofty aim, even as the ashes conceal the fire, treading on which the foot is burned.
“Pride and indifference shroud this heart, too, as the sun is obscured by the piled-up clouds; supercilious thoughts root out all modesty of mind, and sorrow saps the strongest will.
“As I am a conqueror amid conquerors, so he who conquers ‘self ’ is one with me.
“He who little cares to conquer ‘self,’ is but a foolish master; beauty, of earthly things, family renown and such things, all are utterly inconstant, and what is changeable can give no rest of interval.
“This right apprehension once produced then there is deliverance from greedy desire arising from ‘self,’ for a false estimate of excellency produces a greedy desire to excel, while a false view of demerit produces anger and regret, but this idea of excelling and also of inferiority both destroyed, the desire to excel and also anger are destroyed.
“Anger! how it changes the comely face, how it destroys the loveliness of beauty!”
As when a snake subdued by charms glistens with shining skin, so the Likkhavi warriors were appeased by the Blessed One’s words and prospered in peace in their lovely valley. They found their joy in quietness and seclusion, meditating only on religious truth.
“What monk, O monks, adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood?” spoke the Buddha to Sariputra, to Maudgalyayana, to Ananda, to Anuruddha, to Revata, and to Kasyapa, on a cloudless night wafted with fragrance in the heavenly Wood. “It is the monk, O monks, who, having turned from his begging round and partaken of his meal, sits down with crossed legs under him, body upright, and brings himself to a state of recollected-ness, ‘I will not rise from this spot,’ he resolves within himself, ‘until freed from clinging, my mind attains to deliverance from all Bane.’ Such is the Monk, O monks, who truly adds to the glory of Gosingam Wood.”
The truth is older than the world, heavier than history, a greater loss than blood, a greater gift than bread.
In his 80th y
ear as Nirmanakaya Buddha walking upon the terrace of the earth, yet like all of us a spiritual ghost in the Divine Ground, he suddenly said: “The time of my complete deliverance is at hand, but let three months elapse, and I shall reach Nirvana.”
Tathagata, seated beneath a tree, straightaway was lost in ecstasy, and willingly rejected his allotted years, and by his spiritual power fixed the remnant of his life.
Buddha rising from out of his ecstasy announced to all the world:-
“Now I have given up my term of years: I live henceforth by power of faith; my body like a broken chariot stands, no further cause of ‘coming’ or of ‘going,’ completely freed from earth, heaven and hell, I go enfranchised, as a chicken from its egg.
“Ananda! I have fixed three months to end my life, the rest of life I utterly give up; this is the reason why the earth is greatly shaken.”
Cried Ananda: “Have pity! save me, master! perish not so soon!”
The Blessed One replied: “If men but knew their own nature, they would not dwell in sorrow. Everything that lives, whatever it be, all this is subject to destruction’s law; I have already told you plainly, the law of things ‘joined’ is to ‘separate.’”
And as Ananda wept in the dark wood, the Blessed One spoke to him these sad, true words:-
“If things around us could be kept for aye, and were not liable to change or separation, then this would be salvation! Where can this be sought?
“That which you may all attain I have already told you, and tell you, to the end.
“There is love at the center of all things and all things are the same thing. Svaha! I am resolved, I look for rest. The one thing needful has been done, and has long been done.