Showing posts with label emptiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emptiness. Show all posts

Monday, 5 June 2017

The Ch’an Teachings of the Sixth Patriarch Hui-Neng 六主惠能

My old university research paper about the Buddhist teachings of a famous ancient Chinese monk from the 7th century.  Funny how I wrote this 20 years ago, as an undergraduate student in year four, for a course “History of Chinese Thought”, long before I became a “dharma girl” (in the Tibetan tradition).  

I didn’t know anything about anything but the professor did say to me:

“Final exam, you wrote the best answer, better than my graduate students, on the emptiness question – on the definition of nothingness.  ”

Ha ha:  I was that girl who got good grades in school.  And now, in this our Dog-eat-doggy 21st century, I still haven’t learned all the tricks to “empty” my two mental obscurations – afflictive and knowledge – directly.


Like The Elephant Man, I fight for my human dignity, I cry,

“I have afflictions, but I am not an affliction:  I am a human being.  
With feelings.  Therefore, I am not an object of abandonment.”

This our troubled times, I fight for the dignity of all SSBs,
“You are not an affliction:  you are a suffering sentient being.
Therefore, you are also not an object of abandonment.”

我是有情 、雖然「我」有煩惱、我並不是「煩惱」所以、我不是「拋棄之物 」妳們也不是 。

Lama says, “We are all in jail, our minds, in jail.   Samsara Jail .  You, must get out of jail, samsara jail.  Study and practice the Buddha-dharma.  Your mind, get out of jail.”


Sunday, 7 August 2016

In Praise of Dependent Origination


1.    He who speaks on the basis of seeing, this makes him a knower and teacher unexcelled, I bow to you, O Conqueror, you who saw dependent origination and taught it.

2.    Whatever degenerations there are in the world, the root of all these is ignorance; you taught that it is dependent origination, the seeing which will undo this ignorance.

3.   So how can an intelligent person not comprehend that this path of dependent origination is the essential point of your teaching?