SOURCES OF HAPPINESS

It is still spring now. However, it’s warmer in  California.  Some early morning, when the sun had not yet wakened up, the distant mountain chain disappeared in the opaque whitish fog. But by noon the sunlight shows up and it sounds the summer returns. Some weeks ago, the two apricot trees with fresh, yellow flowers which now gradually turn white and wither, but they definitely cling to the trees. The Zen monastery locates in the mountainous area.  On windy days, the  pepper leaves dance freely, but how come the apricot blossoms still stay on the branches. Some white  and pink peach trees, though  flowers have faded,  greet  the summer sun with their young green shoots.

Now, it's May. The Buddha came to earth on a  spring day 26 centuries ago. He achieved the  unmovable mind in a spring night, and interpretated all the truths that manage human beings and the universe. Around the early dawn of that spring day, at the age of 35, he became the Entire Enlightened, equal to all the Buddhas in the ten directions of the  three eras, past, present and future. Then, also at a full moon night in spring, he immersed himself in the  nirvana. He was 80 then.

For those reasons, all the Buddhist world today together solemnly host the memorial ceremonies of  the Buddha in the month of Vesak which  corresponds to the full moon day of May. The ancient Indian Vesak month  falls in April and May of the current Gregory calendar.

The Buddha was originally a normal human being, not a deity. But why has he been honored with the noble reverence  by all Buddhists in the world for the long time of over 26 centuries? What did the Lord think, say and do in such  a transient life of 80 years?

He handed down to his contemporaries and the subsequent generations the values of his wisdom  that has been collected  and stored up in the Tripitaka, one  in Pali and the other in Sanskrit.  Those have been the basic ground for mind  practice  in the two largest Buddhism schools: The Theravāda, the original Buddhism and the Mahayana, or   the Development.

That treasure of  invaluable sagacity is respectfully preserved and cautiously left to the next generation. Each Patriarch passed it on to only one official disciple. Though the Tripitaka, or the  Righteous Dharma, were popular then,  the disciple successors, well-experienced in it, took the responsibility in sustaining  the roots and principles of the practice  for the followers in the lineage.

That succession is  special in the Indian Buddhist Meditation for over 1000 years, from the first Patriarch, Mahā Kassapa  in the fifth century B.C. down to the 28th one, Bodhidharma, in the sixth century A.C. Then it was followed by the  Chinese Buddhist Zen.  In 520 A.C.,  when Bodhidharma went to China, he preserved that tradition. The Righteous Dharma was  continuously  passed on down to the Chinese Sixth Patriarch, Hui  Neng, in the seventh century A.C. Since  then, there was no more inheritor because many disciples achieved the enlightenment.  

According to the long history of Indian and Chinese Zen Buddhism, around 12 centuries after the Buddha's Nirvana immersion, the Zen stream kept flowing humbly and gently but it was never cut off. No matter what  ups and downs in life, that line of wisdom continues flexibly adapting itself to human life, quietly expanding and  offering a source of inner peace and happiness to those who get it.

Those metaphors are similar to the image of the crystal spring  whose water is always cool and clear  and the beginning of spiritual well-beings for humans though stones and gravels are scattering  in the current.

Hope the next articles in the series be the placid water  that I’d warmly  dedicate to the Zen practitioners who gather enough conditions.

Sunyata Monastery

May 10, 2021

TN

Link to Vietnamese article: https://tanhkhong.org/a1897/triet-nhu-snhp01-suoi-nguon-hanh-phuc