Lofty compassion

... According to history books, Crown Prince Siddhartha Gautama was a son whose parents were King Suddhodana and Queen Maha Maya. (We temporarily use the title ‘Crown Prince’ when the person involved in this story - Siddhartha - hasn’t left his home to become a monk, ‘Bodhisattva’ when he has left his home as a monk, and ‘Buddha’ when he has attained Buddhahood).

Prince Siddhartha was born in India (nowadays in modern-day\r\nNepal), had a royal life, with a high position and a bright future...\r\n\r\n

Sakyamuni Buddha belongs to the Ksatriya clan - namely, a\r\nroyal descent. But he gave up everything reserved for him, such as a beautiful\r\nwife, a smart boy and all luxurious things saved up for a person of high rank\r\nand fashion like him. Instead, he threw himself in danger spots, looking for\r\nthe universal truth initiated by Buddhism known as ‘saving human life’. When he\r\nbecame the Buddha, he travelled throughout India to widely propagate the\r\ncorrect Dharma.

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Learning about the Buddha’s life, we find that it is a lofty\r\nsacrifice, sympathy, total devotion, and his tireless spirit of preaching and\r\nbenefits to all living beings. This must be a precious lesson to each of our\r\nself-improvement’s life.

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In short, prince Siddhartha had everything that a needy\r\nperson wished to obtain in his worldly life. Then one day he took a stroll\r\nthrough the four gates of the imperial citadel and witnessed the sights of old\r\nage, illness, and death. These did wake up his thinking of human conditions. He\r\nraised the following questions to himself, “Why is a person born into this\r\nlife?”, “Why is a person miserable, and where will he go after his death?” He\r\nunceasingly thought of human impermanence and sufferings, and wished to find\r\nout the answers ... Finally, as he wanted to find out the road to universal\r\ntruth and how to save human beings from sufferings, he definitively abandoned\r\nall comings in for a share of society’s products. Then one night he decided to\r\nleave his parents, his beautiful wife and his smart son together with his\r\nluxurious life so as to throw himself into a jungle to look for a solution to\r\nsave all living beings. Finding out about the road of Buddha’s for these ends,\r\nwe see his lofty sacrifices for Buddhism. For the sake of loving living beings,\r\nhe left everything behind - his family, his parents, as well as his beloved\r\nfamily members to make his austerity cultivation in a remote jungle. Some\r\npeople said that his actions - leaving everything behind - were undutiful\r\ntowards his parents and an inhuman behaviour towards his family members. Was\r\nsuch a thought correct or justified? According to us, when a person leaves his\r\nhome, there must be two reasons: either owing to his inner wishes or his\r\nideological impass. Of these two reasons, which one did the crown prince decide\r\nto choose? Reality showed that the prince had a very happy life, both with his\r\nparents and his wife and child.  Therefore, his departure was neither\r\ndue to his being angry with his parents nor a disagreement between his wife and\r\nchild.  Instead, it was clearly because of the benefits of all living\r\nbeings. Furthermore, not a single person in his position could have ever acted\r\nlike him. Let’s take an example to account for this. During the time our\r\ncountry was occupied by foreign invaders and the whole country was living under\r\nthe ruling invader. At that time, if there was a youngster who decided to\r\ntemporarily leave his family members to join the local army in order to fight\r\nagainst the invaders. In such a case, no one could condemn him as an inhuman\r\nperson - leaving his parents and his lovely family members behind - for this\r\nwas a lofty individual sacrifice for the entire community. It was also the case\r\nof Prince Siddhartha - he did place the benefits of all living beings above\r\nthose of himself. Such a sacrifice could not have been made if it had not been\r\nbased on a great courage, great force, or great compassion. After becoming\r\nenlightened, the Buddha did help his parents, his wife and son as well as his\r\nrelatives knows how to lead a religious life and set them free from birth, death\r\nand samsara in the six paths. So, is the leaving made by crown-prince\r\nSiddhartha regarded as undutiful or inhuman? If we were in his situation, would\r\nwe have the courage to give up everything? It must be really difficult for us\r\nto act like him. As usual, even persons without high ranks and fashion like him\r\nwould be improbable to leave everything behind. How can a person in the\r\nposition of a prince dare act like him? Therefore, this is the first good point\r\nof his abandoning riches and honours - it must be a sublime self-sacrifice on\r\nhis part. Normally, when a person decides to leave the world on a monk has the\r\ntendency to choose for himself the pagoda he will come to, what type of his\r\nfuture abbot from whom he will learn the religion, and finally whether such a\r\npagoda has all living conveniences, including foods and drinks or where to\r\nlive? When leaving home, the Prince did not know where to go, what to eat,\r\nwhere to live, etc. Also, common sense shows that a person without any position\r\ndoes want it, miserable people do want to be happy, poor people really want to\r\nbe wealthy and have good foods and expensive clothes... as for the crown-prince\r\nwho had the high rank just next after a king but renounced everything to become\r\na common people. He gave up his golden palace and accepted being a homeless man\r\nliving by a tree-foot or in a stone cave. He abandoned all that a person of his\r\nrank was supposed to enjoy - with day-and-night servants, delicacies, getting\r\nred carpet treatment... to become a mendicant friar, slowly walking barefooted\r\nand bareheaded, without a parasol and carrying an almsbowl begging for food and\r\neating whatever is donated,    Abandoning the life of a\r\nperson born in the purple and walking into a jungle to pick up the material\r\nfrom dead bodies and using it as his clothes. As the weather in India is really\r\nsevere - either too hot or too cold - but the prince was never discouraged.\r\nTruly to say, a person without any courage, great willingness and pity would\r\nnot have renounced everything like him. We have never seen or met such a rare\r\nperson in this world. Reality shows that a company director’s son would refuse\r\nto sit even on a bricked ground, not mentioning on a total earthen ground, of\r\ncourse! Will such a son accepts to keep a vegeterian diet, not mentioning his\r\naccepting to beg for alms? Such an action would be rare to be done, how can we\r\nexpect the abandonment of everything to become a monk? It must be very rare,\r\nindeed. As present, both those who have entered monkhood and those who still\r\npractise their self-improvement at home have their organisations which have\r\ntheir own ranks and functions. Therefore, sometimes they base on their power to\r\nharrass or create difficulties to their co-religionists. While the crown-prince\r\nabandoned everything to become a common people, we - on the contrary - try to\r\nincrease our ‘selfness’ which will ultimately create more and more sins. To\r\nprevent this, you should follow the Buddha’s pattern of virtue and examine\r\nyourselves. During the time practising Buddhism, the Bodhisattva applied\r\nvarious methods in oder to find out the truth. One of these methods was known\r\nas eating at the minimum so that his body became emaciated or nothing but skin\r\nand bone. In Agama sutra there is a story which is as follows: “When I used so\r\nlittle food, my body became extremely skinny. As a result, the organs in my\r\nbody, small and big, became just like blades of grass or straw grass and my\r\nbuttocks were just like the hoof of a camel. My spine was like a standing\r\nstring of beads and bent on the upper part. My ribs looked like a collapsed\r\nhouse frame. My eyegrounds were nothing but a pair of stars seen from the\r\nbottom of a deep well. The skin on my head looked like that of a bitter melon\r\nthat had been exposed to the sun for many days so that now it became wrinkled\r\ndue to the lack of nutritive substances. When I tried to touch my spinal\r\ncolumn, I hit the skin of my belly, and vice versa. Due to the lack of food, my\r\nbelly skin pressed against my spinal column; as a result, whenever I wanted to\r\nstand up to urinate, I found myself bewildered and fell down. I had to slightly\r\nslap on my arms and legs to make my body revive. Alas! The slapping made the\r\nhair on my body fall off incoherently for it had already died.

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Afterwards, the prince realised that practising asceticism\r\ndid not give any expected results. He concluded that practising cultivation\r\nneeds to avoid two extremes  -  one is to be too happy, the\r\nother is too ascetic, for these two extremes can never lead the practician to\r\nreligious fruits  -  only the middle way can. It is like\r\nthe string of a musical instrument - if you tune it up too much, it will be\r\nbroken; but if it is too slack, it will not give the right tone or pitch. Only\r\nwith right stretching of the strings can give fine tune or sound. When having\r\nrealised this, the prince’s body became exhausted. At that moment, there was a\r\ngirl named Sujata, who brought food into the woods to offer it to the local\r\ndeities. Seeing him laying at the point of death, the girl poured out some milk\r\ninto a bowl and then poured some drops into his mouth. He then started being of\r\nsound mind and sat up. When he was well again, he reached the foot of a neaby\r\ntree and swore that if he would not become enlightened, he would never stand up\r\nagain. Such an oath showed the determined willingness of a Bodhisattva to be\r\nenlightened. Then he sat at the tree-foot nearby up to 49 days continually\r\nuntil he reached the title ‘Supreme or perfect enlightenment’. Up here, we\r\nclearly see his lofty sacrifice when he did not regret his precious body on the\r\nquest of finding out the truth. We also want to cultivate ourselves, but none\r\nof us has kept such a strong determination like him, fewer people of us can\r\never keep our first standpoint like him, and that is why although we have practised\r\ncultivation for a long time, we have not yet get the fruits of our wish. We\r\nchange our goal incessantly - today we want to go to the Pure Land, but\r\ntomorrow we like to stay in the Saha World. Or today we want to cultivate\r\nourselves, but the next day we change our mind and want to refuse the\r\ncultivation. Or today we feel diligent, but tomorrow we become lazy. We have\r\nbackache only after a few moments and feel tired to the extent that we no\r\nlonger want to get on with the cultivation if we haven’t enough food. We feel\r\ntoo full from eating, but we cannot continue our cultiviation if we are\r\nhungry... In short, we have too many reasons to repudiate charity work – either\r\ntoo much happy or sad will prevent us from sitting down for our cultivation.\r\nHow can we perform our successful cultivation if we quote so many reasons? If\r\nwe compare our effort to that spent by Bodhisattvas, ours cannot be called\r\n‘miserable’. Those who perform self cultivation should not look at the examples\r\nof lazy people; instead, they should follow the Buddha’s example. As for\r\nmaterial issues, we should not look up; instead, we should lood down. As for\r\nethical issues and wisdom, we should look up and follow the examples of the\r\nsages and saints. The valuable conduct of the Buddha is his tireless spirit and\r\ndevotion of propagation of the truth. Once he has attained the Buddhahood, he\r\nstill went barefooted and bareheaded, wearing a cassock and holding the\r\nalmsbowl and walking thoughout India for propagation. Normally, a person has\r\nspent years of hard study, until he attains high status thinks of enjoyment; or\r\na hard worker also thinks or it when he is rich. The Buddha is different. He\r\ngave up luxurious life, went to the forest to cultivate austerity reaching the\r\nTruth, and suffered much of trouble until He achieves the Buddha’s fruit. He\r\ndid think about comfort. Although setting up the Sangha afterward with so many\r\ndisciples, He continued to be an almsman, a one who holds a bowl to ask for\r\nfood, and travelled all places to preach until he was eighty years of age.\r\nThrough those sights we can see how great his great compassion was.

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One day, on his way to widely proclaim the Buddhist truth,\r\nhe was respectfully invited by a blacksmith named Cunda to his house where he\r\nused to provid a meal for monks. Cunda respectfully offered the Buddha a\r\nspecial dish called ‘santal wood muchrooms’. After having eaten the food, he\r\nasked the blacksmith to bury the remaining food and did not let anybody else\r\neat it more. The reason was that he had a violent bellyache but tried to stand\r\nit and ordered his subordinates to follow him to go back to Kusinara citadel\r\n(in the North of India), about 9 kilometres from the blacksmith’s house. On the\r\nway to the citadel, he was both sick and tired, so the escort had to stop more\r\nthan 20 times for a rest. At a stop, he was so thirsty that he ordered the\r\nescort to make a stopover and asked Ananda to fetch him something to drink.\r\nAnanda felt very sorry for his master, who had sacrificed his whole life but\r\nthere was neither a single person to take care of nor some medicine to help him\r\nwhile he had to walk in the sun without any water to slake his thirst. At that\r\ntime there was a spring flowing nearby, but the water was not pure because\r\nthrough which there were oxcarts passing. Ananda, therefore, respectually said\r\nto the prince, “Would you please go on for some more distance where we can find\r\nsome pure water.” But the Buddha replied, “No. Just find some relatively pure\r\nwater from it, for I am too tired to go further.” Hearing that, Ananda felt\r\ndeeply pained and walked with his shedded tears, trying to get some impure\r\nwater from the spring for his patron, and after drinking the water, the prince\r\ncontinued walking to Kusinara in his old and weak body. At the destination, he\r\nordered one of his subordinates to spread one old cassava down on the ground\r\nand laid himself down on it. Right after that, he entered into Nirvana. Up\r\nhere, we really feel very sorry for the Buddha, who died right on the ground!\r\nAnother special thing to be noted is that, before his death and, though, his\r\nvery weary the Buddha still thought of Cunda, who might be blamed by common\r\npeople for having cooked sandlewood mushrooms and presented the dish to the\r\nBuddha. The Buddha also worried that Cunda would feel regret to have offered\r\nthe food to the Buddha. The Buddha called Ananda and said to him and the\r\nescort, “There are two precious things when you offered food to me - one is\r\nwhat you offered before I attained supreme perfect or enlightment and the other\r\nis before my passing into Nirvana. You told him that it’s he who harvest great\r\nblessing when offering The Buddha before He went to Nirvana. ”

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Above here, I just mentioned some traits relating to the\r\nprocess during which the Buddha was in quest of universal truth. If you have\r\nenough time, try to read books about ‘Life of Sakyamuni Buddha’ to understand\r\nhis subtly wonderful dharma as well as his lofty sacrifice. And, at least, you\r\ncan consider it a good example in your practice doing your daily cultivation.

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Thich Chan Tinh, Senior Venerable, Hoang Phap Pagoda Abbot.

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Translated into English by Mr. Hoang Huan, layman. 

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