..续本文上一页erly. He illustrated that by arranging things on a mantelpiece. But things are always in a mess and the bodhisattva finds a harmony within that.
In Mahayana thought there were some great developments. There was a whole school called mind only which came to the realization that there is that great underlying basis of everything, the great fundamental ground of being, which is what we call emptiness when we chant the "Heart Sutra." And that this is an experience that just comes over us in meditation sometimes. Everything is taken away. This is the true renunciation. It is not an act of will, but an act of understanding. Even to say understanding is saying too much. It”s like the moon reflected in the water. It”s an instantaneous reflection. The water doesn”t think about it and then reflect the moon. It”s just like a mirror. So the moonlight is this fundamental ground of being, but it”s also intangible. It can”t directly be touched. But everything is held in this and we can speak of the compassion of the ground of being, that it holds us and whenever we come home, there it is. It is always there. Whenever we gather our attention, it is always there. And while it is nothing at all, we can rest in it. This is a vivid experience of zazen and also something that you can cling to and destroy you and yourself with it, of course, like everything else.
As the Mahayana went on, people began to develop even more sophisticated images. Perhaps the height of this was the Flower Garland School, which is the Hua-yen (Jap. Kegon) School of Buddhism, which saw that not only are all the things of the world reflected in the mind, but the mind completely appears in all those things in the world. So the idea of interpenetration arose. If you”ve ever read or sat with Thich Nhat Hanh, he”s very influenced by this idea and talks about it a lot. For him it is the source of all social action. The idea that each being is actually all other beings. The universe is the great net of Indra, is one of the metaphors, and each place the net crosses over, there is a jewel and each jewel holds a reflection of all other jewels. There is a great luminous world here in which each object is alive and vibrant and containing all other objects and at the same time the subject-object boundary is, of course, quite broken down.
About that time philosophy seems to have run out in zen. I think it was a great achievement, that tradition, and something I”m still trying to quite fathom, I think, but also it got kind of fancy and got away people”s direct experience. So in zen there is always the move back to direct experience. So that Wu-men Hui”kai (Jap. Mumon Ekai) says, and he”s quoting an ancient saying, "When you meet the Buddha on the road; kill the Buddha." Because the Buddha is no use to you. If you are not the Buddha, the Buddha is just a kind of poison. He also said, "Wash your mouth out with soap and water when you speak the word, `Buddha”."
So this is the enlightenment experience when you completely let go of all your ideas and delusions because they are a kind of veil in front of you. There”s nothing wrong, really, with walking around with a veil. You still contain every other being in the universe, but if you want to know for yourself, if you want to experience the joy, then you have to fast in that way and let go of that veil. Let go of something good until you have nothing and then the joy will appear.
So I”ll talk a little, perhaps, about enlightenment experience. I gave a talk in Berkeley about a week ago and I spent about two minutes talking about enlightenment and it was a rather long talk and almost ninety percent of the questions I was asked were about enlightenment. And so I thought, "Gee, I should wash my mouth out with soap and water for mentioning the wo…
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