English
A Detailed Exposition of the Vimalakirti Sutra
by Grandmaster Lu, Living Buddha Lian Sheng of the True Buddha School
Translated into English by the True Buddha School Vimalakirti Translation Team
Discourse 14, 3 July 2022 - Chapter One—Buddhaverse (Continued)
Thus have I heard: At one time, the Buddha was in the Amra Garden near the city of Vaisali, accompanied by eight thousand great bhikkus, thirty-two thousand bodhisattvas, and the assembly of virtuous and knowledgeable spiritual practitioners.
Their attainments of the great wisdom and fundamental conduct were solely due to the divine might of the buddhas. Together they formed a dharma-protecting fortress to uphold the true dharma. Their lion’s roar resounded throughout all ten directions. They took the initiative to deliver sentient beings and felt at ease in any situation.
They relentlessly hoisted the Three Jewels with grandeur, and subdued maras[2] and all the heretics on deviant paths. They had been completely purified and eternally freed from all obscurations and entanglements. Their minds were in a constant state of unhindered liberation, and with complete upholding of right thought and right meditation, they engaged in debates with eloquence.
They had perfected their generosity, moral ethics, endurance, diligence, meditative stability, and wisdom, as well as expedient means. They comprehended unattainability and reached the state of unborn endurance. They could smoothly turn the non-regressing wheel following the course of nature. [3]
Yesterday, I talked about generosity, moral ethics, endurance, diligence, meditative stability, and wisdom. Let me elaborate more on wisdom—referring to the Buddha’s wisdom. I have explained that the Buddha’s wisdom encompasses the wisdom of emptiness, the wisdom of existence, and the all-embracing wisdom of the Tathagata.
The first wisdom—also called the wisdom of all knowledge—is about emptiness. The second wisdom—the wisdom of the knowledge of the path—is the dharma that is established on top of emptiness, representing existence. The last one is the all-embracing wisdom of the Tathagata, which is the dual execution of both emptiness and existence.
The Tiantai Sect established emptiness, falsehood, and the middle way as its One Mind in Threefold Contemplation. Emptiness indicates that all things lack inherent self-nature—they are merely aggregates—as stated in the Vajra Sutra.
For example, before a house is built, it is emptiness. In America, we build a house from wood, and in Taiwan, it is made of cement. Together with the steel bars, glasses, doors, windows, and all the interiors, they form an aggregate. Each part has no self-nature by itself, and it starts out from nothing. How long will the house last? Perhaps one or two hundred years. In the end, it will disintegrate. At first, it is a new house, but after a while, it becomes an old house, and it starts to leak and become infested with mold. It deteriorates until it can no longer be occupied. Then it is demolished. It has returned to emptiness. So, emptiness is the wisdom of all knowledge.
The wisdom of existence is the wisdom of discernment: Where there is existence, there is discernment. The wisdom of discernment is also the wisdom of all knowledge. The Heart Sutra states that form is emptiness, and emptiness is form; form is no other than emptiness, and emptiness is no other than form. Form refers to existence, so existence is equivalent to emptiness. They are fundamentally inseparable, as they are both the same thing. Existence and emptiness are the same. This is wisdom!
By mutually applying both emptiness and existence, one can comprehend and utilize the Buddha’s wisdom.
For example, when we are troubled, we can think that the world is inherently empty. Then self will no longer exist, and all our afflictions will be gone. What is there to cling to? The body is an aggregate of the elements—it is a combination of earth, water, fire, and wind. The bones and flesh are the earth element, the blood is the water, the body temperature is the fire, and our breath is the wind element.
Our bodies are merely aggregates. And they age. What are we attached to? We don’t use it for too long. The body lasts at most 140 years—not that long. Really old people can scare people off in the middle of the night. Is there a need to live that long? At first, it is empty, then it comes into existence, and eventually, it returns to emptiness again. So, why are you clinging to it? There’s no need!
The Buddha frequently reminds us to apply the notion of emptiness to resolve our afflictions and attachments. And we utilize the notion of existence to discern and employ skillful means to deliver sentient beings. We utilize both emptiness and existence.
For instance, on one’s children. I am not attached to my children and do not control their future. We just do our best to educate them, but they are in charge of their own future. Never mind the grandchildren, since there is nothing we can control anyway. My granddaughter’s skirt is getting shorter and shorter. You can almost see her underpants—but can you make her listen to you if you tell her not to dress that way? It is fashionable now. What can you do?
All we do is to provide the right education and give her our best, but we cannot control the outcome. As for my grandson, we have been telling him to exercise and not to play on his cell phone all the time. But does he listen to us? They have grown up and have their freedom, so we cannot meddle and control them.
Anyway, if you think about it, you yourself will become empty one day, and afterward, your children will become empty, then your grandchildren, too. Therefore, there is nothing to worry about, as it will be all the same in the end. This is a kind of wisdom [to think this way].
Amid existence, you need to embody the wisdom of discernment. And amid emptiness is the fundamental wisdom of emptiness. The wisdom of discernment never neglects the law of cause and effect.
In our spiritual cultivation, we must understand the Buddha’s wisdom: the wisdom of emptiness, the wisdom of existence, and the all-embracing wisdom of the Tathagata.
What are the expedient means? They are any skillful and expedient means to save sentient beings, such as the four ways to entice sentient beings to walk the spiritual cultivation path.
For example, I had this experience with converting people by likeness-association. After the Golden Mother opened my divine eye, I started to perform divination. I was still quite young then. My mother’s younger brother, my uncle Huang Bingsheng, loved to go dancing at the dance clubs. He made an excuse to visit me and told my aunt so. Well yes, he did visit me but then he took me to the dance clubs. I went along, and that’s how I learned how to dance.
The first dance club I visited was the She Le Dance Club next to the Love River in Kaohsiung, in the lobby of the Houdefu Hotel. When we got there, we bought the so-called dance tickets. Every time you dance, you need to give your dance companion a ticket. The dance girls were all sitting in a row, and you could invite any of them to dance with you. It is not like this nowadays.
I could not dance at that time, so I just watched. My uncle urged me to ask a dance companion to dance with me and gave me a ticket. Eventually, I learned how to dance. So my dancing was learned in the dance clubs and taught by the dance girls. Afterward, we also went to the other three major dance clubs in Kaohsiung: the Dashijieh Dance Hall, the Queen Dance Club, and the Ruicheng Dance Club.
Two people took me to the dance clubs—one was my uncle, and the other one was my best friend and classmate Huang Jingxiong, who also loved to dance in the dance clubs. It has always been free since they paid for me. They told the dance clubs that they will pick up the tab for all my expenses. How nice!
Later, I moved to Taichung. In Taichung, there are dance floors at the concert halls, nightclubs, South Night, Eastern Dance Clubs, and what else…? The Snow White Big Ballroom! Oh, that’s right! I even consulted fengshui for the office of the boss. So I knew all the dance clubs very well, including those frequented by the youngsters.
This is not all for nothing! Many of the dance girls came for spiritual consultation at my home. They loved fortune-telling. Had I not gone to the dance clubs, how would they know and come? So, not only did I give them spiritual consultations, but I also taught them to chant Amitabha Buddha and recite the Fortune God’s mantra so that they would have many clienteles. There were many groups of them coming back then. This is called deliverance by likeness-association—and this is a skillful means!
I was extremely pure back then, even when dancing with the dance girls. I just danced and nothing else. They knew me very well, and words went by mouth that I could do divination. There was a time when I was in Taiwan, I went to a dance club one night. Amazingly, I heard someone call me, “That’s the Living Buddha Lian Sheng, Mr. Sheng-Yen Lu!” When I heard that, I turned around and ran away. They chased after me until they broke their high heels. They must have been the daughters of the dance girls of the early times. They wanted me to tell their fortune and asked for spiritual consultation.
This is called a skillful or expedient means! During the consultation, I told them to believe in the buddhadharma—and not worshipping the Eight-Precepts Pig because Taiwanese clubs typically enshrine him to help attract customers to the clubs. Once, I was invited by a restaurant owner to consecrate a shrine, and it turned out to be the Pigsy.
This is expedient means! I have converted many dance and drinking girl companions from the clubs. Many of them were involved in some sort of pornography. It was due to my affinity when I was young that I visited such places. Thus they were interested in divination, and then I was able to guide them onto the path. I taught them how to chant Amitabha Buddha and the mantras and introduced them to places where they can hear sutra expositions, such as the Buddhist Lotus Society. This is the skillful means I employed! I no longer visited such places after I became a monk.
The great bhikkus and great bodhisattvas have expedient means to deliver sentient beings. They use the four methods[4] to guide beings onto the path. These are all skillful, expedient, or convenient means to deliver sentient beings.
That’s all for today. Om mani padme hum.
Next discourse on the Vimalakirti Sutra: Discourse 15, 9 July 2022 - Chapter One—Buddhaverse (Continued)
Previous discourse on the Vimalakirti Sutra: Discourse 13, 2 July 2022 - Chapter One—Buddhaverse (Continued)
Index of links to all discourse on the Vimalakirti Sutra: https://en.tbsn.org/guidem/detail/2975/
Back to the main index page of all dharma discourse: https://en.tbsn.org/guidem/index
Full webcast of 2022.07.03 Tara Who Saves from Contagious Diseases Homa Ceremony (Rainbow Temple, North Bend, USA) and dharma discourse with English interpretation: https://youtu.be/q9lXQYMpJgE
