Maitreya's Semtsema (Part 4 of 6)

by Khenchen Appey Rinpoche

We have already seen in the preceding parts of this teaching that the Buddha’s qualities are infinite and impossible for ordinary beings to fathom. We have seen how through His clairvoyance, wisdom and infinite compassion, the Fully Enlightened One has the power to liberate sentient beings from the four maras, the causes of the suffering of beings.

The text goes on to expound a further set of qualities of the Buddha, known as the four fearlessnesses of the Fully Enlightened One. According to these, the Buddha has total inner confidence and courage, which make Him totally unaffected by any kind of opposition to, or criticism of, Himself and His teachings. The activities related to these four fearlessnesses are twofold: first, they provide the Buddha with an unequivocal sense of confidence in His teachings, thus keeping Him completely safe from any vilification by detractors. Secondly, this complete conviction in His teachings allows Him to help beings; for example, through His absolute knowledge of the thirty-seven attributes of Enlightenment, the Fully Enlightened One intrinsically knows each one of the defilements of sentient beings and each one of their antidotes; furthermore, He knows how every single defilement of every single being can be purified. Through this conviction, He can help beings to become free of their defilements and thus ripen their liberation.

Because of these four fearlessnesses, the Buddha is indomitable. He is impervious to any kind of challenge by holders of extreme views, heretics or even powerful gods. However valid or logical these challenges might seem, the Buddha is easily capable of defeating them, and they are unable to cause the slightest dent in His confidence and courage.

A further set of the Buddha’s qualities is that He has no need to keep anything secret. He feels no apprehension that, by others being privy to His views or thoughts, He might make Himself vulnerable to refutation or intimidation. When in the midst of large gatherings, nothing makes Him feel inhibited, nervous or threatened, and so He’s able to dispense His teachings with great confidence and glowing qualities, instilling consummate respect in the minds of His listeners.

Yet another set of qualities is that of the three well-established recollections, or mindfulnesses. This refers to the ability of the Buddha to stabilise the mind with awareness. When the Fully Enlightened One teaches, He feels no attachment or aversion to the reaction of His audience. Whether His listeners are filled with good intentions, respect and devotion, or whether they are physically present but mentally absent and do not appreciate the teachings, or whether they begin the session with great enthusiasm and gradually lose it, the Buddha is not affected. He feels no attachment to those who revere Him, and no aversion toward those who ignore or reject Him. The Buddha is able to free Himself from the two extremes of aversion and attachment, and can thus remain in a perfect state of equanimity. This is what we call the power of stabilising the mind with mindfulness.

Another aspect of the three mindfulnesses is that the Fully Enlightened One shows no sign of weariness while dispensing the teachings and is able to abide in the equanimity of mindfulness from the beginning to the end of His exposition. Due to these qualities of mindfulness, the Fully Enlightened One is persuasive and is able to attract and captivate the minds of His audience.

The next verse reads: “Homage to You, the Omniscient One, who are truly meaningful because You are not capable of anything but omniscient conduct at all times and in all Your activities.” This refers to the ability of the Buddha to only perform appropriate actions of body, speech and mind. There is never a single activity of the Buddha that is not in accord with the needs and benefit of sentient beings, never an activity that is ill-timed or ill-gauged. Whilst certain actions of Arhats, however well-established in their enlightened qualities they may be, can at times be flawed, there is not the remotest possibility of any single action of the Buddha being faulty.

And the text goes on in saying: “In Your activities in the world for all beings, You’re never untimely and therefore Your deeds are always meaningful. Homage to You who are never forgetful.” The Buddha is perfectly accurate in His timing, His activities are always performed at exactly the right time, never an instant too early or too late. The mind of the Buddha is completely and permanently aware and conscious and therefore never suffers from any kind of forgetfulness or lack of punctuality; thus He is able to carry out the right activity at exactly the right time, in exactly the right place.

The following verse eulogises the evercompassionate mind of the Buddha, whose single intent to benefit each and every sentient being is actualised at every moment. The Buddha gazes and, through His watchful eye, He sees the needs of sentient beings and looks after their well-being. Unfailingly altruistic and compassionate in His intention, He knows how best each and every kind of suffering can be relieved.

The compassion of the Buddha is ‘mahakaruna’, or great compassion. There is a great difference between compassion and great compassion. Whereas the Sravakas and Pratiekabuddhas are endowed with compassion, only the Fully Enlightened One is endowed with great compassion. Sravakas and Pratiekabuddhas do not have compassion for all sentient beings. They feel compassion primarily for beings suffering in the Kharmadatu, or desire realm. They only see the manifest suffering of sentient beings, and do not take the initiative of relieving or eliminating it. They don’t have the altruistic compassion to take the suffering of others upon themselves.

On the other hand, the great compassion with which only the Fully Enlightened One is endowed, is such that there is not a single being that is not its object, from beings in the lowest forms of rebirth to those dwelling in the Bodhisattva stage, including the Sravakas and Pratiekabuddhas, not to mention ordinary beings. His great compassion includes every single being that is not fully enlightened, and it takes on their suffering and the causes of their suffering. His willingness and determination to relieve this suffering, this ardent act of empathy, is what is referred to as Mahakaruna.

So in the light of this, when we practise the path of Mahakaruna and we begin to feel the suffering of sentient beings, we should be driven to take on all that suffering, and create the firm intention to relieve and remove it. Such an altruistic shouldering of the responsibility of eradicating the suffering of all beings is proper to the path of the Great Vehicle.

The next set of qualities of the Buddha that are described in the eulogy is that of His eighteen unmixed unique characteristics. This refers to the characteristics of the Buddha that are unique to Him, and are therefore unmixed, unshared by anyone else.

These eighteen unique characteristics are: six unique qualities related to the conduct of body, speech and mind; six unique characteristics related to realisation; three unique characteristics related to wisdom; and three unique characteristics related to enlightened activities.

Of the six unique characteristics related to the conduct of the Buddha, the first appertains to the conduct of the Buddha’s body, which is absolutely free from mistaken physical conduct. The physical conduct of the Sravakas far surpasses that of ordinary beings, but in comparison to that of the Fully Enlightened One, if is somewhat faulty. There is nothing in the physical conduct of the Buddha that is inappropriate or flawed.

As for the unmistaken verbal conduct of the Buddha, His voice is utterly unable to produce an unpleasant or undesirable sound. Even Arhats at times will generate certain ungainly sounds with their voices or their laughter, but this never happens with the Buddha.

And as regards the unmistaken mental conduct of the Buddha, His unfailing mindfulness ensures that it is always impeccable. Unlike Sravakas and Arhats, who sometimes lack mindfulness and therefore whose actions don’t always live up to their intentions, the Buddha never strays from meditative stabilisation, and therefore His mental conduct is flawless. A further quality of the Buddha’s mind is that He sees no duality between Samsara and Nirvana. Unlike Sravakas and Arhats, who are still prone to dualistic conceptions and feel attachment to Nirvana and aversion to Samsara, the Buddha doesn’t see an iota of duality in anything whatsoever within Samsara and Nirvana. One more unmistaken quality of the Buddha’s mental conduct is that His mind doesn’t suffer from lack of analysis. Whereas Arhats may sometimes engage in analysis as to how to best help beings, but actually fail to apply the correct remedy, the Buddha’s mind is free of any kind of faulty analysis, and His actions are always well analysed and well executed.

The reason why a comparison is made between Arhats and the Buddha is not to diminish the qualities of the Arhats. The purpose of this exposition is rather to emphasise the magnitude of the infinite qualities of the Buddha by comparing them favourably to those of Arhats, themselves endowed with supreme qualities. This comparison is made with an aim to inspire ordinary beings to generate stronger faith in and veneration for the Buddha’s qualities.

The next set of unmistaken qualities of the Fully Enlightened One refers to qualities related to realisation. First among these is the willingness or determination to show the truth of the Dharma to sentient beings in order to eliminate their suffering. The Buddha engages joyously and with perfect mindfulness in His effort to show beings the path of remaining in the meditative concentration that leads to the understanding of the lack of inherent existence of the self. As a result of this, moksha, or thorough liberation is attained by these beings.

And so these are the six unmixed unique characteristics in relation to the realisation of the Buddha. These are not shared by Sravakas and Arhats because of the degeneration of their realisation. This does not mean that they were formerly endowed with something that degenerated, but rather that there are gross defilements, obscurations of knowledge, still obstructing their minds and preventing them from attaining realisation. The Fully Enlightened One, on the other hand, has removed all defilements and obscurations of knowledge, and has therefore attained thorough liberation.

Next are the three unmixed qualities in relation to the aspect of the mind of the Buddha that knows the present, past and future, instantly and spontaneously. There is nothing that obstructs or hinders effortless and simultaneous realisation of all things present, past and future, no matter how lengthy the passing of time. In this aspect as well, the knowledge of the Buddha infinitely surpasses that of the Arhats. There is a story related to this. It is about a householder called Palkye who strongly desired to become ordained. He approached Shariputra with his request, but was turned down because he was not deemed by Shariputra to have the necessary merit or seed of virtuous inclination that would make him worthy of ordination. Palkye approached several Arhats with the same plea but, as none of them could see any virtuous inclination in his mind, he was again rebuffed on the same ground that he lacked the required merit. When Palkye’s wish was finally brought to the attention of the Fully Enlightened One, He reprimanded Shariputra and the Arhats, saying that Palkye did indeed have the seed of virtuous inclination that would warrant him to be ordained. The Buddha related how, in a previous life where Palkye had been reborn as a pig, he had been chased by a dog around a stupa, thus creating the meritorious seed that would make him worthy of ordination. And so, whereas the Arhats cannot perceive the duration of eons and the space between eons, the mind of the Buddha transcends any duration of time, nothing is beyond His omniscience.

The same applies to inconceivable space, what we call ‘eons of eons of space’, meaning the distance between one place and another. Whereas even the Arhats’ concept of space is limited, the Buddha’s omniscient mind is unhindered by distance, however great. As an example of this, there is the story of Maugdalyanaputra, who had many miraculous abilities and great clairvoyance, but nevertheless could not see where his mother would be reborn. He consulted many Arhats, but none could help except the Fully Enlightened One who, through His omniscient mind, unhindered by the concept of distance, knew that Maugdalyana’s mother would be reborn in a realm called Öserchen, or the “Light-Filled Realm”. No one apart from the Buddha could see this, not even Maugdalyana himself.

Like eons of eons of time and space, the mind of the Buddha is unfathomable and inconceivable, it cannot be comprehended by anyone, not even by the Arhats.

Next are the three unmistaken characteristics of the Buddha relating to His enlightened activities, or ‘thinley’ in Tibetan. Of all the enlightened activities of the Buddha’s body, speech and mind, there is not a single one that won’t be virtuous or beneficial. On the other hand, although Arhats would never engage in non-virtuous deeds, there are times when their virtuous actions become mixed with neutral activities. But there is not the slightest possibility of the Enlightened One engaging in an activity that is not virtuous, while even His neutral activities are transmuted into virtuous ones. This is because there is not a single activity of the Buddha that is purposeless or meaningless. Every single one of His activities is generated by His primordial wisdom.

And here the author pays homage to these eighteen unique characteristics of the Fully Enlightened One, which make Him the peerless master and supreme teacher of all beings, including Sravakas and Pratiekabuddhas.