万佛圣城南传禅七期间阿摩罗比丘

 

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Talk by Ven. Ajahn Amaro

Sanghapala Vipassana Retreat at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

 

一九九二年七月一日 July 1, 1991

国际译经学院记录 Translated by Theresa Kung

 

早期的佛教徒似有这种与世隔绝、自我解脱的倾向，使得佛教日趋贫乏，蒙上一层否定与虚无的色彩。后来印度的佛教界出现了一股反抗的力量，为佛教注入了新生命，突破陈旧自闭的心态，趋向慈悲为怀，广度众生的北传大乘佛教，而且日后更不断成长并发扬光大。

 

我曾对自己说：「纵然我必须轮回亿万次，只要在这亿万生中，我能够帮助到一个人，那么这亿万生就没有白过。」如此类的思想，不断在心中涌出，我突然间感觉到难以形容的喜悦及解脱，亿万生的痛苦轮回只为了帮助一个人，听起来似乎是不值得的，但却使我从自私的监牢中解放出来，而得到无上的喜乐。

 

在修行大乘佛教时，无论是如何的慈悲喜舍，如果修行的阶段仅止于「我奉献出我的生命来拯救其他有情」，只要仍然有人我的分别，终会遭遇障碍，而感到孤立而了无意义。因此，我们要用禅定的方法来使自己融人利他的境界。佛许多的教导都是以「无我」 「空」为中心，但若是无我了，谁是将爱心散布到世界的人？谁是那个传播慈爱的人？又还有谁是那个接受者呢？可见有某种层次的觉悟和存在是超越人我分别的，如果我们不能超越这种分别，那么无论有多么崇高的理想，终究不是圆满的。

 

佛指示我们不要尝试对觉者下定义，因为我们所能思考的任何定义都是相对的、不完整的。无论是在南、北传的经典中，佛都告诉我们，最终的处事态度是不执着，真正对真理的觉悟，常住于觉中，而不是采取任何思考形式或理想化的立场。这方是我们的皈依。皈依佛，本身即是觉。所以任何与我们身体、感觉、性格、年龄、国籍、烦恼、才能等有关的都只是一些附属于有为世界的特质，都是有起落生灭的。修行的目的即是要常住于对这些事物的觉之中。

 

但是若想在率性而为的生活中去证空，即是说你必须明了追求欲望所随之而来的沮丧与失望亦是空。这些都是相对的：你不能只沉湎于逸乐而不顾及它的反面。就像抓住一个轮子，快乐的时候转上来，但轮子终有转向下的时候。我不是要贬低任何人，但根据我自己多次的经验而言，在高处时是无心放手的，或纵然想放手也不能。我们看到许多的佛教徒偏向对某种传统的外表形式的认同，小乘佛教在过去几世纪以来，陷入了心胸狭窄、独善其身、对生命否定的虚无主义，以及与之俱来的空虚感中。大乘佛教则流于空泛的理想主义，缺乏实质，好似个冠冕堂皇的道具。大乘经典中充满了非常具启发性的上妙经文，但大乘佛教却往往止于理想。许多人也不遵照实行：他们的行为所表现的是心胸狭窄、自私和迷信。至于金刚乘则执着于神通，倾向放纵并过份讲究繁文缛节。由此可见，光是将自己与某一团体相提并论是不够的。

 

我们要知道，我们的存在和生命中的各个阶段都与一切众生息息相关。纵然我们或许可以认知并体验到纯净的智慧，处于无时、空、自我的觉地，从这个层次来观察生命，但其他众生并不一定也能有同样的见地。佛教的修行就是一条将我们所有不同程度的存在，都连结在一起的道路。

 

(Continued from August 1992 Issue 267)

 

This is probably why the Mahayana school gained such strength in India because it seems that the Buddhism of early centuries did drift very much toward isolationism and the Sangha practicing in a very elitist way built around salvation for oneself with no real concern for others. This brought a sterility and negativity, a nihilism into the teaching, and so as a revolt against that the more expansive, benevolent, generous and open-hearted teaching gained enormous strength in the early centuries. And after the Buddha's time, what is now called the Mahayana, or Northern tradition, sprang up from that. It was a breaking out from the limited, narrow-minded view.

 

Once, I started saying to myself, "Well, I don't care whether I feel even a moment of happiness for myself in this life; I don't care if I have to be reborn ten thousand million times. If I can do one kind act for one person in a thousand million lifetimes, then all that time will not have been wasted." Thoughts like this began to come up spontaneously in my mind, and I suddenly felt an incredible joy and happiness and a feeling of relief, which is kind of strange if you think about ten thousand million lifetimes of ineffective activity and complete pain and boredom. This could be a pretty strange deal. But the result was a vibrant joy and delight. It was the breaking out of the prison of self-concern.

 

Even in Mahayana Buddhism which is outgoing, geared very much toward altruism, generosity, compassion, developing a spiritual life for the sake of all beings, still if our practice stops at the state of, me giving my life to help all others, even if this is highly developed, at the end of it there's still ME and YOU--me who is helping all sentient beings. Even in that respect, even though there can be a lot of joy, you still find this barrier, a sense of isolation or meaninglessness. There's a separation there. So, it is important to use the meditation practice to practice to not just absorb into altruistic thoughts and feelings, because, if you notice, a lot of the Buddha's teachings revolve around selflessness, around emptiness, like the teachings on Anatta, on No-Self. If there is no self who is it who's going to be radiating kindness over the entire world? If there's no self, then who is sending Metta and who is there to send it to? One then sees that there is a level of understanding, of being, which is beyond that which is tied up with self and other. No matter how high, refined and pure our aspiration might be, unless we go beyond that sense of self-identity and division in that respect, then there will always be that feeling of incompleteness, the desert experience will tend to creep in.

 

The Buddha advises us not to try to define the enlightened in conceptual terms because any conceptual definition can only fall short, can only be relatively true. The Buddha made very clear in the Theravada teaching just as much as in the scriptures of the Northern school that the ultimate perspective on things is this perspective of no fixed position, of actual realization of Truth, of abiding in that position of Awareness, rather than taking any kind of conceptual or idealistic position. That is our Refuge. Taking Refuge with Buddha is being that Awareness. So that we see that everything to do with our body, our feelings, our personality, our age, our nationality, our problems, our talents, all of these are simply attributes of the conditioned world that arise and pass away and there is awareness of those. The whole point of the practice is to constantly abide in that sense of awareness.

 

The result of trying to realize emptiness within a free-wheeling life means that you have to realize the emptiness of despair within and the depression that comes from following those desires. It's a related thing; you can't just focus on the absorption into pleasure without the other side of it. It's as if you're holding onto the wheel as it goes up the pleasure side, but you're still holding onto it as it goes down the other side. I'm not saying these things as a put-down but, having done this quite a bit myself, I realize that you just don't have the presence of mind to let go at the top. It's the way you'd like it to go but it doesn't really operate like that. So, you see how people within the Buddhist traditions can tend to identify with the external characteristics of their clan or their tribe. Theravada Buddhism often gets caught in small-mindedness and self-concern and the nihilism of life-negation. It has easily drifted into that over the centuries, the small-minded position, and the hollowness that comes with it. Mahayana Buddhism tends to drift into empty-minded idealism, high-minded idealism which is rather insubstantial, just a grand prop. You read Mahayana literature and there are fantastic, wonderful descriptions, very, very inspiring, but it tends to go in the direction of assuming that just the ideas and the aspiration are enough. Many people who follow those ideals don't actually live according to them; their actions, their ways, are often quite small-minded, quite selfish and superstitious. The Vajrayana tradition, their attachment, tends to go into magical practices and a lot of license and ritualism. You can see that simply aligning oneself with a particular social calling is not enough.

 

This is good to understand, how the different levels of our life, of our being, interplay with each other, because even though at some moment we might be seeing life, acknowledging and witnessing experience from the level of pure wisdom, from that place of timeless-spaceless-selfless awareness, the rest of the world is not necessarily seeing things from that point of view. What you have within Buddhist practice is a way of tying together all the different levels of our being.