覺悟的條件

净空法师

自古以來，覺悟的人不多。在淨土宗，東晉廬山遠公大師的時代，只有一百二十三人往生，這是我們在歷史上看到最多的一會。而在禪宗六祖惠能大師會下開悟的，也只有四十三人。從這些地方，我們很清晰的明瞭，覺悟的人不多。什麼樣的人能覺悟？徹底犧牲自己利益的人能覺悟，如果對世間名聞利養放不下，五欲六塵的享受放不下，恩怨的情執放不下，就不可能覺悟。真正覺悟之人，並非要特殊的天才。釋迦牟尼佛會下的周利槃陀伽是愚鈍之人，他在世尊會下時間不長，亦能證阿羅漢果，原因就是他能放下。

我們在多生多劫之前，就曾經學過佛，遇到佛菩薩，供養過佛菩薩，種植深厚的善根。為何不開悟？病根是我們的情執沒有徹底放下。徹底放下情執之人，心裡只有一個念頭，就是為一切眾生服務。我們常聽說「為民服務」，此範圍小，這只是十法界裡的人法界。而為一切眾生服務，此範圍大，除了人之外，其他的九法界都包括了，這個心量多偉大！決定沒有自己，知道虛空法界一切眾生就是自己，為眾生服務就是為自己服務，此理很深。

若只為自己，不肯為人、為眾生，這是迷惑顛倒，迷失了自性，還害了自己，就是害自己生生世世永遠不能脫離輪迴；說得再明白點，永遠不能脫離三惡道。應當要曉得，我們生在人、天兩道很幸運，但時間很短促，佛經上的比喻說，我們是出來旅遊的，三惡道是故鄉，所以在三惡道的時間長。這是什麼原因？自私自利造成的，貪圖世間五欲六塵享受造成的。所以為自己是害自己，為眾生才是真正利益自己。這些道理與事實真相，迷在六道、迷在情欲之中的人不懂，也不會覺悟。

今天我們非常幸運知道這些道理與事實真相，對於佛菩薩的大慈大悲，才能體會到幾分。也開始漸漸醒悟過來，能夠學習佛菩薩，捨棄自己的妄想、分別、執著，以真誠的愛心，無私的布施供養，無條件的幫助一切眾生，這樣的人才會覺悟，才會開智慧。智慧與煩惱是一樁事情，迷的時候，也就是我們沒有放下自私自利的時候，我們的智慧都變成煩惱。若我們放下妄想分別執著，放下自私自利，無量無邊的煩惱馬上就轉變成無量無邊的智慧。佛經上講：「煩惱即菩提」，菩提是智慧；「生死即涅槃」，這是一樁事情。佛菩薩何以有智慧？佛菩薩沒有自己，只有眾生，念念為一切眾生，這就是佛菩薩；念念想到自己的利益，這種人就是凡夫，佛菩薩與凡夫的差別就在此地。我們真正清楚、明白了，在學佛過程當中，才能做到「轉惡為善」，這是第一個階段。

我們從第一個階段，提升到第二個階段「轉迷成悟」；希望再提升到第三個階段「轉凡成聖」。何謂凡聖？雖然轉迷成悟了，但是還無法脫離六道輪迴，那還是凡，脫離六道輪迴才稱作聖。六道以外是阿羅漢、辟支佛、菩薩、佛，此四種人是小聖，這還在十法界。佛法有小乘、大乘，這是小乘的聖者。超越十法界才是真正的大聖，即《華嚴經》上講的四十一位法身大士。大聖的觀念跟小聖不一樣，小聖慈悲、愛護、服務的對象，是三千大千世界的眾生，所以他的心量是三千大千世界。大聖的心量更大，是盡虛空、遍法界，無量無邊諸佛剎土裡的一切眾生，為他慈悲、愛護、服務的對象，這就是佛法講的大乘。超凡入聖是世尊、諸佛如來教導我們真正的目的，是希望我們作大聖，而非作小聖。

「心包太虛，量周沙界」，是大聖的心量。這兩句話，雖然讀的人、念的人很多，但心量還是放不開，還是不能脫離自私自利，只是用這兩句話來讚美釋迦牟尼佛及諸佛如來，這兩句話永遠是別人的，不是自己的，這是我們的過失。這兩句是真實話，盡虛空、遍法界一切眾生的心量，都是包虛空法界的。由此可知，遍虛空法界是我們的真心，是我們本有的心量。佛說我們迷惑了，把這麼大的心量迷失了，現在變成很小的心量，連兩個人都容納不下。聽人家造謠、毀謗，就幾天都睡不著覺，這個心量多小！

我們學佛學的是什麼，自己要知道。上根人拓開心量，中下根人改過遷善，從事相上逐步改正自己錯誤的行為、想法、看法。上根利智之人從根本修，根本是觀念，即現在學術裡講的人生觀、宇宙觀；觀就是看法，對宇宙人生的看法。從根本修是將過去對宇宙人生錯誤的看法，立刻扭轉過來，與諸佛菩薩同一知見，《法華經》上講的「入佛知見」。只要觀念轉過來，思想、見解、言語、行為全部就轉過來了，這是佛家講的上根利智。

上根利智之人畢竟是少數，我們能否做到上根利智，佛明白的告訴我們，這個沒有難處，總在遇緣不同。實在講，雖然說沒有難處，但還是有條件的。第一是名利心要看得淡，日常生活容易滿足，粗茶淡飯的生活能過得很自在、很快樂，這是好條件。第二是要遇到善知識，或者沒有遇到善知識，能遇到佛法，喜歡讀經。只要具備這兩個條件，長時薰修，鈍根也會變成利根，愚痴也會變成智慧，周利槃陀伽就是很好的例子。因此，我們要想在一生當中，薰習成上根利智，只要依照佛的教誨去做，向古大德學習，他們在一生當中能成就，我們在一生當中也能成就。所以，只要願意過最低水平的生活，再加上一個「好學」就行了。好學一定是向佛學習，向菩薩學習，向祖師大德學習，這哪有不成就的道理！

煩惱少，智慧開；煩惱斷了，智慧就圓滿。圓滿的智慧，圓滿的愛心，圓滿的服務，佛家稱作大圓滿。這樣的人是少，正是善導大師所說的遇緣不同。我們今天很幸運，因緣具足，所以希望同修們要認真努力，我們一切為法界苦難眾生，我們不成就，他們就多受一天苦；我們早日成就，早日為他們服務，他們就早日脫離苦難。要常存此心，勉勵自己，勇猛精進，才能圓滿菩提。

Whatever is dependently co-arisen is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation is itself the Middle Way.

-- Nāgārjuna

The Missing Self in Buddhism and Psychology

by Asa Hershoff

THE BIG INVESTMENT

A few years ago, a friend of mine was ready, along with his wife, to retire. They had invested their life savings, the work of 20 years, to fund their golden years. Unfortunately, it was with a man named Madoff. In a single moment, they lost it all to this con artist and it was never recovered. What has this to do with the Dharma, mantra recitation, deity visualisation, mahamudra, Dzogchen, or glimpsing the luminosity of ultimate mind? Just like that retirement fund, the Dharma requires a tremendous investment, not only of money but of precious time, effort, thought, dedication, and even sacrifice. So the question becomes, where are we really putting all this energy? Because it is not guaranteed that it will go where it actually belongs, where it can really do us some good.

Flashback to 1982, when I was first contemplating entry into a three-year Vajrayana retreat, I had wrangled the position of a driver for my teacher, the Venerable Kalu Rinpoche. Touring New York, Boston, and points between, it helped that I had purchased a black Citroen that Rinpoche would have been familiar with from his extended time in France. One day, while giving a French student a ride, I asked when he planned on undertaking a retreat since at that time this was the logical path for Kalu Rinpoche’s students. In broken English, he spoke words that still ring in my ear: “Well, I’m not very impressed with the result.”

Indeed, I have known individuals who have done six-year retreats, and Eastern lamas who have done a cumulative 20 years in caves and isolated huts, and who were variously arrogant, self-important, self-centred, vindictive, or manipulative. There are cases of people who have abandoned the Dharma altogether after a three-year retreat, while others have committed suicide. As is public knowledge — and my unfortunate personal experience — a rare few seasoned Tibetan meditators have been sexual predators or out and out thieves, even black magicians.

Yet the same teachings and practices have clearly helped transform Western Dharma students and Eastern teachers into their best selves, beacons of compassion, integrity, inner strength, and impartiality. Meditation and mindfulness can save minds, save lives, and eradicate negativity and suffering. But there are also modern mindfulness masters who are self-satisfied, arrogant and engage in “virtue signalling” rather than actual virtue. So what gives? How can the very same Dharma produce such different results in different hands or minds? We can just shrug it off as individual differences, or karma, or pre-existing mental pathology. But there may be a more precise issue that we can put our finger on and perhaps do something about. 

UNRAVELLING A MYSTERY 

It comes back to where we invest, or “who” we are investing in; what part of us is receiving the Dharma, what part of us is penetrated by the ideas, practices, and experiences that encompass the path of Buddhism. To answer that question requires a dip into psychology, that vast repository of thinking on the nature of our relative self — not just our ultimate nature. This opens up to a much bigger issue, one central to psychology and spirituality alike, and why, in a sense, our entire culture has made a “bad investment” and continues to do so. It simply invests in the wrong self. But so can Buddhists, because both have overlooked the “missing self.” In many ways, the whole problem of humanity is a case of mistaken identity!

Back in 1982, John Welwood, a psychologist and student of Chogam Trungpa noticed a phenomenon he termed spiritual bypassing, which he defined as “using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” This could take the form of self-inflation or deflation, specialness or self-blame. He noted, rightly, that there are two lines of human development: becoming a genuine human person versus going beyond the person altogether. Theoretically, these parallel lines of development may come to a single point on some event horizon. But staying a dysfunctional person for untold lifetimes does not seem to accelerate that theoretical convergence.

Centuries before Welwood used this term, the old Zen masters of Japan used the term “the stink of Zen” to describe those who developed a persona of specialness while taking on the external trappings and activities of a monk, but without any internal shift. Seon Roshi and others used this term freely with their Western students as clearly this problem is endemic to spiritual training. Welwood even goes so far as to call it an “occupational hazard” of meditation.

But we are still left with an unanswered question about what it means to fix oneself on a psychological level so that we can progress on a spiritual level. The growing field of Buddhist psychology may offer some solutions. But there may be an even more direct and elegant answer from an unexpected source.

THE MISSING SELF IN PSYCHOLOGY 

I was always intrigued by the idea of the 25 cent gasket that disrupted the launch of a billion-dollar spaceship. The devil is in the details, and when foundational details are wrong — as anyone who has done any accounting knows — the errors carry through to all the future calculations. A few foundations block out of place at the bottom of our building, and that edifice can become a leaning tower of Pisa.

That was my impression of modern psychology after I came across a startling book, back in my pre-Buddhist days of the late 1970s. Within the pages of In Search of the Miraculous, G. I. Gurdjieff was quoted as saying: “Essence is the real in man, Personality is the false.” He described in detail how we have a basic nature, with its constitutional predispositions and tendencies, with our real potential, purpose, and destiny. What Trungpa called Basic Sanity or Basic Goodness is basically Essence, or is at least a core characteristic of this underlying stratum of our identity. Secondly, we develop, from an early age, a programmed, socialised, culturally moulded self in order to interface with the world.

Gurdjieff termed this Personality, but to avoid confusion with modern definitions, I use the word Persona, i.e. a mask or artificial facade. Having a common interface with other human beings (including language) is essential, but it should be a vehicle or a tool of our authentic Essence. In most cases that artificial construct, with no real existence of its own, is dominant while Essence is left to wallow and wither, without nourishment. Unfortunately, the whole of our modern consumer society is Persona-based, where image and impressions far, far outweigh the force of presence and being. Essence is neither promoted nor supported in most cases. It is style over substance, sizzle over steak.

THE CONFLICTED SELVES 

The Persona cannot grow and mature; it can only upgrade. A new way of speaking, a tweaked set of beliefs, different facial expressions, different emotional tones, and a new “sense of identity” can all be adopted or manufactured. Persona can have the guise of an activist, a doctor, an expert, a Buddhist. The forms are creatively infinite. Essence is that part that can grow, mature, develop, even transform. It is automatically connected to the spiritual self. And as Essence matures, it can form a True Persona, one that is fully congruent and accurately reflects who we really are, reflecting our life’s purpose and unique gifts. But it is also true that the cobbled together Persona has little or nothing in common with Essence. False Persona, once in ascendancy, is not happy to give up its artificial status. How and why we move from Essence to a Persona-based life is well beyond this short essay, but is a question that should stay prominent in one’s mind. It is the key that unlocks an understanding of the human condition.

Although the idea of a True Self has not gone unnoticed by psychologists such as Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Karen Horney, and C. G,. Jung, or some in the fields of positive psychology, social psychology, personality theory and the study of authenticity, mainstream psychology stubbornly takes the self to be one solid block. That fundamental miscalculation means that all research, reportage, surveys, statistics, and working models of traits, self-schema, self-view, developmental theory, and so on, are based on the assumption of this monolithic “personality.” This is the 25-cent part that dooms the planned interplanetary reaches of psychology. The same goes for the thriving field of self-help. But how does this impact our Dharma practice?

THE MISSING SELF IN SPIRITUALITY 

Spiritual systems in general, including Buddhism, portray a duality of mind. There is an ultimate being, a non-dual, non-local luminous consciousness that underlies our limited, subject-object experience of relative reality. And then there is our familiar mundane self. Often this is identified as the “ego,” a term oddly borrowed from Freud, who defined it quite differently. As such we have a two-self system in Buddhism (or you can call it a self and non-self system). Ego is the tyrant who usurps our spiritual self, the “narrow cell of your false identity.” It obscures our Buddha-nature, the spacious consciousness that transcends this localised identity. Yet we know our state can vary from mechanical, unaware sleepwalking through life, to an awakening, highly attuned awareness of one's own being and the vibrant world around us. Something big is lost when we lump everything about our normal state together and pathologise it. And something bad happens when we think we have to transcend, eliminate, or leap over that self. Because there are two very different creatures living in that egoistic self: Essence and Persona. Essence is the bridge to the spirit.

THE NEXT STEP 

Spiritual bypassing, and the stink of Zen, are both instances in which the Dharma enters Persona, but does not penetrate Essence. There is a third self, neither “ego” nor pure luminous consciousness, which if ignored, hobbles both modern psychology and Buddhism from fulfilling their grand promises. Indeed, it appears that becoming Essence-centred is the only healthy way toward spiritual development. Trungpa, Welwood, and thousands of other teachers have ways of helping drop down into Essence temporarily. If this mechanism was better understood, we would have a much better chance of living there. So does your Dharma practice enter Persona . . . or Essence?

There have been many Buddhas before me and will be many Buddhas in the future.

-- The Buddha

于身无所取,于修无所著,于法无所住

梦参老和尚

咱们拜佛也好，礼忏、念经也好，一天当中上殿过堂的，里头夹着毒素。所谓毒素，就是还有贪瞋痴，起心动念，不清净的地方太多了。吃饭的时候，今天很合口味，不知不觉就多吃两口；那不好吃的，勉强哪，差不多就算了，这里面都有爱憎。有时候发脾气，不敢跟人家发，在心里发，自己跟自己过不去。

这个事明明不晓得，根本不会，在很多人面前，怕失掉面子，勉强装会；不会的却装会，不懂装懂。因为在没得到清净的梵行之前，你的三业不会清净的。虽然也接受法，接受佛，接受僧，也皈依三宝，但这里头有毒素；毒素就是不纯，里头夹杂着爱染、爱见。为什么经过很多劫数都不能成道？成分不纯，不是清净行。

如果你能够放下，这样观察，“于身无所取，于修无所著，于法无所住”，过去已经过去了，不再思念。没有一个人不留恋过去的，因为做个梦，他会想起很多事，也许会想好几天；做个坏梦，也会恐惧好几天。为什么？过去的不能消灭掉。过去就过去了，还是不能截断；未来呢？没有一个人不会想未来的，将来我会怎么样等等，这也包括我们修道者在内。

一下想住住茅蓬，一下又想清净清净，人多了，烦乱修不成。那你就去住茅蓬去修吧! 一个人去修又害怕，三两个人又打闲岔，那怎么办呢? 就这样，反反复复，多生累劫都这样。大家共住吧，嫌着约束，一个人静住吧，又懈怠，又恐怖；一年又一年，一辈子又一辈子，无量劫就这么过来了。如果你执著，于法乐住，喜欢的，就专持哪一法，不喜欢的就排斥。这些执著，每个修道者都有，还不用说到不修道者。

《梵行品》是专门为出家人说的。为什么？去除你的执著，你执著的不得了，就不能够随缘，一随缘就变了。达到随缘不变，那你必须观，观身无所取，那身业就没有了；观修无所著是意业，意业也没有了。对于一切法无所住，无所住就不执著，一切法都不执著。佛说一切法，就是要你不执著；可是我们学哪一法就执著在哪一法上，不能梵行。梵行并不是说什么都不动，专门落于空寂，那成断灭了，不是那样的意思。

梵行清净是指什么? 是把你那个心洗干净。相信你这个心跟佛无二无别，那就非得用梵行，一切无著。当你面对持戒犯戒，修与不修，会有另一种看法。

以前有一位师父，他有两个徒弟，其中一个大徒弟，已经深入修行了，可是外表没有显现出来，外相就是睡大觉。另外一个小徒弟非常精明，看不起不聪明的师兄，“这个家伙，出家干什么？一天懒惰得要死！”不过他师父是知道的，非常重视大徒弟。这个小徒弟自以为很聪明，就很不满。

有一次他的师父就试验这个小徒弟，拿个夜壶，老年人夜间尿尿用品，那个夜壶是瓷的，他师父就让他小徒弟洗。洗一遍，他师父说不干净，再洗，洗两遍，还是不干净，再洗。洗了好多遍了，拿来总是不干净，他就没办法了，“师父，我洗不好了。”“你洗不好，找你师兄去洗。”

嘿，他就烦恼了，“我洗这么多遍都洗不好，他一天睡大觉，他会洗得好？我看他怎么洗？”他就拿那瓷的夜壶给他的师兄洗。他师兄在那膝盖上一顶，把这瓷夜壶翻过来了，再去洗，一洗就干净了，翻过来还不干净吗？这时候他才知道他的师兄是真正有德行的，真人不现相，现相就不是真人了。

你从外相看，你看不出来哪个好哪个坏，得从本质上看。你看这位师兄对什么事都糊里糊涂的，因为他什么都不执著。这个小徒弟很精灵的，就是因为他太执著了，他才精灵。懂得这个道理吗? 你以为他在睡大觉，其实是在观心呢!

不要在相上执著。看看自己的念头，一天都起什么念；念头要是什么都不执著，就是清净的。你要是看什么执著什么，一句话也放不下。看着一点事，牵涉你的放不下，那还可以，因为涉及你的自利。不干你的事，你也跟着搅乱，放不下，你说你不是糊里糊涂，麻烦吗？

这不只是说话，而是检查你的行为，身所做的，有时候都不是真切的，心所想的才是真切的。身口是被指挥者，它有个识，指挥它的是识，你把识降伏住了，虽然不行，还是得降伏这个心。识是被心所指挥的，心的层次太多了，共有四十二个。咱们现在从十住、十行开始，乃至于到十回向，十地，十一地；佛，不是那么容易成就的。

念诵《梵行品》，不用五分钟就可以念完了，要是去做，你要从凡夫地证到成佛。咱们讲的都是佛的境界、大菩萨的境界，一发心就成正觉了，这样的菩萨境界，能示现百劫作佛；可是我们的心，还没有完全梵行，唯佛与佛才能究竟梵行，不要把这个问题看简单了。

我们怎么办呢? 咱们从净行达到梵行，先修持文殊菩萨所教授的一百四十一愿，再达到法慧菩萨所说的，一切无所著，这个时候功德就大了。是什么功德呢? 发菩提心。发菩提心成佛，并不是那么容易的，读读《梵行品》就知道了。

要是我们做任何事都不执著，那就像一个痴呆似的，像傻子似的，其实并不傻。中国有句话，大智若愚，智能越大的，你看他像傻子一样。他就是傻，小事不注意，大事不糊涂；越大的事，清楚得很，小事他根本不在意，要这样去修行。

我们一天当中就执著穿衣、吃饭、人我关系，要是把心放在这个上头，怎么能修道呢？怎么能清净呢？贪瞋痴放下了，戒定慧才能生起；戒定慧能生起了，你才能够一切无著。这并不是不持戒，而是他持戒达到这种程度了，不持而持，不再作意了，他不会犯戒的。

To use your mind in a natural way means to avoid trying to control it. The more you try to control your mind, the more stray thoughts will come up to bother you.

-- Venerable Sheng Yen

Doing What Has to Be Done

by Prof. David Dale Holmes

Insight wisdom provides the power of mind to see and understand that all things are impermanent.

The development of insight wisdom is a gradual awakening process in which, over time and through persistent practise, we gradually begin to see arising phenomena — one mind-object after another. We come to see how all perceptual phenomena are insubstantial and not as real or as solid they seem or appear to be.

This is true not only of big things but also of small things, such as subtle mental-sense impressions as they impinge upon our minds.

They tingle our perceptions, making them seem as we wish them to be or do not wish them to be ─ especially when we are foolhardy enough to allow ourselves to go grasping after whatever we vainly think will be satisfying in the fleeting-nebulous illusions of sense perception.

Further, we need insight to develop the clear, incisive knowledge and wisdom necessary to see through the clever, sly, subtle tricks of the sense aggregates as being nothing more than biased, bursting energy bundles.

They try to fool the mind, to deceive it into perceiving arising phenomena in the way that the aggregates want to be seen, so that they can get their greedy hooks into resultant, arising feeling levels of delusive sense awareness.

Because of the power of these sly tricks of the sense aggregates, we urgently need to develop and depend on keen alertness and active mindfulness to constantly guard the doors of the six senses to the city of the mind. This city is teeming and swarming with hoards of deceptive appearances and phantasms after which the untrained mind will, consciously or unconsciously, want to chase and grasp in order to devour and enjoy or crush and kill.

Indeed, we crucially need to develop and depend on the combined defensive forces of sila, sati, and nana (right conduct, awareness, and insight knowledge), all working together to secure the citadel of the mind. Working to stand as mental forces and serve as guards against approaching deceptive apparitions, which have the potential during incautious mental lapses to penetrate security, when the mind is unconsciously relaxed and unguarded and then slips back into old habits.

We must note, also, that the normal worldly mind can become defensive and aggressive when it is compulsively grasping after tempting illusions and sensations. It aggressively dislikes being curbed or hindered.

It wants what it wants, and it does not easily tolerate anything getting in its way. This is why it becomes agitated, aggravated, and sometimes even out of control when things don’t turn out the way the unruly mind desires them to be. It may even act with defiance and violence against anything trying to control and train it to change its ways.

So how do we become trainers of the mind?

The untrained mind is much like a monkey or a child that grasps at things, following the momentary impulses of the eye. It sees and wants, even though, in reality, such impulses to grasp and clutch onto everything in sight are just momentary, empty sense perceptions and phantasms that bring no ultimate satisfaction.

The Buddha made the ingenious analogy that although the normal mind is naughty and greedy and uncontrolled, it can be compared to a wild elephant or stallion, which resists being controlled. However, the wild elephant or stallion has the potential to be calmed and tamed and eventually trained to become a beneficial and useful friend. We may come to see ourselves as similar to such an elephant or stallion, and when we do, we will know what to do, without anyone telling us how. The decision becomes ours alone.

When we are beginning to try to develop the mind, it is not easy. At first, we are very unskilled and have little success in controlling our impulsive, stubborn, grasping tendencies.

But then, as we slowly begin to understand the ever-recurring dangers that impulsiveness and compulsiveness inevitably cause, we begin and continue to develop the capacity for judgement (discernment) through direct observation and experience of what is a beneficial action and what is not, and what the result will be.

To reiterate, cultivating insight knowledge means slowly developing wisdom through the experience of knowing what is beneficial and what is not beneficial. What brings fulfilment and happiness and what brings a lack of fulfilment and unhappiness. This invariably leaves a person who is accustomed to worldly grasping with a sense of letdown expectations and disappointment will inevitably follow in its train.

To pinpoint the source of delusion more precisely, the mind watching the mind eventually recognises that the illusion of what we, at first, falsely considered to be “our mind” or “our thoughts” or “our self” is actually nothing more than another impermanent, accumulating aggregate of elusive sensations; impressions, impulses, and desires arising and ceasing.

The detached mind watching the mind eventually comes to realise that what we have always considered to be “our mind” ─ working away in a worldly way ─ is just another impermanent accumulation or bundle of interacting perceptual phenomena, lacking any actual abiding reality.

The point is succinct, yet it is not so easy to see.

When the mind watching the mind sees that there is no “our self,” no “our mind,” no “our thoughts” as an independent entity, then, with time and discernment, the mind gradually comes to realise that there are only the flashing instants of mind watching mind. It becomes clear through insight that the mind is, in fact, only a tool to be used in a process of observation and analysis, and then to be laid down and set aside once its task of locating and sorting and dissolving the delusions of phenomenal existence has been accomplished.

When we are young, our minds are untrained and we are unwise and unskillful and follow every whim. But as we become older and wiser, we keep learning from our mistakes and become more skilful in directing our choices and actions.

As we become older and more experienced, some of us who have learned about the powers of mindfulness begins practising insight meditation as a way to be more watchful, to learn to mend and mind our ways. And, as we become more skilful in discernment, we begin to know how to choose which actions will be constructive and which will not.

Some of us who are disposed of thereto will seek a teacher who can guide us in following the Buddha’s instructions, as outlined in the Pali Canon. We will then go on to do what we need to do; to seek a way through the tangle of the tangle. To clear the path of self-made obstacles and hindrances within the jungle of the wild, untamed mind. To try to unravel the seemingly hopelessly entangled networks of insecurities and anxieties related thereto.

So many a time people come and ask me: "My guru, where is he?". Many people just feel frustrated that they cannot find a guru. Actually, I think, the problem lies in - ourselves. Because our desire for dharma, it is not correct or it is not pure, therefore we are unable to find a guru, or perhaps we find a guru who isn't one with virtue, and you find a bunch of people with issues as gurus; and they are not real gurus actually, they are just gurus with issues! 

-- 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje

爱

希阿荣博堪布

大乘小乘

做任何事情之前，我们应该问问自己：为什么做这件事？行为的动机就是发心。在修行的时候，发心不仅决定了修行的结果，也在很大程度上影响着我们的见解和修行的过程。

为了获得人天福报而修行，这是下士道人天乘的发心。发善心、做善事，自然会修得善果，下士道非常强调做人要正直善良，因为这是获得人天福报最关键的要素。为了自己能脱离六道轮回的痛苦而修行，是中士道声闻缘觉乘的发心。为了一切众生究竟解脱而立志成就佛果，是上士道大乘的发心，也称为菩提心。

人天乘的出离心表现在厌离三恶道的痛苦，希求今生来世得善趣的安乐；声缘乘和大乘共称为解脱道，声缘乘的出离心表现在厌离轮回的痛苦，希求涅槃的安乐，而大乘则是进一步认识到轮回、涅槃皆为浮想，众生因为妄想、执著而痛苦，由此生起无伪大悲心，希求所有众生断尽无明、究竟解脱。

皈依后是趋入大乘还是趋入小乘，最主要就是看有没有生起利益众生的菩提心。

菩提心以出离心为基础，是对出离心的扩展和深化，不求个人独自解脱，而求众生解脱；不仅摆脱轮回的束缚，还要出离一切无明执著。因此，认为大乘不讲出离心、学大乘可以不修出离心是错误的，没有出离心，菩提心无从谈起。

大乘佛子不要因为自己发心更殊胜，遵循的见地更高，而看不起声缘乘、人天乘的修行人。一般世间有德行的人都值得恭敬，何况天人，他有他的善果。声缘乘修行人发愿不伤害众生，谨言慎行，要做到这一点需要精密严格地持戒，而很多学大乘的人经常轻易就伤害他人，真的应该感到惭愧！

法无大小，人心自有等差。众生的意乐根机不同，不要枉自分别“我是大乘、你是小乘、他是不求解脱的愚夫愚妇”。我们只是更有热情、更有勇气、兴趣更广，而且相信不仅是自己，所有众生都有成佛的潜力而已。时刻检视自己的心，确定自己是为了一切众生的究竟解脱而修行就好。

菩提心

菩提心是一切佛法的精要，是成就佛果的因。要发大愿，发无伪的真心，为无量众生的解脱立誓成佛。

关于菩提心，各教派的历代祖师都有很殊胜的教言，归纳起来就是一位修行人如果具足了菩提心，就具足了所有的佛法功德，所做的一切善法都将成为成就无上佛果之因。

普贤菩萨曾发愿：十方所有诸众生，愿离忧患常安乐，获得甚深正法利，灭除烦恼尽无余。这正是对愿菩提心的具体阐释：其一，希望众生远离挫折、痛苦、磨难，经常感受快乐；其二，希望众生真正趣入正法，信受奉行，由此摆脱轮回的痛苦，并最终灭尽烦恼，成就无上正等觉。

以悲心缘有情，愿一切众生远离苦因及苦果；以智慧缘正等菩提，愿所有众生圆满佛果。只想自己圆满觉悟、不愿帮助众生离苦得乐，这是不合理的假设。圆满觉悟，或者说成就佛果，意味着“智、悲、力”三者圆满。在因地修行时没有悲心，果地也不会有悲心，没有悲心就不叫圆满觉悟。

闻思和修法前,首先检视自己的发心，看看是为了自己，还是为了众生。如果是为了自己，一定要马上纠正。将希望所有众生得到安乐、最终获得佛果作为自己的发心，这才是大乘之道。

在心里发愿为所有众生成佛而修持佛法，发了这个愿以后要不断地修持菩提心，训练自己。不仅仅是修法念诵时，平时心里也要记得常常这样发愿，能使功德不断增上。

哪怕只在佛前供一支香、磕一个头，念一句佛号，绕一圈塔，也要发菩提心，这样我们所有的善根都会成为解脱与成佛之因，有很大的功德。

相续当中一定要生起真实的出离心和菩提心，这样无论闻思还是进入实修，都会很快获得成就。不管做什么功德善业，修什么法门，都不要忘记以出离心和菩提心摄持自己的相续。

具备出离心，修行能得到阿罗汉的果位；具备菩提心，修行能成就佛的果位，否则都只能获得世间福报。没有出离心，无法获得解脱；没有菩提心，即使再精进，哪怕一辈子在山洞里闭关修行，也不可能成佛。就像一个人，没有腿、没有交通工具，甭管想去哪，都实现不了。

辛辛苦苦做了那么多功德，却不是解脱和成佛的因，不是很可惜吗？

八万四千法门最精髓的都在慈悲心和菩提心里。要成就佛果, 没有差错的道路就是菩提心。菩提心的功德几天也讲不完。寂天菩萨说：我们生起菩提心，就像是乞丐在垃圾堆里找到稀世珍宝，它给我们带来无尽的喜悦，满足我们所有的希求。

“菩提心如劫末火，刹那能灭诸恶罪”。生生世世，我们因为无明和烦恼，造过的恶业数也数不清，不生起菩提心，即使很精进地修法，也难以清净全部业障。然而，当我们内心真正生起菩提心的时候，一般的业障会彻底消灭。造过大业的人，比如杀父母等五无间罪，恶业果报成熟堕入地狱一瞬间就能脱离地狱。

如果一个人具有菩提心，不管他是上师还是普通人，我们都应当向他顶礼。

发心有大小而无优劣，每个人可以随自己的因缘发菩提心，只要诚实并且是真心为了众生的解脱，发心无论大小都值得赞叹。

刚入佛门的人立即就生起菩提心可能很困难，但一步步修持，相续中最终一定会生起菩提心。久而久之，造作的发心也能激发真正的菩提心。

根据大乘佛教的教义，菩提心与空性智慧在根本上无二无别。证悟空性和修持菩提心是无法分割的，如果相续中没有生起无伪的菩提心，也不会产生证悟空性的智慧。

在实修当中，树立无我的见解可以帮助激发、巩固菩提心，修持菩提心反过来也是体悟空性最便捷有效的途径。

初学佛者不具备无我的见解也可以先修菩提心，到一定程度时对空性自然就会有所了悟。出家人、在家人，都要修菩提心。

爱自己

佛教徒是决心与自己亲密相处的人。亲密相处有两层含义：一是诚实地觉察自己身、口、意的所有活动，二是柔和地对待自己。

不往内观照，无法真正消除迷惑；不心怀温柔，修行便只剩下受苦。慈悲不仅是针对他人，也针对自己，并且首先是针对自己。缺少对自己的慈悲，很难真正对他人慈悲。

对自己友善并不是放纵自己，因为放纵只会让我们越来越不尊重自己，而不能让我们内心安乐。友善意味着以温和的方式了解自己，带着幽默感去观察自己的傲慢、无知、冷酷、僵硬。

自卑与自负一样，遮蔽了我们的当下，使我们不能清楚地认识自己，同时也阻碍了我们与外界的交流。因为缺乏交流，我们感觉孤单、孤立。

当处于情绪的低谷又孤立、封闭时，我们很容易认为自己比其他人都更悲惨。但是，情况肯定比想象的要好。不要相信有个叫“命运”的家伙在专门跟你作对、故意要整垮你。这个世界上不是只有你失意、无助、没有安全感。你的感受是众生普遍的感受，你并没有被遗弃。

在遇到痛苦挫折时，放掉对自己的担心、怜悯、评断，不再只是在“我对我错、我行我不行”的圈子里打转，放松下来，单纯地去感知自己内心的感受，并且去与外界沟通，欣赏一下花草和晨风，也许痛苦依然强烈，却不会让你窒息、让你绝望到走投无路，因为此时你的心打开了。

自以为是有时也表现为自卑。坚持认为自己一无是处，在任何情况下都不改变这个观点，这不是自以为是又是什么？

在开放的心中怀着敬意看待自己当下的体验，尊重自己的洞见，不否认自己的缺点和过失，也不认为自己一无是处而失去内心的庄严。即使面对自己的狭隘、冷漠、混乱，依然不忘记知足和感恩。

只有不放弃自己，才会不放弃他人；只有尊重自己内心的感受，才会愿意去体念他人的感受；只有相信自己觉悟的潜力，才会相信他人觉悟的潜力，并因此走上大乘菩萨道。

你我他

菩提心的训练之所以可能，是因为我们看到万物相互依存、息息相关的事实。

耗费一生精力企图在自己与外界之间砌一道围墙的做法是徒劳的，而这种徒劳带来的挫败感让我们很不快乐。

我们的信念、理想、价值观什么的往往被利用来强化自我、排斥他人，不信就看看吵架的、冲突的、战争的各方，没有一个不认为自己有理的。

自以为是不仅割离了我们与当下，而且还使我们更容易受侵犯，也更容易侵犯别人。在观察自己的过程中，如果我们足够诚实和专注，就会发现很多时候我们都在不知不觉中伤害了自己和他人。

我们排斥他人什么，实际上正反映出我们排斥自己什么。如果你认为别人不会理解你，说明你根本不想去理解别人；如果你讨厌别人贫穷，说明你害怕自己贫穷；如果你排斥别人的浅薄、狭隘、冷漠，说明你不想面对自己身上的这些东西。所以，我们只有不排斥别人才能接受自己。

每个人都有良善的一面，也有黑暗的一面。只要内心还有执著，就不能避免对人对己的伤害，嫌恶那些无明习气更重的人，就像是五十步笑百步。

正是因为全社会都极力推崇分别心，人与人之间才会这样疏离，世界才会这样四分五裂。分别心使我们用孤立、分离的眼光看待事物，万事万物之间的联结便在我们眼中消失了，所以我们很难以包容的心面对世界，而且相信自私就是利己。

修行是修养仁爱、宽容、谦让、与人为善等等能给自他带来安乐的精神品质，也就是说，要关注其他生命的福祉，并且自觉调整自身行为以让其他众生感到安适快乐。

依靠佛法的正知正见，我们调整自己对人生和世界的态度以及为人处事的方式，从狭隘、僵硬、矛盾重重到宽阔、温柔、和谐圆融，从伤害自己伤害他人到帮助、利乐一切众生，从痛苦到安乐，从轮回到解脱。

有人不知道怎样印证自己的修行是否有偏差，方法其实很简单：看看你的“自我”是否依然强大，你与他人、与世界之间的界分感是否依旧强烈。

亲密的人之间往往有太多执著，心里会有许多期望和要求，要求对方完全理解、欣赏、领受、符合我们的心意，不然便感觉失落、痛苦。 对亲近的人，我们并不缺少爱，而是缺少宽容和放松。

既是有缘做一家人，就彼此珍惜、尊重，不要试图用贪爱去束缚对方，由爱生怨、由怨生恨，枉自荒废珍宝人生。

Thoughts come and go like a thief in an empty house. There is nothing to be gained or lost.

-- Mahasiddha Padampa Sangye

The Work of the Moment

by Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

Several years ago, I was in the Catskills with a colleague, celebrating the completion of a two-and-a-half-year project. It was summer, and it can get very hot in the Catskills, so we were sitting on the veranda of my friend’s place with tall glasses of iced tea and stacks of novels. We had worked really hard on this project, and we were ready for relaxation. As we sat there, I kept looking to the side of the house at a hillside entirely overgrown with shoulder-high tarweeds, the kind of weeds with leaves that are sticky to the touch. They had so completely taken over the hillside that they were killing all the other native plants.

Suddenly, without even thinking, I rose up out of my chair, got some tools, walked up the hill, and began pulling up and cutting away the weeds. I worked up there for the next three days, covered in sweat and sticky pitch, my hands stinging because I didn’t have any work gloves. My colleague couldn’t believe me; she could easily have had her caretaker do it. However, I remember it as a time of rapture, of enormous, satisfying pleasure. It wasn’t about “work” as we usually understand the word; it was about my whole body and mind being fully with the smell of the tarweed as I pulled and hacked away at it. It was about complete mergence with that hillside, not thoughts of how it would look later, but a complete at-oneness with what I was doing in a most profound and beautiful way.

That’s how I experience intimacy with work, even when the work is challenging. Spreadsheets, for example, are hard for me to understand and manipulate, and I find myself butting up against the software, asking stupid questions, and so on. Still, being immersed in that kind of work can also be a source of joy.

The word work is apparently about five thousand years old, and from the beginning — in its Proto-Indo-European version, werg — it simply referred to “something being done.” How are we in relation to this something being done in our daily lives? What is the heart of our work? What are the qualities surrounding something being done?

Work can mean our career or simply how we make money; it can be our calling (our “life’s work”) or simply our functioning in the world: cleaning the zendo floor, making the beds, doing the dishes.

I like to think of work as what we do; it is the activity of the life we live. Work is any activity we’re engaged in that requires our energy and focus, whether or not we’re paid for it. We all know you can work really hard for no money. There’s work in the marketplace, and there’s work at home. There’s paid work and unpaid work. When I was a young woman, I took a few years off from the university and learned so much about the world. I learned to cook, to paint, and to write poetry; I tried my hand at pottery; I did canning; I gardened; I sold organic vegetables; I learned to quilt; I even sewed my husband’s shirts by hand. Then I’d go to a party, and someone would ask me, “What do you do?” And because what I was doing had no value in the marketplace (even though I was experimenting and learning and full of creative energy), I felt like saying, “I don’t do anything.” But I was working twelve hours a day on all my projects. Amazing!

What is valid work? I know a woman who is a wonderful writer. I met her because she walks dogs for my neighbours in the apartment building where I live. We have the same daily schedule, so we often meet in the mornings and evenings when she’s making her dog runs. I join her, and we walk the dogs together. This is her profession, how she makes her money. Simultaneously, she’s also a really fine writer and probably has many other talents. Yet our society looks down on those who do such tasks as walking dogs for a living when they actually may also be involved in creative, nurturing, and service work.

What is work? There’s a story about the great thirteenth-century Zen master Ju-ching, who was once the sanitation officer at a monastery. In those days, the job of the sanitation officer was to shovel the shit. Back then, they had wooden toilets, and shit and piss would fall into tiled trenches below. Every week Ju-ching would go and clean out the trenches with buckets and take the manure to the garden. Then he’d wash the tiles with rags and brushes.

One time his teacher, Setcho, asked him, “How do you clean that which has never been soiled?” He was asking Ju-ching about himself.

Poor Ju-ching did not know how to answer. He kept practising with that question for a full year, during which time he continued cleaning toilets. Finally, Ju-ching went to his teacher and said, “I have hit upon that which has never been soiled.”

This would be a good question for each of us to ask ourselves: How do you clean that which has never been soiled? Finally, after much struggle, Ju-ching saw that there is no work that isn’t of high value. Shovelling shit is not soiled work any more than walking a dog is soiled work. He went to his teacher and said, “I have hit upon that which has never been soiled.” To this day, in all Zen communities, a tradition for practice leaders during retreats is to go out in the middle of the night and quietly, unobtrusively, clean the bathrooms and toilets.

What do you think about work? Is some work of value and some not? Are you “too busy”? Are you trying to get one thing “done” so you can get the next piece “done”? Are you anxious about, angry about, or resentful of your work? Do you neglect your work? Do you do it in an obsessive way or in a sloppy, careless manner? Do you think, If I work harder, I’ll be successful, and when I’m successful, I’ll get what I want? Do you think, This work is not what I am capable of, or deserving of, so I’m not going to give it my all?

In terms of our work, we often think we have to act a certain way all the time, that we have to force ourselves into some kind of way of producing rather than being alive to what is here and now. In doing that, we close off our possibilities. We lose our creativity, even our compassion. Too often we find ourselves stuck in a loop of narrowing attention, trying to find some success, some acknowledgement, and in so doing, we lose what we seek.

There is a fairy story from China that illustrates this. Once there was a young man who wanted to meet Kuan-yin, the bodhisattva of compassion. He began to meditate very hard, feeling that if he were successful, he would become fully enlightened; he would achieve his heart’s desire. As he was meditating, Kuan-yin walked by and noticed him. Smiling, she walked up and tapped him on the shoulder. The young man said, “Please don’t bother me right now. I’m looking for Kuan-yin.” Delighted, Kuan-yin tapped him on the shoulder again. “Go away,” the young man said. “I’m busy meditating. I’m looking for Kuan-yin.” So Kuan-yin shook her head sadly and walked away.

I think each of us can recognize ourselves in this young man. Pushing too hard, being too busy, we miss the very reality we seek. We miss our context: the presence of our coworkers, our materials, the changing environment of which we are a part.

There is such a difference between complete effort and striving. It is possible to be thoroughly involved in work and yet not be attached to the outcome, to be thoroughly connected to the effort without grasping for some “result” that exists only in the mind as a concept, an anxiety, a figment. How can we realise and recognise the subtle difference between obsession and involvement? How can we sharpen our perception?

Once there were two Zen disciples who were biological brothers as well as dharma brothers. They lived together at the same study centre. One day, as Daowu was sweeping the ground, his brother, Yunyan, passed by and said, “Too busy!” Daowu replied, “You should know there’s one who’s not busy.” Yunyan replied, “Oh, come on now, you’re saying that there are two moons!” With that, his brother Daowu held up the broom and said, “Which moon is this?”

Visualise this. I can just see Daowu sweeping, completely in the zone: focused, immersed in his action. And Yunyan is critical: “You are too busy!” Maybe he thinks that Daowu, like the young man in the previous story, is lost to what is here, that there is no leisurely element that is alive to all aspects of the moment. Thus, he is “too busy.”

Daowu replies, “You should know there’s one who’s not busy.” I picture him continuing with his sweeping. Daowu is saying, “Oh, the leisurely one is here. You just don’t see him.”

Very often we mistake activity for busyness, but that is not what is really there. What is there is complete immersion: self and broom and sweeping; self and child and play; self and computer and problem-solving. The trick is discerning the difference both in others and in ourselves. Sometimes looking out the window is active engagement and typing madly is not; sometimes the reverse is true. How can we tell the difference?

Yunyan says, “Oh, come on now, you’re saying that there are two moons.” He thinks he’s caught Daowu: “Aha! You’re saying there are two realities: the reality of your being busy and the reality of your being not-busy.”

In the Zen tradition, the moon in the sky stands for true reality, and the second moon — the one we see reflected in the water — is our idea of reality. Here, Yunyan is implying that when Daowu says there is one who is not busy, he is actually separating his sweeping activity from the concept of being one with the wholeness of life.

Daowu holds up the broom and says, “Which moon is this?” He brings it back to no-separation: even in our most involved, focused activity, right there is the balanced one, the leisurely one. It is in our actual activity, in our intimacy with all aspects of this moment, that we are whole.

Who has not felt, in a moment of great activity such as creating, serving, giving, or holding, both the energy and the aliveness of the activity and at the same time the leisure, the ease, the simple movement? It is not poky and not frenetic; it is the smooth and unhurried quality of doing each thing at exactly the right moment — not too fast, not too slow, but at just the right moment. It actually has nothing to do with fast or slow; it has to do with the whole body connecting to reality itself.

We heal, we listen, we hold a hand, we find a solution or a way around a difficult problem, we draw a line, we make a sound, we make a meal, we clean a space, we give an honest answer or a steady hand up. Sometimes just the presence of our body sitting with someone when they are down, blocked, upset, locked up, or dying (or even dead) is the full-on activity that is needed.

This is true intimacy with our work of the moment, an intimacy with who we are and what we do, whether we are cleaning toilets or waiting tables or designing software or making art or playing music or teaching or whatever. Just the other day I was watching a young man working the back of a garbage truck, swinging up and down from the truck, picking up sacks of garbage, and manipulating the controls of the compressor. His whole body was synchronised, like a dance — utter involvement, aliveness.

Of course, not all work is like this. There will always be little breaks in the intimacy: a headache; a cranky boss or coworker; a hangover; the arising of resentments and comparisons and craving ideas in our mind that create anxiety, frustration, and boredom. What might we do at such a time? Again, the strategy is to include everything, to turn toward, not away from, the conditions that are emerging. Take a breath. Check your body and mind, and look directly at the obstructions. What is it that is pulling you away from this very moment?

The “second moons” trip us up. What are we to do? Daowu shakes his broom, saying, “No! Right here in what I am doing right now is everything: me, broom, floor, all of life is right here, flowing around me.”

The garbage worker grabs the next bundle of trash.

Questions and Answers

Question: It seems like a lot of things that are impediments to intimacy with our work are things that our society tells us are good. Like, you should make money, but thinking about making money can be an impediment to intimacy with our work. Or you should know what you’re doing, but knowing what you’re doing can be an impediment. Or you should work as hard as you can, or you should relax and take it easy. It seems like these can all be impediments to being intimate with our work.

Roshi: Yes. Buddhism often refers to the openings to insight as “gates.” The gate can swing in two directions, so with something we usually consider a vice, maybe we just need to turn it another way. We can just turn something that keeps us “out” and open it as a way “in.” Sometimes it’s just our language. “Working too hard” is different from “complete effort,” and “slacking off ” is very different from “being at ease in our work.” We get so caught up in language that it can condition us.

Question: There are these tasks that I hate, and I find it’s really hard to remember that once I’m doing whatever it is, it’s fine. For example, I hate doing the laundry. It’s so hard for me to remember that once I’m doing the laundry, it’s not a problem.

Roshi: Yes, because it’s not doing the laundry anymore; it’s more like putting things into the washer and taking them out and folding them. That’s very different from doing the laundry.

The whole point of meditation is to take it from the cushion to the world, to bring your pristine mind meditation into everyday life.

-- Orgyen Chowang Rinpoche

修习智慧的步骤

心定法师

每一位修学佛法的人都希望早一点开悟，进到禅堂来都希望明心见性。这都很好，但我们必须了解到我们无始以来的这些习气，不是一个禅七可以消除净尽的，所以一定要悟后而修。在禅堂培养你打坐，或者参话头的这些方法、要领，乃至在这里了解诸法的实相，就是开悟了。「开悟」，简单的说，就是认识宇宙人生的真实相。

什么是开悟?

舍利弗尊者还没有见到释迦牟尼佛的时候，原本跟目犍连尊者都是当时宗教界的佼佼者，对宇宙人生的认识也都是自认为最高的。没有想到听佛陀的弟子阿说示比丘(五比丘中的其中一位)说道︰「诸法因缘生，诸法因缘灭。」这两句话，他就得到那么大的震撼，当下豁然大悟。原来世间都是因缘生，世间的一切就是因缘灭，这就是佛法的真理。

我们很多学佛的人，都希望看大经大论，也希望发心遍阅大藏经，这都很好。但如果有智慧的人能够像舍利弗尊者一样，听了这么一句因缘法，他就开悟了。所以并不是说看遍三藏十二部的大部头经典，就叫作「多闻」，这只是看了很多而已。只要你没有得到缘起法、生灭法的正见，看再多也是没有用。

「若人生百岁，不见生灭法；不如生一日，而能解了知」。对于生灭法，究竟是怎么样生、怎么样灭？一旦通达了这种「因缘法」的理论，就可以叫「多闻」。所以了解缘起法、般若空性，体会缘起法、般若空性，以此作为修持，以此来证悟，才是真正的「多闻」。

所以我们要从这个缘起法当中，了解世间都是假相，进一步来参究缘起法的平等性、空寂性。证悟到这种空寂性，也就是一切法的真实相以后，就能找到我们自己的本来面目。这才是对缘起法已经有了概念，这叫做开悟。

像舍利弗尊者听到「诸法因缘生，诸法因缘灭」以后，他马上开悟，知道世间一切事物都不是自己生，不是自己有，不是自己成就，世间祇不过是假相而已，所以从假相当中找到它的真实相。真实相就是观察这些假相，体会到它是缘生缘灭的，没有真实，而开悟的。

悟后而修

修行佛法，特别是修学所谓人生的佛教、生活的佛教，都是要开悟以后再用功修行。这叫「悟后而修」，佛法应该要这样子学的。所以「开悟」也有小疑小悟、大疑大悟、不疑不悟三种。这是在参究话头、提疑情方面得到的一种悟境，这些相信班首师父们会给大家一点提示。

我所谓的「悟后而修」，只是要大家先认识「因缘所生法」，也就是缘起法，了解世间的真实相，改变对世间的看法以后再来修行。现在知道一切是因缘生的，靠因缘而现起的，明白世间一切都是假相，所以不再执着、不再染着，从此就慢慢的来修行。

我们一向以为世间是真实的，所以那些贪念、染着，包括对意见的执着，在日常的生活里头都要用「持戒」来克服自己。自己习惯性的一些口头禅，讲那一类的话，动不动就说出来了，动不动就做了，这些都叫做习惯。

习惯是怎么来的呢？都是从过去的无明，不知道世间的真实相时，不断地追求世间的一切享受，才成为习惯性。现在我们既然明白了，对于这些冲动性的行为，就要从持戒来克制自己，避免侵犯别人。所以在生活里要正语、正业、正命。合法的身体行为、语言行为，就叫正语、正业；合理的经济生活叫做正命。

日常生活里要尽量的克制自己，不侵犯别人、尊重别人。在行为上虽然能克制得了，可是习气太重，不容易克服。纵然行为、动作、表情勉强可以克制，内心的念头还是放不下，一直在这可爱的境界上或是憎恨的境界上一直起妄念、起分别，妄念纷飞，所以必须修禅定，才会有正念、正定。

培养正念与正定

什么叫正念？正念是指所念的内容都必须与「正见、正思惟、般若空性智慧」相应，也就是要能够念一些可以降伏烦恼，可以契入真理的所缘境。像「观身不净」、「观受是苦」、「观心无常」、「观法无我」，这些可以降伏烦恼，也可以契入真理法性的所缘境，就属于正念。(注：「所缘境」是指心念所思考或专注的对象。不论修习禅定或智慧，都必须选择一个「所缘境」来使心念专注或加以思惟，才能修习成就。)

一定要把跟「三法印」、「诸行无常」、「诸法无我」、「涅槃寂静」等真理相应的义理，作为我们修禅定的所缘境。这种念头合乎中道、合乎缘起，所以叫做正念。

什么叫正定？在修行的过程中，因为日常生活里都这样子系念，在这种正念里头，已经慢慢地对世间的权力、五欲逐渐地淡泊。所以一旦达到入定，或是即将入定时，在习气上、习惯上已经不容易现起这些行为，因此就与道相应。

生活方面，个性已经很温和，念头已经不再妄念纷飞，行为也没有那么贪求、染着、坚持己见，就能逐渐与道相应。因为是「观无常、无我、不净、观受是苦」等等而入定，所以定境的内涵里就有一种出离世间的心态。展现出来的就是一种无漏的定境，它是清净的、与道相应、与法空性相应的，这种根本定就属于正定。

唯有正念，也就是「四念处、三法印」，才能够引生出离心，才能够引发无漏智慧，这种定就叫做正定。有这种正定再来思惟正见、思惟三法印，就能够契入真实、契入法空性，得到解脱生死。所以学佛先要有正见、正思惟，才能以般若空性来照见五蕴皆空。这样子体悟、证悟、开悟，然后在日常生活里头时时观无常、观无我等等，对世间淡泊、放下、看破，就能得到现生的解脱。

菩萨的修持基础---我空观

所以《金刚经》里，释迦牟尼佛明明白白的告诉所有的大菩萨都要作如是观。《金刚经》都是对大乘菩萨所说的，不要以为讲这些「无常、无我」都是阿罗汉的作为，这是大错特错。没有一个不修行「我空观」的人可以成佛，可以成为菩萨的。观自在也是观「我空」，照见「五蕴皆空」，才这样得自在的。

《金刚经》的最上乘菩萨所讲的道理也是我空观。要无我相、无人相，这样观察「我空」以后，来作一切善事。所以离我相以后所作的善事，不住于色、不住于声、香、味、触、法，这才合乎菩提。菩提是一种觉性、一种空性。能够离我相、离一切相来作一切善事，那么就合乎空性，能够三轮体空地行六度波罗蜜。

这样所得到的功德，并没有功德性。所以合乎空性，与空性相应，这才是成佛的资粮。若有我执，执着于色、声、香、味、触、法而行布施、持戒、忍辱，那就会住于这些名、闻、利、养。这种心态顶多来生时出生到人间大富大贵的人家，或者生到天堂享受天上的无比福乐。便与成佛不相应，所以大菩萨的作为还是要从我空观修起的。

《般若心经》不是天天念吗？它也是照见五蕴皆空，并没有非常特殊的法门。「我空观」是阿罗汉、菩萨成就道业的不二法门，这是肯定的。《法华经》说「唯有一乘道，无二亦无三」，这一乘道就是八正道，八正道的正见就是要观察诸法无我。所以不管大乘、小乘的体系都是一样的，大家一定要深深去体会，去肯定。

《般若心经》告诉我们要「我空观」，才有办法度一切苦厄。「照见五蕴皆空，能除一切苦，真实不虚」，佛祖不会骗你的。所以《金刚经》教大乘菩萨的根本修行法门，就是叫我们知道「凡所有相皆是虚妄」，「离一切相，即名诸佛」，这是在教我们怎么样正当的、正确的去观想。

一切事物靠因和缘而成的话，叫作「有为法」。不必靠因和缘而成，原本就有的那种空性，叫作「无为法」。一切靠因缘变化的有为法，一定是变化无常的，所以他的速度是很快的。一切有为法，如梦幻泡影地不实在，时间的变化是如露亦如电。要这样的观才能与道相应，才能与空性相应。

静中养成，动中磨练

我们学佛一定要这样子，先认识世间的真实相。开悟以后，在日常生活不断的以修禅定或是持戒，配合智慧一起下手，来慢慢消除自己经常有的一些紧张、冲动的举动、习气。例如对于自己所喜爱的可爱境界，那种不断的思惟，不断的染着，爱恋的一股冲动的力量；或者对憎恨、厌恶的境界也是不断再想起，引发内心生恨的那种习气，然后境界现前时，「啪！」的一声，打、骂的不好行为就表现出来了。

班首师父经常教导我们「静中养成，动中磨练」。在禅堂里头，安静的养成持戒修定的习惯，能够明心见性。先把这个修持养成一种习惯，然后出去面对大众，人与人相处时再来磨练，接受考验。自己心里有没有明明白白，清清楚楚？起心动念，举手投足，有没有侵犯到别人？有没有明白当下自己的心是怎么样子？这要动中磨练。

所以说「悟后而修」，是指开悟了以后，在日常生活里头一步一步的修。与人相处，你才知道你的习气、脾气大到怎么样的程度？你的习气别人容易忍受，还是很难忍受？越难忍受就表示你的习气越重。人家不尊重你，你就大发雷霆，说人家伤害你的自尊。自尊心就是我执的代名词。

人与人相处才好修行，热闹场中作道场，所以要在动中磨练。在禅堂里大家要好好地养成一种随时观照，随时明心的功力，这非常要紧。时间不多，大家要更加用心，好好的养成修定的习惯，才能观照自己的起心动念。出去以后，随时随地能够派上用场，能够用上功夫。大家继续用功。

Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practise sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

-- Dogen

Debunking the Myth of Meditation

by Venerable Guan Cheng

Finding a meditation centre close to where you live is hardly a challenge these days — they are everywhere. There are even smartphone apps aimed at helping us meditate. With mindfulness studios and workshops springing up in major cities from San Francisco to New York, and London to Hong Kong, it is no wonder why this ancient practise has gone mainstream in our current era.

The media and the medical community have done much to showcase the benefits of a meditation practice. Mainstream culture has popularised meditation as a simple, cheap, no-frills approach to improving one’s health and mental well-being that is arguably much better than shelling out thousands of dollars for prescription drugs or long therapy sessions with a psychiatrist. There is also a plethora of scientific and medical studies that extol its many health and stress-reducing benefits. The scientific evidence is certainly convincing, perhaps accounting for why it has caught on so quickly in the secular sphere, among those holding to no religious faith or spiritual tradition. But with all the hype about people blissing out and getting “free, drugless highs” from meditation, one cannot help but wonder whether meditation is really what it is made out to be in the media and popular culture.

HOW IT ALL STARTED 

Meditation has its roots in Asia and dates back millennia. The earliest written records of meditation come from the Vedic scriptures in India, which places its origins at around 1500 BCE. While the meditative tradition continued to flourish in India for centuries, even spreading to Mesopotamia and China in its formative years, it was not until the Buddha’s enlightenment in the 6th century BCE and subsequent written records found in the Buddhist Pali Canon in the 1st century BCE that meditation began to play a prominent role in spiritual tradition and practice. The word for meditation in Sanskrit is bhavana, which means developing or cultivating. The essence of meditation lies in developing the mental qualities that free the mind of ignorance and delusion, which form the basis of the suffering and insecurities of life experienced in samsara. Samsara is a Sanskrit term that means “wandering.” It refers to the world in which we live: an endless state of wandering through cycles of life and death.

NOT A WALK IN THE PARK

The Buddha underwent six years of ascetic practise before he achieved full deliverance from samsara and resolved the perennial problem of suffering. From the sutras and his teachings, we know that the path to his awakening was hardly smooth sailing, but fraught with trials and hardships. Even at the end of his journey, in the critical moments before his supreme awakening, he was forced into a final confrontation with his mental defilements of craving, hatred, and delusion. When he finally severed his last remaining strand of attachment to this world, he realised the true nature of reality and became fully enlightened as the Buddha. The Noble Eightfold Path was his way. Heedfulness and perseverance, among others, were his valuable companions. For the Buddha, the path was not at about pursuing eternal glory or divine bliss. The path was a raw and intimate process of self-discovery, a profound investigation of the nature of mind and a brave unravelling of the mysteries of human suffering.

MEDITATION'S TRUE COLOURS 

In his book A Path with Heart (1993), the renowned Western meditation teacher Jack Kornfield wrote, “True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds: our grief from the past, unfulfilled longing, the sorrow that we have stored up during the course of our lives.” His teacher, Ajahn Chah, put it more bluntly: “If you haven’t cried deeply a number of times, your meditation hasn’t really begun.”

Contrary to popular belief, meditation is not just about entering into blissful trances to make us feel good about ourselves. Yes, with enough practice, these states will come, but there is more. At its very core, it is a courageous endeavour to confront our deepest wounds and fears. It is the willingness to open up our hearts to embrace the full force of our destructive emotions and inner conflicts. True meditation is a softening of the heart, a breaking away of the thick crust of painful and conflicting emotions that conceal the core of our being. It is the work of cleansing our deepest emotions and attachments. This cathartic process, before being complete, must be repeated over and over again, each time shedding a deeper layer of ignorance that obscures the natural luminosity of the heart. In Chan Buddhism, it is commonly referred to as “the all-embracing death” (大死一番), death not of the physical body, but of the self-made delusion of existence. It is death followed by renewal, repeated until we completely shed all ignorance binding us to samsara.

A BRIEF BUT CLOSER LOOK

When we train our minds through meditation, we are plumbing the depths of our innermost emotions and entrenched habits. As this process unfolds, we will often see things we never knew we had. There may be intense feelings of grief, anger, fear, anxiety, and unfulfilled desires that had been largely hidden from us in the past, but are the source of our internal struggles and lingering disappointments in life. Meditation gives us a safe, controlled mental environment in which to dredge up these old emotions and memories, and the tools to investigate them under the microscope of loving-kindness, awareness, and understanding. It allows us to deeply experience the rawness of our emotional energies, unsullied by the storylines we are accustomed to giving it, and to clearly see the nature of all things created by our minds.

When we realise, not through intellectual analysis, but through experiential learning, that the fundamental qualities of our emotions and thoughts are unsatisfactory, impermanent and without a self, a profound transformation begins to take place that gently releases us from the bonds of our deepest conflicts and attachments.

THE BEST WAY OUT IS THROUGH MEDITATION 

Meditation, in its true form, is not only a self-improvement tool used to bolster self-esteem or to calm one’s mind. Rather, it is the fearless path of developing qualities of the heart that help us to embrace, with love and understanding, our most difficult wounds and sorrows. Rather than running away from our difficult emotions, meditation allows us to confront them head-on, with unremitting courage and perseverance, opening them up long enough in the warmth of our embrace to see their true nature. This is the essence of Buddhist meditation, and the path leading to true happiness and freedom.

Through the change of state of the skandha of form, mastery over [pure buddha] realms, kāyas, the excellent major and minor marks, infinite voices, and the invisible mark on the crown of the head [is attained]. 

-- Asanga

减少烦恼的两个原则

慧律法师

应该怎样过人生呢？要记住：

第一：你一定要宽恕众生。人的一生耗费在干扰别人、伤害别人、毁谤别人、批评别人的时间，超过于冷静下来了解自己。我们每天眼睛一张开，都在看别人的错误，一张嘴巴，都在讲别人的过错。人永远是烦恼的动物，从早到晚都是一样，到老到死还是不觉悟。

你要活得快乐，你一定要宽恕众生。

大家都不是圣人。你的心中，一定有最气愤的人，你最恨的人，最讨厌的人，也有最嫉妒的人，对不对？从来没有发脾气的人，请举手……没有人！除非是神经病。大家都曾发过脾气。现在师父告诉大家，怎样过最快乐的日子。要宽恕众生，不要看人家的缺点，要看自己的缺点。我举个例子：比如说，同样在一个公司里，别人的能力比我强，我就嫉妒他，我的内心就不满。诸位佛友，你看是那一个人比较痛苦呢？是别人活得痛苦，还是你活得痛苦呢？

你嫉妒别人、恨别人，人家又不知道，真是神经病。然后，有一天你实在忍不住了，对你所恨的人说：“我在恨你，你知道吗？”对方说：“我不知道啊！”这样不是很可怜吗？

世界上只有慈悲能够解除痛苦，你们一定要放下，要宽恕众生。宽恕人家，你就会很好过日子。你今天晚上来听师父讲这一席话，值二十万新加坡币，回去就很好睡觉了。你就可以说：“我以前恨你，今天听师父讲，就不恨你了，反正前世欠你的，你就拿去用吧！”这就0K了。

《六祖坛经》中说：“他非我不非。”六祖慧能大师就是这样教我们的。别人弄得是是非非，我们是不能有是非的，要做到如下的原则：“宽恕众生。”这是学佛的第一步骤，如此你才不会痛苦烦恼。

其实我们不只是为了众生才宽恕众生，而是为了自己想要享受那一份安祥宁静的内在，体会那种知足而清心自在的快乐。所以，你一定要宽恕众生，这样我们的智慧就会慢慢启发出来，心地也会渐渐地广阔开朗起来。

第二：改变自己，胜于改变别人。释迦牟尼佛说：“降伏百万大军并不伟大，降伏自己，才是世界上最伟大的人。”简单地讲，学佛所要做的工作就是要改变自己。

我们看看当今社会上，父母亲因意见不合而吵架，兄弟之间因小事而纷争，同学因对事情看法不同而起争执，同事间会斗争，这是为什么？你有没有想想症结在那里？该找找根本解决的办法。

我们再更深入地想一想，不管是同公司的同事，亲密的朋友，情如手足的同学。刚开始相处时，大家都很融洽，后来大家都搞得很痛苦，为什么呢？可以找到问题的根源吗？面临这些现实的问题，总要找到答案，因为人必须生活下去，每一个人总要活下去，一定要工作，一定要吃三餐，但是面临每天争执的问题该怎么办呢？我认为：“改变自己，胜于改变别人。”随便举个例子来讲。比如夫妻之间，先生花天酒地，喜欢玩女人，太太伤透了脑筋，因为她放不下，观念转不过来。

如果学了佛法，观念就能转过来。你今天不回来，我就寻自己的乐趣，反正我的生活总要过下去，改不了你，我改变自己。同事与同事之间也是一样，彼此相处久了，相互就了解对方了，也了解其为人了。比如：这个人怪贪不舍，只想占人便宜。买一个便当，偷偷跑到外面去吃。我买了一个便当回来，被他发现了鸡腿，马上被偷走。他买水果自己偷偷躲着吃，我买水果，他一定要抢着吃，什么事情都为了他自己。

世间这种人很多。在台湾很多，在新加坡不知道有没有，可能没有。这种人水准很低，我们也不必跟他计较。若遇到这种人，我奉劝你，改变自己。面对这种人，他是凡夫，不会觉悟的，是不可能解脱的，所以，我们不要跟他一般见识。因此，要宽恕别人，改变自己；宽恕众生，快活自己。

We cannot eliminate all of the challenges or obstacles in life — our own or anyone else’s. We can only learn to rise to the occasion and face them. Shantideva suggests that we need to cultivate a “Can do! Why not? No problem!” kind of attitude toward our neuroses and obstacles in order to overcome them. If we have no confidence, we’ll already be defeated.

-- Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Karma in Simple Explanation

Source: KMSPKS

Karma (Sanskrit) or Kamma (Pali) is one of the most profound of Buddhism’s core teachings. "Karma" refers to the actions done by our body, speech and mind. We may find karma difficult to understand as the ripening of karmic fruits is not instantaneous and may happen in our present life or even in one of our future lifetimes. As quoted in Buddhist teachings, “everything we do, even if it’s just spitting in the dust, brings consequences”.

The law of karma can also be explained as the law of cause and effect. The effect of karma, manifesting as our body, appearance, parentage, present life’s friends and relatives, overall situation of life, state of mind including thoughts and emotions etc, are the results of the actions we did in the past. The present we are experiencing is the fruition of our past actions performed either in our present or past lifetimes.

Our future can be determined by every action we do in the present, and this is known as the cause. Explained simply, if our actions are virtuous, the karmic results will be positive; whereas, if the actions are unvirtuous, the karmic outcomes will be negative. These outcomes can affect our practice, while positive ones put us in a favourable position to change ourselves for the better, negative ones create obstacles making the path more difficult to progress.

As the Buddha said, “Intention, I tell you, is karma. Intending, one does karma by way of body, speech and intellect.” (AN 6.63). Our intentions are the determining factor on whether an action will result in positive or negative karma. It is important to assess and reflect on our intentions, though it is not easy as we have a natural tendency to hide the real motives from ourselves and others. Ignorance of our true motivations will not excuse nor relieve us from the karmic consequences that arise from our actions.

The understanding of karma is important to train ourselves to be mindful by reflecting on our intentions before we take any action with our body, speech and mind that may cause suffering to ourselves and others. We can all work towards becoming kind, compassionate and generous people where our intentions and actions do not cause harm nor suffering to ourselves and others.

Entering a dark room, someone mistakes a rope on the floor for a snake and is terrified. If they are told at that moment that what they see is just a rope and not a snake, their fear might abate but not disappear entirely, for they might still have doubts. If they turn on the light and see with their own eyes that it is indeed a rope, they will completely be rid of fear.

Likewise, we suffer from samsaric existence because we take dependently arising and transient things as real. Hearing about the Buddha's teaching on selflessness and knowing in theory that the origin of suffering is our attachment to a self, we nevertheless continue to suffer from afflictions. This suffering can only cease when we realise the nature of selflessness.

-- Khenpo Sherab Zangpo Rinpoche

修行不能自欺欺人，一定要真实

大安法师

善导大师特别开示：“不得外现贤善精进之相。”不能表面上表现得你很善良、很有贤德、很精进修行的样子，但是内心却是虚假的、不相应的，充满着贪瞋的烦恼，充满着邪伪之心，举心动念都是骗人的，作秀的，摆架子的，奸诈百端。那个内心充满着恶念，表现出来的行为就像蛇蝎一样的具有毒素。

如果这样的存心，你就虽然身、口、意三业也在修行，但你的心不相应。这个善就叫杂毒之善，又叫虚假之行，就不叫真实的净业。如果以这样虚假的心来修行，纵然是如救头燃地修行，也称为杂毒之善。你用这个掺杂着毒素的行，想求生西方极乐世界是不可以的，不能成就的。

为什么呢？因为阿弥陀佛的名号是真实心所结晶出来的。阿弥陀佛名号所内具的佛的功德，是他在无央数劫行菩萨大行的过程当中乃至一念、一刹那，法藏菩萨三业所修都是从真实心里面做出来的。所以名号功德的内涵、它的施设、它的手段、它的目的，全都贯穿着真实的特点。

我们想念佛往生，主要看能不能感应道交。那所感的全体是真实的。我们所应的是真实的，我们能感的也一定也要真实：只有真实跟真实才能沟通，你虚假跟真实就沟通不了。

所以这个净土法门特别把至诚心放在首位。包括印光大师不断地讲践修净土法门没有什么其他的诀窍，唯一的诀窍就是诚和恭敬——“诚敬”两个字。

只要有诚敬心，你才跟弥陀的名号、功德、愿力、净土能够相应。如果是虚假的，就一点都不相应。差之毫厘，失之千里。所以我们在日常的生活修行当中就要持戒。止一切恶，修一切善，也都要在真实心里面做出来。

不管是在公众场合还是在自己寮房，面对自己的时候都要真实。不能当着大众的面——有别人在场的时候，表现得好像真实的样子；自己一个人就肆无忌惮。有至诚心他能做到慎独，他才能做到自律。这慎独、自律也是建立在因果法则的基础上。

我们单独自处的时候，我们举心动念，我们与俱生神都会知道，天龙八部都会知道，佛菩萨六种神通具足，也会了了明白。所以不能自欺，一定要真实。

Ordinary people are obscured by ignorance, and consider the non-existent as real and substantial, thus generating unending attachment, afflictions, and suffering… Truthfully speaking, this is utterly a trap of one’s own making, creating one’s own suffering.

-- His Holiness Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche