..续本文上一页 back and forth like this even for three years, he”ll never get there. And when he doesn”t reach the city, if he were then to go telling people that it doesn”t exist, he would be making a serious mistake.

　　So it is with people who practice virtue, concentration, and discernment in half measures, back and forth, and — when they don”t gain Awakening — go telling others that nibbana is null and void, that the Buddha took it with him when he died. This is very wrong. We can make a comparison with a field where our parents have raised rice and always gotten a good crop. If they die, and our own laziness fills their place so that we don”t do the work, we”re bound to go hungry. And once we”re hungry, can we then say that our parents took the rice or the field with them

　　 In the same way, nibbana is there, but if we don”t assemble the causes for realizing it and then go denying its existence, you can imagine for yourself how much harm we”re doing.

　　If we haven”t yet reached or realized nibbana, there”s nothing extraordinary about it. But once we have come close to nibbana, the world will appear as if full of vipers and masses of fire. The palaces and mansions of heavenly beings, if you can see them, will look like the hovels of outcastes. You won”t be attracted to living in them, because you”ve already known nibbana.

　　Nibbana is nothing else but this ordinary heart, freed from all the effluents of defilement so that it reaches its primal nature. The primal nature of the heart is something that doesn”t take birth, age, grow ill, or die. What takes birth is the act of falling for preoccupations. The heart”s nature is clear and shining, but unawareness keeps it clouded and opaque. Yet even on the physical level — to say nothing of the heart — if someone were to come along and say that the water in the ocean is clear by nature, that a person with any intelligence could see the ocean floor, you”d have a hard time trying to find anyone to believe him. But what he says is true. There are plenty of reasons why we can”t see the ocean floor — the dust and minute particles floating in the water, the wind and the sea creatures that interact with the water — but if you could get someone to eliminate these factors so that there would be nothing but the nature of the water, it would be crystal clear. You could tell at a glance how deep or shallow the ocean was without having to waste your time ping and groping around. So it is with the heart: If our hearts are still ignorant, we shouldn”t go groping elsewhere for nibbana. Only if we cleanse our own hearts will we be able to see it.

　　People who meditate are by and large extremely prone to conjecture and speculation, judging nibbana to be like this or that, but actually there”s nothing especially deep, dark, or mysterious about it. What makes nibbana seem mysterious is our own lack of discernment. Nibbana is always present, along with the world. As long as the world exists, there will always be nibbana. But if no one explores the truth of nibbana, it will appear mysterious and far away. And once we give rise to our own misunderstandings, we”re bound to start formulating notions that nibbana is like this or like that. We may decide that nibbana is extinguished; that nibbana is null and void; that nibbana has no birth, aging, illness, or death; that nibbana is the self; or that nibbana is not-self. Actually, each of these expressions is neither right nor wrong. Right and wrong belong to the person speaking, because nibbana is something untouched by supposing. No matter what anyone may call it, it simply stays as it is. If we were to call it heaven or a Brahma world, it wouldn”t object, just as we suppose names for "sun" and "moon": If we were to call them stars or clouds or worlds or jewels, whatever they re…

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