Part 3
The Buddha said to Subhuti, “The Bodhisattvas should surrender their minds thus: All kinds of sentient beings — be they born from eggs, born from wombs, born from moisture, or born from transmutation, be they material, immaterial, thinking or non-thinking, or neither thinking nor non-thinking — I shall have them all enter perfect nirvana without remainder and thus liberate them all. Although I liberate innumerable, countless, infinite sentient beings, not a single sentient being is in fact liberated.”
“Why not? Subhuti, if the Bodhisattvas have images of self, images of person, images of a being, images of a liver of life, they are not Bodhisattvas.”
Commentary:
‘All kinds of sentient beings’ here means not only the living sentient beings narrated above but also non-living things such as stone and wood. There is nothing that is beyond the realm of sentient beings except the Buddha. People may wonder how it is possible to liberate such sentient beings that we cannot communicate with, whilst saying that even human beings who can have mutual understanding with us are difficult to liberate.
We have the phrase ‘If you attain enlightenment, all the rest of the universe also attains enlightenment along with you’. Attaining enlightenment means to stop being deluded by forms and words, which is to see everything just as it is. This is to see and hear everything as empty. It should be kept in mind that ‘empty’ doesn’t mean ‘void’ but means ‘perfect’. So, Emptiness is another name of the Buddha, nirvana, or the true-Self, and seeing everything as empty is referred to as seeing the true-Self, the Buddha, or entering nirvana. So, when you attain enlightenment, all the universe as well as all the sentient beings mentioned above are liberated. Simply put, once you become enlightened, you come to the realisation that all the sentient beings, including all of us, are already liberated, that is, they are already in nirvana and that even though all things without exception are essentially the Buddha, we have mistaken them as sentient beings because we cannot see them as they are.
To have all sentient beings enter nirvana and liberate them doesn’t mean to have them altered but means to change our way of seeing them. This is why the Buddha said that we should think that there is not a single sentient being we liberate, no matter how many sentient beings we may liberate. This signifies that when you are not enlightened, even the Buddha can’t help but appear to be just a sentient being.
Master: “What did you do?”
Student: “I read the Diamond Sutra.”
Master: “What did the Buddha say?
Student: “He said that we never in fact liberate any sentient beings even though we liberate countless sentient beings.”
Master: “You shouldn’t defame and degrade the Buddha. The Buddha never said any words.”
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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