Part 10-5
“Subhuti, by way of analogy, if a person’s body is as large as Mount Sumeru, what do you think? Would you say that his body is large?” Subhuti said, “It is very large, World Honoured One, because the Buddha called that which is not a body the large body.”
Commentary:
Mount Sumeru is the most grandiose mountain in the countless worlds that symbolises the centre of the universe in Buddhism. We should understand why the Buddha said that a person’s body is as large as Mount Sumeru.
As mentioned in Part 10-4, when we don’t dwell on anything, or when we see and hear things as they are without being deluded by words, there is not a single word even though our eyes and ears are full of light and sound. When there is not a word in our seeing and hearing, there is not a single thing even though our eyes and ears are full. That there is not a thing in our seeing and hearing means to see and hear things like dreams just as the Buddha told us to at the end of this Sutra.
Then, a person’s body is not a person’s body, and Mount Sumeru is not Mount Sumeru, but they are just illusionary images like dreams. In other words, seeing everything like a dream is compared to seeing everything like a rabbit-horn that is not real but illusionary. There is no difference between a large rabbit-horn and a small one, although they appear to be different from each other, since they are not real but imaginary. In the same way, when we don’t dwell on anything, there is no difference between a person’s body and Mount Sumeru because both of them are no more than rabbit-horns. This is why the Buddha called that which is not a body the large body, and why ancient masters would say that we should be able to put Mount Sumeru into a mustard seed.
Student: “What is the large body?”
Master: “What have you seen so far?”
©Boo AhmAll writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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