Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College.

A couple of weeks ago, when we discussed the Hindu concept of Moksha, students in the class asked a series of good questions: How can we achieve Moksha? Who can judge one has already achieved Moksha? What shall we do if we do achieve Moksha? As we know, “Moksha” is the religious goal of ancient Hinduism, a goal of final release from the suffering cycle of reincarnation into another divine realm of being, which is thought of by the Upanishads as being achievable via one’s ascetic practice in the forest, and by the Bhagavad Gita as being achievable via fulfilling one’s social duty in an inner state of pure equanimity. In tandem, these texts also give us many beautiful descriptions about how one feels when “Moksha” is achieved. Words such as non-duality, union, equanimity, peace, joy, non-attachment are all used for the descriptions. Using these descriptions, together with some guidance from one’s spiritual mentor such as those Hindu gurus, one can confirm whether and to what extent one has achieved Moksha. Nevertheless, among all the asked questions, we cannot find a clear and easy answer from the texts to the last one: what shall we do if we can safely claim we do achieve Moksha (at least to a certain extent) ?

Interestingly, you can actually replace “Moksha” with any other religious goal envisioned by other religious traditions, ask the same questions, and then, you will find the asked questions actually have addressed a common and crucial aspect of human religious life across virtually all traditions.

For instance, if we replace “Moksha” with “Salvation,” we will find a Christian may be struggled with how she can make sure she will achieve salvation, at least to a certain extent, in this or afterlife, and what she should do if she does make sure of achieving it. The same can be said to the Buddhist goal of “nirvana,” the Ruist/Confucian goal of “obtaining one’s conscientious awareness,” and the Daoist goal of “achieving immortality,” etc. In a word, all major traditions are struggling with understanding a cluster of questions surrounding the tension of “ideal” vs “reality” that is so tangible to one’s spiritual life on a daily basis.

To indicate my general view on this issue, let’s use the two competitive poems written respectively by the founders of the Northern and Southern schools of the Chinese Chan Buddhism, Shen Xiu (606-706 C.E.) and Hui Neng (638-713 C.E.), as an illuminating example.

Shen Xiu was a very educated monk, who was versed in ancient Chinese and Buddhist texts from a very young age, and he was therefore acclaimed by his peers as the most probable person to become the Sixth Patriarch of the Chan school. To prove he had achieved the Buddhist enlightenment and thus compete for the recognition of the Fifth Patriarch as the legitimate heir, Shen Xiu writes:

The body is the bodhi tree
The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand.
At all times we must strive to polish it
and must not let dust collect.

In contrast, Hui Neng was illiterate and could not write any single word when he was put into a position by the Fifth Patriarch to grind rice in the monastery. Hearing what Shen Xiu wrote, Hui Neng responded that:

Bodhi originally has no tree.
The bright mirror also has no stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing.
Where could dust arise?

According to the legend recorded by the Platform Sutra, one canonical text of Chinese Chan Buddhism, Hui Neng was confirmed as the really enlightened human being, and he thus inherited the lineage of Chan and became the sixth Patriarch.

So, let’s ask the aforementioned three questions to these two poets, and see which one answers each of them well.

For Shen Xiu, one reaches enlightenment, which is the Buddhist religious goal of being aware of the true reality called “sunyata” (emptiness), through the so-called “gradual realization”: you need to do all sorts of daily practices and disciplines to rid of all dusts on your originally bright Buddha nature; if you continually do so, one day, you will eventually get there. However, for Hui Neng, the spiritual state of being aware of Sunyata is all encompassing. Since Sunyata refers to the interconnection of all beings in the universe, it has its potential “infinite” quality as well. Understood as such, no matter how hard we discipline ourselves according to the method suggested by Shen Xiu, the accumulation of finite means cannot lead to an infinite enlightenment. Therefore, Hui Neng’s poem essentially tells us that all means, though alleged as being able to lead to enlightenment, are by no means the condition of the enlightenment. They are best thought of as a certain kind of “trigger” or “stimulus,” rather than “premise,” and the genuine foundation for one to achieve enlightenment is that our bright Buddha nature is originally and already there. As Hui Neng’s poem says, there is originally no single thing to be attached to, and no dust can blur the original Buddha nature. Therefore, in reliance upon the so-called “sudden” enlightenment, one can achieve her religious goal in any place at any time while getting triggered by any circumstance.

So, for the first question, how can one achieve enlightenment, Hui Neng seems to have given a better answer.

Secondly, who can tell whether one has achieved enlightenment? In the legend, it was the Fifth Patriarch, Hong Ren, who discerned the more enlightened state of Hui Neng from the different poems, and this tells us that only enlightened humans can discern enlightened ones. However, the poems themselves do not address this question, and we can use our best to judge that Shen Xiu’s and Hui Neng’s poems get a tie under this question. The discernment provided by the Fifth Patriarch also speaks to one notable characteristic of Chan Buddhism: the state of enlightenment is deeply experiential, and ultimately beyond any human language can describe. Therefore, the handing-over of Buddhist teaching among generations will mainly rely upon a method called the heart-to-heart transmission, which at least contains two components: a practitioner needs to “get” the Buddhist teaching into her heart by herself at first; and then, she can seek convenient and practical means to inspire other practitioners also to “get” there by themselves. What gets transmitted eventually is not any reified form of Buddhist teachings in any material evidence such as words. Instead, it is the experience of the genuine reality of the world in reliance upon the rediscovery of one’s originally bright Buddha nature.

Finally, what shall we do once we achieve the enlightenment? I have to say, in my view, Shen Xiu’s poem is much better than Hui Neng’s to answer this question. If we more realistically evaluate the everyday condition of human living, we would find that even if we can claim to reach that enlightened state of experiencing something that is infinite, we cannot be so confident to aver that there is a possibility for ordinary human beings to stay in the same state forever. Human life is deeply ambiguous and changing: one enlightened state at one moment may be conducive to ignorance and obscurity at the next, and one seeming setback may be just a sign of another triumph. So, it may be true that we can achieve our religious goal, at least to a certain extent, at a certain moment of our life as it is triggered by a variety of factors, but we still need to diligently do something to maintain that enlightened state. Hui Neng’s poem tells us very little about how to maintain it, while Sheng Xiu’s says that in order to keep our awareness of our originally bright Buddha nature, we need to “strive to polish it and must not let dust collect,” which, in my view, makes a lot of sense.

Therefore, since Shen Xiu and Hui Neng are eventually on a tie regarding their competitive answers to the three important questions, if I am the Fifth Patriarch, I would not just simply appoint Hui Neng as my heir. I may need to wait for some time to see whether they, or a third person, can write a better poem to incorporate the insights from both sides.

In general, my own view on the tension of ideal vs reality in religious matters can be summarized as follows: In order to live a good spiritual human life, we need to balance the two aspects of ideal vs reality in any adopted spiritual lifestyle. On the one hand, we need a goal that can be so sublime that no real human situation can ever fully capture it. In this way, the goal will continually motivate ourselves to better ourselves so that our life never lacks its momentum to move forward. However, the so-envisioned spiritual goal cannot be so high and ethereal that no actual human effort can capture it in any substantial way. In other words, we need some methods, such as meditation, ritual performance, daily human interaction, etc., to taste the sweetness of the spiritual goal to a certain extent in real moments of human life. In this way, the spiritual goal would not have been made completely out of human reach, because otherwise, what is the point for us to practice religion or spirituality at all? However, given the first condition about the sublimity of a spiritual goal, whenever we feel we get there and hence have good reasons to believe that we enjoy the realization of the goal to a certain extent, we also need to constantly remind ourselves that this is a just partial and momentary realization, which is by no means the full manifestation of the ideal in reality. So, eventually, the spiritual state of a human being who has reached the desirable balance would be like this: she would constantly discipline herself to realize her spiritual goal in real life; however, whenever she reaches it, she would tell herself: yes, I realize you, at least to a certain extent, but I just want more.

(A more elaborated discussion of mine on this topic of religious goal vs realities can be checked via my essay on “perfectionism.”)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College.

For a general introduction of the Hindu history of Buddhist religion, we can see the biography of the historical Buddha as Buddhism 1.0, Nikaya Buddhism as Buddhism 2.0, and Mahayana Buddhism as Buddhism 3.0. These were three stages of the development of the Buddhist religion in the ancient Hindu world before it migrated to other parts of Asia, such as to China, Korea, Japan, the area of Tibet and other areas of South and South Eastern Asia.

Texts of Mahayana Buddhism call itself as a “great vehicle” to help sufferers to reach the ultimate goal of the painless state of Nirvana, while calling its predecessor, the Nikaya form of Buddhism as “Hinayana,” viz., small vehicle, which, literally, is not great enough to reach the ultimate goal. Although today’s Buddhist learners do not need to buy into this apparently very sectarian nomenclature, it is indeed of significance to comprehend how Buddhism evolved before its migration to the non-Hindu world.

We once termed Nikaya Buddhism as a conservative sort of Buddhism in our previous lectures mainly because the following several reasons. Firstly, its philosophy still holds on to, quite strictly, the teaching of Four Noble Truths as the first sermon given by Gautama after his enlightenment, and tries to use organized arguments to reaffirm the sermon’s key concepts such as “no-self,” “co-dependent origination,” “suffering,” etc. In other words, Nikaya Buddhism still sees Buddhist teaching as somewhat a “thing,” and if one wants to reach enlightenment, she must seek this thing of Buddhist teaching at first, which means to read, meditate and practice the “thing,” and then, she can get what she aspires. Secondly, sociologically, this would imply the rigid boundary between religious professionals, viz., those monks and nuns in varying monasteries and religious orders, and lay people. According to the thought of Nikaya Buddhism, the enlightenment of lay people relies upon their rapport with the elite circle of Buddhist monks and nuns. Thirdly, since Buddhist teaching, as it was passed down in varying texts and other material evidences, were treated as a solid thing by Nikaya Buddhism, there was not too much a need for anyone to deify the Buddha so as to evoke his divine aid for the sake of reaching enlightenment. In this stage of Buddhist practice, if one wants to be a Buddhist, either, she needs to support a monastery to seek guidance; or she needs to become a nun herself to be trained of reading Buddhist texts and venerating the historical Buddha as her supreme teacher.

However, if one religion is organized as such, we can anticipate possibilities of new development from within it, since the power of human creativity on religious matters never ceases. To all the three mentioned aspects of Nikaya Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism made significant renovations, and once the renovations done, we would find the potentiality of Buddhism to metamorphose to other forms almost becomes infinite. Starting from around the common era until its migration into the non-Indian world, unique characteristics of Mahayana Buddhism can be summarized as follows.

Firstly, if the teaching of Sunyata (emptiness) based upon the nature of “no-self” (anatman) of things is thought of consistently, there is no reason not to employ it to the Buddhist teaching itself. If Buddhist teaching has no independent self either, then, there is really no legitimacy to prioritize any material evidence (which may include oral and written records of Buddha’s teaching, later commentaries on that, statues, relics, temples, ritual performances, etc.) so as to claim any absolutely necessary means to the Buddhist enlightenment. In other words, any means can be equally adequate to help individuals step on the path of enlightenment, which path to choose would all depends upon how individuals utilize these means for a convenient and practical sake. Therefore, in the most chanted Mahayana text, the Heart Sutra, it says: “There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, up to and including no aging and death and no distinction of aging and death. In the same way, there is no suffering, no source of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no exalted wisdom, no attainment, and also no non-attainment.” (assigned reading, p. 127) Read carefully, this text would mean that there is no “four noble truths,” since there is no such a selfed-thing called “four noble truths”; however, there is no “non-four noble truths” either, since the opposite of “four noble truths” has no self too. Hence, whether to take “four noble truths” as one’s target of learning and path of enlightenment will become a secondary and dependent question. According to the Heart Sutra, by merely chanting the mantra of the “perfection of wisdom” – Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhir svaha, one would maintain to be in the state of great spiritual fulfillment, and “thoroughly pacifies all suffering.” By the same token, the same word can be said virtually to any other chosen path as long as it works.

Secondly, using the same logic, the religious goal of Buddhism, nirvana, cannot be treated as a selfed-thing either. In other words, there is really no such an enlightened place with such an enlightened state of mind, which can be separated from the everyday moments of the mundane world, the world of samsara. Therefore, the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (first or second century C.E ?) used a logic of tetralemma to deny four possibilities of characterizing Nirvana: Nirvana is not a thing; Nirvana is not a non-thing; Nirvana is not both a thing and a non-thing; Nirvana is not neither a thing nor a non-thing. Why so? This is because since Nirvana is not a thing according to the consistent logic of the original Buddhist idea of Anatman, every other possibility of the tetralemma cannot be seen as a selfed thing either, since they all depend upon the first statement “nirvana is not a thing.” The conclusion reached by Nagarjuna is that “There is no distinction whatsoever between nirvana and samsara.” (p.130) In other words, one can achieve nirvana at any time and in any place of one’s mundane life as long as she chooses the right path fit for her situation. Together with the first renovation we explained above, this non-solidification of both the nirvana and the Buddhist teaching about nirvana, so-to-speak, makes the boundary between religious professionals and lay people completely unnecessary. In other words, lay people have no less chance than those professionals of reaching nirvana, and they can indeed achieve nirvana in any fashion conceivable to their own unique situations.

After this upgrade of Buddhist thought from its original 1.0 and 2.0 versions to this very radical 3.0 version, two major trends can be discerned before Buddhism’s migration:

Firstly, intellectuals, who like to engage Buddhist teaching in a more sophisticated way, would like to manifest the more intricate conceptual tendency of Mahayana Buddhism in a variety of ways. For instance, the school of “consciousness only” which was initiated by the philosopher Vasabandhu (320-400) developed a very sophisticated theory of human consciousness to serve their needs of Buddhist enlightenment. According to this theory, beyond the normal modes of human consciousness: vision, sound, odor, taste, touch, and the underlying perception of all of them, there is the seventh consciousness called manas which would attach the idea of “self” to both the perceiver and the perceived. Eventually, all these perceptions will be stored as seeds in the eighth consciousness called alayna, or granary consciousness, which will be furthermore reincarnated into the form of individual consciousness in one’s next life. Understood as such, this Buddhist theory of “consciousness only” furnishes an understanding of reincarnation more consistent with the Buddhist commitment to no-self, since what is reincarnated is not any individual self, but a stream of consciousness which contains seeds of perceptions of one’s previous life. For intellectuals who practice this type of consciousness-only Buddhism, the goal of nirvana is reached in the form of realizing the pure form of alayna consciousness which is not affected by any other mode of consciousness contaminated by the seventh one of manas, and this also means that they can eventually abandon the consciousness of self.

However, obviously, people with a favor towards intellectual sophistication merely belong to the minority of humanity. In tandem with this intellectual development of Mahayana Buddhism, we witness a very robust Buddhist movement similar to the development of devotional Hinduism out of its previous ascetic tradition. Namely, lay people believed they can choose their own forms of incarnated Buddha as deities to worship, and hence, to almost seamlessly embed their Buddhist practices with varying mundane concerns of their everyday life. For instance, in order to have a child, a lay person can go to a temple, pray to a Buddha who took charge, and wait for a good result in her household. To get a good afterlife, people can repeat the name of Amida Buddha for ten times with their sincere faith so as to be eventually transferred to a Buddhist paradise called the Pure Land where everything is so perfectly arranged, and no one would be reborn into suffered beings. At the same time, the image of Bodhisattvas became increasingly popular because a Bodhisattvas is an enlightened being who can achieve Buddhahood; however, in order to save other beings from suffering, the Bodhisattvas would simply delay his or her enlightenment, and re-dedicate his or her energy into the mundane world so as to save more and more people from suffering. In comparison, the image of accomplished monks and nuns in Nikaya Buddhism was perceived by this new Buddhist movement as an inferior arhat, who merely selfishly focused upon her own enlightenment without regard to the suffering of ordinary people.

Before concluding this lecture of early Mahayana Buddhism, I hope that you now get a better understanding on why later Buddhism, when it migrated to other parts of the world, can become so diverse and colorful. Since every individual is allowed to choose their own path to get rid of suffering and achieve nirvana, and not any path is prioritized over another, then, you can imagine the growing and diversifying potential of Buddhist thought. In next meeting, we’ll start to discuss the Chinese Chan and Japanese Zen Buddhism, where you will find an abundance of unexpected, “unorthodox,” and indescribable ways of Buddhist enlightenment.