WHERE IS THE BUDDHA’S REALM?
This morning, it was warm and sunny. A couple of days ago, it rained steadily during day and night. The rain was not heavy. In California, we never hear any roaring, thunder or see any lightning from the sky. It was overcast but the cloud was not black, just whitish grey. But the clear raindrops scattered the roof and made tapping sound. It also slowly fell down the cement yard with puddles formed at night. They gently and quietly drizzled onto the yard, touched the puddles then burst, flashed out and vanished. Those that sprinkled down on the leaves or flowers sometimes stayed there, sparkling and crystalline.
The tiny raindrops are so cute, lucent and colorless. But this morning, when the sun rose, the beams diagonally lustered down the leaves and flowers that are luminously twinkled and glistened up like carved with diamond. Each drop reflects multicolor.
Ah! Life is just sunny and rainy days! Previously, I thought it only consists of gathering and leaving. But now, time is merely days and nights. Brilliant days alternate with dark evenings. Somberness and radiance take turn in a continuous circle. It is natural. It should be in that way. Who could ever change it?
There are three pots of yellow appricot flowers, Mai flowers, in the monastery. Two of them were in full blossom last month. On earlier rainy and windy days, many withered flowers have fallen. Now the last of the three slowly started its blooming to welcome spring. The row of daffodils along the main hall showed off their ardent color in the winter wind. But they were fading. When spring just came, red flowers appeared from the two peach trees. Now they were also in tatters on the grass by rain and wind and only the green shoots stay on the boughs. Recently, the white Mai tree bears the snow-white flowers that, when seen afar, look like snowflakes on the dark brown and skinny branches. The arrays of ice flowers, in the warm weather, opens their splendid, yellow blooming to greet sunlight. Next to them, the red ice ones just protrude their very young sprouts on each branchlet. The violet bushes are taller, growing bigger after some rain, now full of purplish and greenish buds. The monastery yard is potential with asssorted flowers at each different time. When spring is over, summer comes with purple Phoenix flowers. Then, autumn is back with golden leaves shattering in winter gust…
How beautiful to watch the nature! A painting right in front of our eyes, so tranquil with different tones of virescent, the green color of the leaves, the blue of the sky. In the verdancy of grass and leaves, scattered here and there are red and yellow flowers. In the blue spectrum of the sky is the white cloud hovering. In the painting, there is also a breeze which slightly shakes the pepper branches. The sun is not there but it is bright and warm. A small bird with long tail suddenly flies downward and hops on the yard. Some little wind breezes: all the pepper leaves move themselves rhythmically accordingly to the wind direction. Could any dance without music be so beautiful?
In this small area, there is everything, soil, water, air and heat, sky and cloud and, moon and stars as well. At the first sight, we can discern all of them are quiet, innocently existent in harmony with innumerous necessary conditions and phenomena. Simultaneously, we know each of them is living in full energy at every instant of time. They move water from the ground, and sunlight into each leaf, then run those collected substances in the way that they turn into the yellow color of the apricot flowers, the white of the cherry blossom and even the fragrances. What a mystery!
Silently watching flowers with leaves, grass and plants every day in the monastery can help us clearly sense a great deal of truths in life.
When it rains, grass and plants hail it. When sunny, they welcome it. No reaction from them. The sunlight equally shines on earth..... The wind blows everywhere. The rain spreads evenly on the ground. All vegetation species, squirels, mountain rabbits, small birds... live in peace and freedom. None of them invades any others. All are immersing themselves into the life rhythm and the fervish transformation flow of the boundless cosmos outside.
So, how come we, the noble sentient beings with emotion and insights, are not content? How come human life becomes an ocean of sufferings? We do have many an answer. And each of them is correct.
Because we do not want to live in good harmony with the present conditions and phenomena. We do neither want to get along well with others nor to stay in unity. We do want to govern the nature and control other people.
Because we always raise greed for the possesions of money, materials, fame, eating and sleeping.
Because we disregard the worldly truths. We are ignorant and unaware of them.
Therefore, to achieve mental peace and happiness, it requires us to get good command on the insight of life impermanence. And do not cling ourselves to the abrupt, personal changes on health, wealth, honors, aging, illness and deaths, even those from our family and relative members.
To a further step, should recognize that all situations, all things, all creatures generated due to the causes and the reactive conditions. One day, each of them ends. Their nature is empty and barren without any core inside. We are unable to possess, trust or rely on them even at the minimum rate.
It is normal, natural, and reasonable that mundane phenomena emerge, change then terminate. If we could grasp that comprehension, when something appears or disappears, we are neither cheerful nor sorrowful. Then, our mind is serene and peaceful. And we realize that everywhere is our original adobe, every phenomenon, fact, event, situation or being, carries the truths of transience, the principles of cause-responded conditions, non-selfness, and the trait of bareness… The Dharma sounds from our Lord have been roaring and echoing in the infinite universe. As a result, the planet where we are now is the Buddha’s very realm, my dearest friends.
Bhikkhuni Thích Nữ Triệt Như
Ṥūnyatã Monastery, April 03, 2024
English version by Ngọc Huyền
Seclusion of NonSpeech, Late Spring, 2024
Link to Vietnamese article: https://tanhkhong.org/p105a4134/triet-nhu-tieng-hat-giua-troi-bai-50
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