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Q. Why should we bow and pray to a statue of Buddha?

A. You should not pray to it. It is a lifeless thing made of wood, steel, stone, or clay by people. Whatever you say to it, it doesn’t make any answer or reaction to your prayer, let alone comply with your request. Praying to a statue of Buddha is no more than idol worship, which is not a religion but a superstition or a kind of primitive belief like the worshipping of natural things such as the sun, the moon, huge rocks, big trees and so on.

If you are to pray to Buddha, then you had better treat people around you with the same mental attitude that you have during prayer to a Buddha statue. This is true prayer, and you will never fail to be rewarded for your prayer. The purpose of Buddhism is not to idolise a statue of Buddha but to realise that people around you are the holy and valuable being that you should treat in the same way you worship a statue of Buddha. So, the first Patriarch Bodhidharma said, “Don’t make your living Buddha worship a dead Buddha.”

©Boo Ahm

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Baofu’s Blocking of the Eyes, Ears, and Mind

Dizang asked a monastic from Baofu Monastery, “How does your master teach the true-Self?” The monastic said, “Once Master Baofu told the assembly, ‘I cover your eyes to let you see what is not seen. I cover your ears to let you hear what is not heard. I restrain your mind to let you give up thinking.’” Dizang said to the monastic, “Let me ask you, ‘When I don’t cover your eyes, what do you see? When I don’t cover your ears, what do you hear? When I don’t restrain your mind, what do you discern?’” Upon hearing these words, the monastic had realisation.
Student: “Why did Master Baofu cover the monk’s eyes and ears?”

Master: “In order to enable him to see and hear what can’t be seen and heard when they are not covered.”
Student: “Why didn’t Dizang cover the monk’s eyes and ears?”
Master: “In order to enable him to see and hear what can’t be seen and heard when they are covered.”

Commentary:
Covering your eyes and ears, you can’t see and hear what is seen when they are not covered.
Not covering your eyes and ears, you can’t see and hear what is seen and heard when they are covered.
What you should see and hear is what is seen and heard both when your eyes and ears are open and when they are closed.

©Boo Ahm

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Hsin Shin Ming: “24. When a mind doesn’t come into being, everything is without fault.”

‘A mind’ here means a thought, and a thought is a discrimination. ‘A mind doesn’t come into being’ means ‘you don’t make a discrimination’. So, the scripture says that everything is without fault when you don’t make discrimination. This means that everything is faulty because you make discrimination.

As mentioned earlier, to make discrimination is to create labels like ‘a cup’, ‘good’ or ‘poor’. The moment the thought ‘This is a cup’ comes into being upon seeing something, the thought ‘a cup’ gives birth to subsequent thoughts such as a plastic cup or a ceramic cup, a white cup or a red cup, a small cup or a large cup and so on. These thoughts produce their subsequent thoughts. Each of these thoughts always has subsequent thoughts that are contrary to each other: ‘A cup is good for drinking water but bad for knocking in a nail’, or ‘A plastic cup is good for a picnic but poor for entertaining an important guest’. In this way, everything becomes faulty when you make discrimination.

In fact, the cup is not a cup before the thought ‘a cup’ comes into being, or you label it a cup. It is not ‘plastic’ not ‘poor’, but perfect just as it is until a thought comes into being. It becomes faulty, like being ‘poor’, only because you make such a discrimination. It is not due to the imperfection of a thing but due to your discrimination that things look faulty. Accordingly, everything is without fault when a mind (i.e. a thought) doesn’t come into being.

©Boo Ahm
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Q. They complain that they still have as many vexations as they did before the experience. Did they truly experience enlightenment? Does it have any lasting effect?

A. People can have a variety of minor experiences before coming to realisation of the true-Self. They often mistake these for enlightenment. One of the most common sayings among such people is that they forgot enlightenment because they didn’t continue to practise after enlightenment. However, enlightenment, once attained, can neither be discarded, be forgotten nor be escaped from forever.

To attain enlightenment means to have our views of things, or the angle of our view of things changed. When your view is changed, your way of thinking is changed. When your way of thinking is changed, your acts are changed. When your acts are changed, your life is changed. In other words, if your view is changed, your life can’t but be changed, just as your life is changed when you’ve recovered from chronic illness after taking good medicine. Whatever experience you may have, you are not enlightened unless your view is changed, just as you can’t be said to have recovered from your illness if you still feel unwell no matter what experience you may have had after taking medicine.

©Boo Ahm
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In a dream Kyozan went to Maitreya’s Pure Land and sat in the third seat.

In a dream Kyozan went to Maitreya’s Pure Land and sat in the third seat. A monk there beat the gavel and said, “Today the one in the third seat will give a sermon.” Kyozan arose, hit the gavel and said, “The truth of Mahayana is beyond any verbal expression! Listen, listen!”

Student: “Why did Kyozan hit the gavel and say, ‘Listen, listen!’ when he was asked to give a sermon in his dream?”
Master: “Listen and you will understand what he meant.”
Student: “He hit the gavel in his dream long ago. How can I listen to it now?”
Master: “How can you ask me about what happened in his dream long ago if you can’t listen to it?”
Student: “What happens if I listen to it?”
Master: “You come to awaken from your dream.”

Commentary:
Don’t mistake his showing the true-Self for telling an account of a dream.
Why do you divide Oneness into reality and dream?

©Boo Ahm
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Q. Is it possible, without attaining enlightenment, to stop creating karma? If it is possible, then how?

A. First of all, don’t think that the enlightened don’t create karma. No one, even Buddha, can cease to be subject to karma. Every moment of our life is the effect of past karma and the cause of future karma at the same time. What you are today is the result of how you lived yesterday, and how you live today based upon what you are is the cause of what you will be tomorrow.

To escape from karma doesn’t means to stop creating karma but to realise that everything, including karma, is empty. When everything is empty, not only karma but also the creator of karma is empty. To realise this is to attain enlightenment. So, without enlightenment, we can’t be free from karma.

Student: “How can I escape from karma?”
Master: “Realise who tries to escape what clearly.”

©Boo Ahm

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Q. Do random thoughts create karma?

A. This is like asking ‘Do random acts create karma?’ because thoughts are a kind of act and random thoughts are random acts. We also can say that random acts are the result of random thoughts. This is also like asking ‘Do random causes have effect?’ My answer is “Yes, they absolutely do.” Whatever you do, or whether you do something or not, you can’t avoid creating karma even for a moment.

When you do something, you have the karma of doing something. When you do nothing, you have the karma of doing nothing. You are as subject to karma, cause and effect as you are to gravity. Saying that random acts don’t create karma is like saying that taking poison randomly does not have any effect on the taker of it and that being run over randomly by a car has no effect on our bodies.

©Boo Ahm

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Dongshan’s Disclosing Mind, Disclosing Nature

Zen master Sengmi was travelling with his dharma brother Dongshan. Dongshan pointed to a temple on the roadside and said, “In that temple is a person who discloses the mind and discloses the Buddha nature.” Sengmi said, “Who is it?” Dongshan said, “Someone who has just achieved complete death as you asked.”
Sengmi said, “Who discloses the mind and the Buddha nature?” Dongshan said, “Someone who has achieved life in death.”

Student: “Who is someone who has achieved complete death?”
Master: “Someone whose illusions have all died.”
Student: “Who is someone who has achieved life in death?”
Master: “Someone who is free from the illusions of life and death.”
Student: “How does he disclose the mind and the Buddha nature?”
Master: “He does just as you do now.”
Student: “Why don’t I know that I also do that now?”
Master: “Because you are still alive.”

Commentary:
Someone who has achieved complete death is not scared of death because he has no life to lose.
Someone who has achieved life in death is not attached to anything because there is nothing that is not him.

©Boo Ahm

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“Happiness you can possess is not true happiness because it can leave you anytime. True happiness can be felt only when you are happiness itself because it can’t leave you.” Boo Ahm

©Boo Ahm

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Hsin Shin Ming: “23. Although all dualities arise from the One, do not cling even to the One.”

‘The One’ means the true-Self or emptiness, and ‘dualities’ mean forms. Enlightenment is to realise that the root of everything or all forms, including yourself, is the One which is also called the true-Self, emptiness. Therefore, this scripture means ‘Although you come to realisation that everything is from the One, the true-Self, you should not cling even to the One.

To realise that all dualities arise from the One is to realise that all dualities are empty because the One means emptiness. There is nothing to cling to or let go of and no one who will cling when everything is empty. If you cling to the One, emptiness, that is not the One but an illusion of the One. It is because you don’t know what the One is that you cling to it. Leaving all dualities and clinging to the One is like going into another burning house after getting out of a burning house. The moment you cling to the One, you can’t avoid falling into dualities since the One is divided into you and the One.

If you happen to think that there is even a small thing to cling to, you are as far apart from the truth as heaven is from the earth.

Student: “What is the One?”
Master: “Duality.”

©Boo Ahm
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