..续本文上一页ng, something very worthy to be taken as an example. They gave their hearts, their lives -- every part of themselves -- in homage to the Buddha and Dhamma, to the point where they all became homage to the Sangha within themselves. In doing so, they all encountered difficulties, every one of them.
Because the Dhamma is something superior and superlative, whoever meets it has to develop and prosper through its power day by day, step by step, to a state of superlative excellence. As for the defilements, there is no type of defilement that can take anyone to peace, security, or excellence of any kind.
The defilements know this. They know that the Dhamma far excels them, so they disguise themselves thoroughly to keep us from knowing their tricks and deceits. In everything we do, they have to lie behind the scenes, showing only their tactics and strategies, which are nothing but means of fooling living beings into falling for them and staying attached to them. This is very ingenious on their part.
For this reason, those who make the effort of the practice are constantly bending under their gravitational pull. Whether we are doing sitting meditation, walking meditation -- whatever our posture -- we keep bending and leaning under their pull. They pull us toward laziness and lethargy. They pull us toward discouragement and weakness. They pull us into believing that our mindfulness and discernment are too meager for the teachings of the religion. They pull us into believing that our capacities are too meager to deserve the Dhamma, to deserve the paths, fruitions, and nibbana, or to deserve the Buddha”s teachings. All of these things are the tactics of the pull of defilement to draw us solely into failure, away from the Dhamma. If we don”t practice the Dhamma so as to get above these things, we won”t have any sense at all that they are all deceits of defilement. When we have practiced so as to get beyond them step by step, though, they won”t be able to remain hidden. No matter how sharp and ingenious the various kinds of defilement may be, they don”t lie beyond the power of mindfulness and discernment. This is why the Buddha saw causes and effects, benefits and harm, in a way that went straight to his heart, because of his intelligence that transcended defilement.
For this reason, when he taught the Dhamma to the world, he did so with full compassion so that living beings could truly escape from danger, from the depths of the world so full of suffering. He wanted the beings of the world to see the marvelousness, the awesomeness of the Dhamma that had had such an impact within his heart, so that they too would actually see as he did. This is why his proclamation of the Dhamma was done in full measure, for it was based on his benevolence. He didn”t proclaim it with empty pronouncements or as empty ceremony. That sort of thing didn”t exist in the Buddha. Instead, he was truly filled with benevolence for the living beings of the world.
His activities as Buddha -- the five duties of the Buddha we are always hearing about -- he never abandoned, except for the few times he occasionally set them aside in line with events. But even though he set them aside, it wasn”t because he had set his benevolence aside. He set them aside in keeping with events and circumstances. For example, when he spent the rains alone in the Prileyya Forest, he had no following, and none of the monks entered the forest to receive instruction from him, which meant that this activity was set aside. Other than that, though, he performed his duties to the full because of his benevolence, with nothing lacking in any way.
This is a matter of his having seen things clearly in his heart: the harm of all things dangerous, and the benefits of all things beneficial. The Budd…
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