(Half bell)
(Bell)
I often have a volition to want to spread happiness
and also to see the beauty in the world.
But sometimes, when I see things without dualities
and I realize that happiness and suffering inter-are and
beauty and ugliness inter-are,
I lack the purpose or volition
for goodness or beauty.
Because it seems meaningless.
If all things are one another,
what is the purpose?
How can we have purpose to do good and to create happiness?
If happiness is inter-being with suffering,
and beauty is inter-being with ugliness?
When I was a young monk,
reading the sutras,
I learned that the Buddha also practices sitting meditation,
and walking meditation,
mindful breathing and so on.
And I asked myself: Why?
You have already become a Buddha,
and you need to practice more?
(Laughter)
And that became object of my meditation.
The question is linked to another question,
whether the Buddha still suffers as a human being.
Because the Buddha is not a god, the Buddha is an enlightened being
who has a lot of compassion and insight.
And also the other question is, if having become a Buddha, you continue to suffer,
what is the use of becoming a Buddha?
(Laughter)
I tried to meditate and then I found the answers by myself.
That reality can be described in term of inter-being.
If there is no right, there is no left.
If there is no subject,there is no object. And so on.
The notion of interbeing, good and evil,
and reality transcends all these notions.
But speaking from conventional truth ...
because there are two kinds of truth; conventional truth and ultimate truth,
we still have to use the notion of birth and death,
being and non-being, happiness and suffering, and so on.
So if we touch the ultimate truth and we can transcend all these notions,
we will be at peace.
But still in the realm of conventional truth, that truth can be applied also.
It's like a classical science -inauthentic but Newton still applicable.
Because happiness cannot be by itself alone.
That is why suffering has to be there
in order to play the role of a non-happiness element.
A lotus is made of non-lotus elements, including the mud.
So without the mud, there is no lotus.
There is no suffering, there is no happiness without suffering.
Because happiness is made of non-happiness elements,
and among these non-happiness elements, there is the element of mud.
So mud is very essential.
It is by making good use of the mud that you can have lotus.
It is by making good use of happiness that you have beauty.
It is by making good use of suffering that you can have happiness.
So, for a person like the Buddha, who has a lot of understanding and compassion,
if he has to suffer, he suffers much much lesser.
That is the advantage of being a Buddha.
If you have to suffer, you suffer much less
because you know how to suffer.
You have so much wisdom and then you can make good use of suffering
in order to create understanding and compassion.
And that is the answer to my first question:
whether a Buddha still suffers after having become a Buddha or not.
As for the other question is that,
everything is impermanent including happiness.
If everything is impermanent, then love and happiness are also impermanent.
And that is why, the Buddha having love and happiness
has to continue to nourish love and happiness.
That is why, he continues to do walking meditation,
sitting meditation, mindful breathing.
So it is very comfortable to know that everything is impermanent,
that everything inter-is with everything else.
And you see a perfect coordination between conventional truth and ultimate truth.
(Half bell)
(Bell)