Thus did I hear. One time, the Buddha was staying in Jeta Grove in Sravasti, residing with 1,250 great monks.
Commentary:
As mentioned previously, ‘hear thus’ means hearing things as they are. Let me give you a little more detailed explanation regarding ‘seeing and hearing things as they are’.
Let’s suppose I, handing you a cup of something, say to you, “You drink it as it is.” How should you drink it in order to perform my words exactly?
Of course, you should drink it without adding anything like sugar or salt, or subtracting anything from it. In the same way, when I tell you to see and hear things as they are, I mean that you should see and hear them without attaching any words, imaginary labels, including names, that describe them and define their identities, to them, because they are not innate, not intrinsic but artificial, extrinsic. A flower, for example, was not a flower until we called it a flower. It has never said, “I am a flower. Call me flower.” It has never mentioned its colour and its size, but we attached imaginary labels such as flower, red, yellow, pink, large, small and so on as we pleased.
When you hear thus, that is, when you see and hear everything as it is without being deluded by forms and words, there is no distinction whatsoever among things and all things become nameless one. This is referred to as Oneness, the true-Self, or Emptiness. In this state there is nothing but Oneness, the true-Self, and everything that reaches your eyes and ears is no more than the function of the true-Self. Then, you can feel the true-Self from each word in reading the sentence ‘One time, the Buddha was staying in Jeta Grove in Sravasti, residing with 1,250 great monks’. This is to see the Buddha face to face instead of merely reading the story of the historical Buddha. This is to read the Sutra truly instead of merely picking up black beans on white paper.
Don’t forsake the Buddha before you by following the Buddha in Jeta Grove in Sravasti 2,500 years ago.
Q: “What is the Buddha before me?”
A: “Answering is degrading myself as well as you.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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