Maitreya's Semtsema (Part 2 of 6)

by Khenchen Appey Rinpoche

If we want to practise the Dharma, it is not necessary for us to try to learn everything. The main thing is to practise compassion. If we practise compassion, we have the foundation, the teachings, the qualities, the stages leading to Enlightenment, all in the palm of our hand. Once we practise compassion, there’s not much else we need to do.

Compassion is the essence of the Dharma, but almost as important is the meditation on impermanence and death. If we fully understand the teaching on impermanence and death, we do away with all the difficulties and obstacles that arise as excuses not to practise the Dharma.

Once we begin to practise the Dharma in earnest, we come to appreciate the qualities of the Buddha, and this empowers us to gain thorough liberation from everything negative that afflicts us. ‘Moksha’, or thorough liberation, is expressed in the second verse of the Semtsema: “O Sage, you who are free from all obscurations”. These words address the One who has gained freedom from all the obstacles, both gross and subtle, that bind beings into karma and defilements. He is the Fully Enlightened One, the Sage, the Muni, the Saint who has the absolute ability to remain free from all obscurations. He embodies the qualities of One who has attained thorough liberation.

The reason why we emphasise the Fully Enlightened One who is free from all obscurations, is because even though freedom, or moksha, is achieved by certain worldly beings, the nature of their liberation is limited. For instance, some worldly beings may be endowed with certain qualities, and may attain particular aspects of liberation, but their qualities do not free them completely from the obscuration of defilements or the obscuration of knowledge. The sravakas and pratyekas, for instance, may have become free from the obscuration of karma and defilements, but nevertheless, they have yet to become free from the obscuration of knowledge. On the other hand, the Fully Enlightened One is fully free from all defilements and obscurations. The verse above refers to freedom from all obscurations, which means that He is free from all obscurations, without a single exception. The Fully Enlightened One has attained thorough liberation.

There are different aspects to thorough liberation. The first two are related to the fact that the Fully Enlightened One is able to create manifestations of Himself, both visible and invisible. The first of these two is the ability of the Fully Enlightened One to create manifestations of Himself that others can actually behold – this is called ‘visible manifestation’. Here, the Enlightened One creates a manifestation of Himself that He renders visible to others. It is the miraculous manifestation of the Enlightened One assuming physical form. Some of these manifestations may be very attractive, and some may be less so. There is a limitless array of physical forms that the Fully Enlightened One may adopt in order to assist beings and guide them out of their ignorance. This is called thorough liberation of physical manifestation.

The second aspect to thorough liberation is the manifestation of invisible forms. Here, the Enlightened One manifests Himself, but His manifestation is invisible to beings, it has no visible form. In both these cases, the manifestations are an expression of thorough liberation.

Another aspect of thorough liberation is manifestation through beauty, whereby all manifestations of the Fully Enlightened One are attractive. Ordinary objects pale in comparison with the beauty of His manifestations, and thereby cease to be attractive to beings who are exposed to them. The purpose of this thorough liberation is to destroy the attachment of beings to ordinary objects.

Yet another form of thorough liberation is called the meditative concentration of formlessness. This meditation on formlessness is the realisation that all things are formless.

The Fully Enlightened One has also attained the thorough liberation of cessation. This refers to the liberation from ordinary perceptions and feelings, through which phenomena manifest. By virtue of this liberation, all ordinary perceptions and feelings, all concepts, completely cease.

So, the first supreme quality of the Fully Enlightened One is immeasurability, the immeasurability of His compassion; and His second quality is freedom from all obscurations.

The third quality of the Fully Enlightened One is the dominion over all phenomena. This is a quality that surpasses all other worldly qualities. It expresses itself through the Fully Enlightened One manifesting as any phenomenon whatsoever, whether in the animate or in the inanimate world. For instance, it can express itself through beautiful features of nature and, when it does, it far surpasses in beauty any of nature’s ordinary features. This quality of dominion over all phenomena can express itself through the Fully Enlightened One assuming the form of any phenomenon in the animate realm and, when it does, its quality far surpasses that of any ordinary phenomenon within this realm. This serves to induce and inspire beings onto the path.

Another way that the Fully Enlightened One guides beings through severing their attachment to ordinary phenomena, is by rendering them invisible. By making invisible the object of a being’s attachment, there is no longer an object to be attached to, and so desire for it is eliminated. So turning visible forms into invisible forms is another way in which the Fully Enlightened One liberates beings.

In the same way, the Fully Enlightened One can transmute colours, shapes and textures that beings are attached to, and transform them into something far superior to anything in the ordinary realm, so that the latter ceases to be attractive and a source of attachment.

While worldly beings such as sravakas or pratyekas may be able to control or transform certain objects in order to curtail beings’ attachment to them, they cannot transmute all objects, all phenomena. For example, their abilities are limited when it comes to making visible objects invisible; on the other hand, there is no visible object whatsoever that the Fully Enlightened One cannot render invisible. There is no form that the Fully Enlightened One cannot transmute into formlessness. This is another aspect to the quality of having complete dominion over all phenomena. Only the Fully Enlightened One is endowed with this quality.

And so, the next verse, “Homage to whose mind is liberated”, refers to the fact that the Fully Enlightened One has exhaustive meditative samadhi, or concentration.

All phenomena, the four elements of water, air, fire and earth, all colours, all textures, all the ingredients that produce appearances, that make the world what it is, all these are infinitely transmutable by the Enlightened One’s exhaustive meditation. This means that through His samadhi, He can make a mountain appear out of an atom, or He can make it so that the whole world is overwhelmed with water, or with fire, or half with water and half with fire. These limitless manifestations of the transmutation of not only appearances and the four elements, but also that of space, and that of consciousness, are the domain of one who has exhaustive meditative samadhi.

“You who embrace all knowable things with your knowledge” refers to the exhaustive quality of the Fully Enlightened One according to which His knowledge encompasses all knowable phenomena. The knowledge of ordinary beings is infinitesimal in comparison to what there is to know, whereas the Fully Enlightened One is omniscient, which means that He knows absolutely everything there is to know. He is omnipresent, and all phenomena fall within His sphere of knowledge.

This means that the qualities of the Buddha are such that the mere exposure of a being’s senses or mind to Him, will cause this being’s defilements to be naturally eradicated.

“Homage to whose mind is liberated” addresses the one whose mind is liberated from all obscurations, both gross and subtle. Sravakas and pratyekas may have become free of the gross obscurations of defilements, but they are yet to eradicate the obscuration of subtle knowledge. The Buddha, however, is one who is completely liberated from both these obscurations.

These supreme qualities are not achievable by us at the moment, however hard we may try. They belong uniquely to the domain of the One with exhaustive samadhi. But, through devotion and sustained practice of meditative concentration, we can eventually achieve these qualities.

Furthermore, as is expressed in the verse “You who tame all the manifest defilements without exception”, not only is the Enlightened One in meditative concentration devoid of defilements, but He is also able to uproot and suppress the manifest and hidden defilements in the mind-stream of the fortunate sentient beings who become exposed to the meditative concentration of a Fully Enlightened One.

When the Buddha goes on His alms round, He is not there to seek alms at all. That’s not His purpose. His purpose is to subdue and tame the defilements of sentient beings who might be exposed to Him. His purpose and intention is to eradicate the defilements of sentient beings.

This means that the qualities of the Buddha are such that the mere exposure of a being’s senses or mind to Him, will cause this being’s defilements to be naturally eradicated. So, a further quality of the Buddha is that, just by being who He is, the defilements of beings are uprooted by His mere presence. His presence has the natural activity of suppressing all manifest defilements in sentient beings, without exception.

This natural ability is not limited to eradicating certain defilements in certain sentient beings. There are no defilements of sentient beings whatsoever that are not eradicated by the mere presence of the Buddha. All manifest defilements of all sentient beings, without exception, are tamed by the qualities of the Buddha. Not one single sentient being is excluded from the domain of the compassion of the qualities of the Buddha through which He tames the manifest defilements, or gross defilements, of sentient beings. Furthermore, not only does the mere presence of the Buddha destroy manifest defilements, but it also destroys latent, more deeply rooted defilements. And it is for this reason that the Buddha manifests Himself to sentient beings. He sees sentient beings’ defilements, and when He does, His natural tendency is compassion. All defiled sentient beings become objects of His compassion. His power is such that He is able to dispense compassion toward any suffering being, and all the defilements of those sentient beings, however subtle they may be, are uprooted by His compassion.

When we, as ordinary beings, become exposed to someone who is angry, jealous, aggressive or abusive, we automatically dislike this person, and can even come to see him or her as an enemy. On the other hand, when the Fully Enlightened Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas become exposed to sentient beings with such characteristics or defilements, They will not see these sentient beings as enemies. All They will see are their defilements that need to be uprooted and destroyed. They will see a sentient being who needs to be cared for, to be protected from the unconscious enemy that he or she has fallen prey to.

Sentient beings wish to be free from suffering, but they don’t know how this can be done. It’s not that they’re not interested in obtaining happiness, this actually is the very thing dearest to their hearts, but they are completely unable to do so. They wish for happiness, but they don’t know what its causes are. They wish to be free from suffering, but they’re ignorant of how to get there.

And so, through an act of compassion, we need to know what it is that makes sentient beings suffer. Sentient beings suffer through their own actions. Their actions are actually caused by their own unconscious defilements. Unawares to them, their defilements make them commit acts that create suffering; and so we need to discover the relationship between the suffering of beings and their actions, of their actions with their defilements, and we need to realise that defilements are caused by selfishness, by self-grasping.

When we fully realise that our own grasping is the root cause of afflictions, that afflictions cause negative actions, and that negative actions cause suffering, then we see the causal chain of the suffering of beings. We can only help sentient beings by knowing the causes of their suffering. Otherwise, however good our intentions are, we cannot help beings. As novice practitioners of the Dharma, the first thing we need to learn is our relationship with our defilements: what are our defilements, what is our view of them, what we consider them to be. We need to recognise our defilements as faults, as something very negative, that can only bring harm. We need to develop a kind of aversion to them, and see them as an enemy, as something that we cannot fall prey to, and that should not control us. We should try to avoid them at all costs and, if possible, try to suppress them, and never ever surrender to them. We should learn how to overcome and defeat them.

As novice practitioners, this should be our primary intention and our main objective on the path. Not only should we refrain from falling prey to defilements, but we should also act as guardians, preventing them from afflicting others.

We can aspire to obtain the same kind of qualities that sravakas and pratyekabuddhas have, by making a deliberate effort to help others attain the happiness that they so desire. We can do this by fervently reciting aspiration prayers that beings may be able to experience the result that they aspire to. On the other hand, the Fully Enlightened One does not need to aspire to results or to pray for them; He has omniscient knowledge of what will be the fruit of His activities; He fully knows the interrelatedness of circumstances that come as a result of particular causes.

Another quality of the Buddha is that of spontaneous accomplishment. Other beings, like sravakas and ordinary sentient beings, have to invest a lot of time and effort in realising their intended goals. But Buddhas don’t need to plan or strive to achieve something. This is spontaneously accomplished because they have omniscience.

The next set of qualities described by the verses relate to what is called the four sets of the intelligence of discriminating awareness. Of these, the first one is the discriminative awareness of phenomena, of dharmas, of reality as it is. This refers to the knowledge of the definition of each object; if we take fire as an example of an object, we first have its actual definition – the fact that we can see fire as an object is the basis for our objectification; and then, we have its unique characteristic, in this case heat, which distinguishes the object, fire, from any other object. The Fully Enlightened One has this intelligence of discriminating awareness, of knowing the meaning and definition of each and every phenomenon, its basis, and the definitive characteristic that distinguishes it from every other object. This is what we call the intelligence of discriminative awareness that knows phenomena, their base and their definition.

Not only does the Buddha know the nature of phenomena, but He also knows how to expound it. And so the discriminative awareness of phenomena has two aspects; the first is that of knowing the true nature of dharmas, and the second is that of being able to explain it.

The third discriminative awareness refers to the Fully Enlightened One’s knowledge of the definite etymology of words, their definite meaning. He knows all the languages of all sentient beings. He knows the names, or labels, of all phenomena. These are of two kinds: some are called ‘merely labelled’, which means to say that there is no particular reason why they are named as they are. Others have what we call ‘inferentially accomplished meanings’, where their etymology is defined by their meaning. The name of the Buddha, for example, has inferentially accomplished meaning, in the sense that the etymology of His name is defined by the inferentially accomplished qualities with which He is endowed. And so the ability of the Buddha to know the meaning of all words and languages, their labels, and their inferential meaning, is called the etymological intelligence of discriminative awareness.

The fourth is what we call the distinctive awareness of supreme intelligence. It refers to the fearlessness of knowledge that the Buddha is endowed with. This inner power or fearlessness comes from a strong sense of confidence in knowing the meaning of a word. The Buddha has a full understanding of each and every word, and has the limitless ability to express their meaning in the most effective way possible. And He has boundless knowledge and skillful means that allow Him to explain the teachings.

So the third and the fourth attributes of distinctive awareness that the Buddha is endowed with, relate to the extraordinary intelligence and courage that provide Him with the unobstructed ability to penetratingly articulate the teachings, and to dispense them in the best way possible for them to be understood by any listener whatsoever.

So here, the author pays homage to the Buddha who is endowed with these four discriminative awarenesses. These are also within the scope of sravakas and pratyekabuddhas dwelling on the ninth bhumi, or ninth stage of enlightenment. But at the highest, unsurpassable stage, the ultimate discriminative awarenesses are uniquely within the domain of the Fully Enlightened One.