Chapter 16: Abandon the love and gain the Dao (added explanation)
The
Buddha said,” People hold the love and desire, and cannot see the Dao. It is
such as the clear water is stirred by hand; the public reach and approach this
water together; there is no one who can see its own image. People interlace the
love with desire. The turbidity is thrived in heart. That is why they cannot
see the Dao. All of you Sramanas should abandon the love and desire. The filth
of love and desire ending, the Dao could be seen. “
There is no-condition and no-demanding in
the grand love. That is, there is no-desire in the grand love. However, the
most people don’t have such grand character. Generally, the love in their mind
means yearning for and controlling something in order to get some kind of
selfish purpose. In this situation, many people have the behavior of the
extortion with some kind of emotion to their relative friends or their family
members in the name of love. This kind of love contains the selfish desire. In
the research of psychology, there can be extended various negative characters
on the basis of this kind of love and desire as mentioned, for example, the manipulative
personality.
Dao is transliterated from Chinese. The Dao
means the path, the way or any system of education or theory. Here, we can give
the Dao the various explanations and teachings according to the different
intelligence of humans and to the different classes of learning Buddha.
Generally, there are two kinds of Dao in Buddhism. One is the Dao of Bodhisattva
and the other is the Dao of Buddha. What is the difference between them is
according to the different extent of realization and practicing about Buddhism.
The Dao explained by Buddha in the Chapter 2 also means the clear and pure
heart, which is the basis realization and practicing for entering to the Dao of
Bodhisattva. And, the Dao of Bodhisattva is the basis realization and
practicing for entering to the Dao of Buddha.
No matter what the Dao is, the basis of the
Dao in Buddhism is the clear and pure mind. The basis of the clear and pure
mind is under the no-condition, no-desire and no-demanding to others when one
person faces any person and anything and doing anything. Secondly, the clear
and pure mind is also to realize and practice the true equality in the mind
when facing any situation. This kind of ideas is more difficult for ordinary
people to understand and practice. However, if we have the will to understand
and practice it, it may not be difficult for us.
"There is no good or bad under any
circumstance. The good or bad under any circumstance is in our mind." This
is the famous sentence said by Zen master in the Tang Dynasty of China (A.D.
618-907). If you could understand and practice this sentence, you would be free
and easy when you face any situation. Why? The environment itself is objective.
However, our thought itself is subjective. That is why poor people complain a
lot to their situation and cannot change their fate, and thus feel suffering. Learning
Buddha can change our subjective and negative thought and thus change our fate.
Regarding how to understand and practice the true equality in the mind, we will
explain it in the following chapters.
The Buddha said,” People hold the love and
desire, and cannot see the Dao.” That is, when people are in the selfish love
and desire, they cannot understand and practice the clear and pure in the mind.
The Buddha explained in a metaphorical way why people cannot see the Tao. “It
is such as the clear water is stirred by hand; the public reach and approach
this water together; there is no one who can see its own image.” The clear
water is as our clear and pure heart. In the clear water, the sand is in the
bottom. When the clear water is stirred by hand, a lot of float sand makes it
become turbid. Meanwhile, the whirlpool of the water also makes the water no
longer clear. A generated thought of selfish love and desire is as the hand to
stir the clear water. A lot of float sand and the whirlpool of the water are
like the complicated situation in the outside and inside. “The public reach and
approach this water together; there is no one who can see its own image.” The
public means the self and the others persons. “Approach this water together”
means both of them are involved in this situation caused by the selfish love
and desire. “There is no one who can see their own image”. It means no one can
see their clear and pure heart. The clear and pure heart is the true self.
The Buddha said, “People interlace the love
with desire. The turbidity is thrived in heart. That is why they cannot see the
Dao.” It means those people who contact each other with the mind of the love
and desire. It makes them appear any unreasonable conditions, harsh demanding
and fantasy expectation to each other from their mind. Under the circumstance,
there is the selfish and self-interested purpose, and there is no treatment of equality
to each other. It means the turbidity is thrived in heart. That is also means
those people have mean and scheming minds. These dirty things with greed would
make them blind their heart-eye and make them cannot see their clear and pure
heart. That is why they cannot see the Dao.
The Buddha said, “All of you Sramanas should
abandon the love and desire. The filth of love and desire ending, the Dao could
be seen.“ Therefore, the Buddha advised their disciples, the Sramanas, the
Buddhist monk, to abandon this kind of love and desire. Those dirty things with
greed are the filth of love and desire. Once this filth of love and desire is
ended, the clear and pure heart can be seen. This is to remove the filth of
love and desire and the brightness of heart is appeared. Even though we are not
Buddhist monk, the Buddha’s teaching as mentioned is also very helpful for our
life. It can increase our wisdom and help our mood to be steady and help our
life to be good.
When we deeply understand and practice the
Buddha’s teaching as mentioned above, we come back to observe the situation of
the world, we can find that a lot of crime and war, and any dirty things are
caused by the selfish love and desire. That is, the selfish love and desire is
the root of evil. In the past thirty years, there is the good economic and democratic
development in Taiwan. Some of the girls from the poor country come to Taiwan
in order to look for the better life for themselves and their family. However,
they use the wrong way. What they use is the filth of love and desire as
mentioned. When Taiwanese men are confused and trapped by the lie of love from
these women, the belongings of Taiwanese men are gradually gone and transferred
to the name of these women. Then, the Taiwanese men die. Finally, the families
of these Taiwanese men have found something wrong and then sue these women--the
deceiver of love. In the end, the truth is revealed.
According to the research in England, the
average intelligence of men is about 103. This is the normal intelligence.
However, once these men are fall in love, their intelligence will decrease. According
to my personal observation, men not only decrease their IQ when they are in
love, but even decrease their IQ after getting married, but when they have an
affair after marriage, their IQ drops even lower. Decreasing intelligence means
their moral principle, thinking ability and judgment are not as good as the men
who have the normal intelligence. According to the research, the men who have
the lower intelligence will have the more rates to have an affair after
marriage, comparing with the men who have the higher intelligence. Usually, the
men who have the lower intelligence harm the family members more than those who
have the higher intelligence.
When we deeply
observe the problem of a family and we are wise, we can find that the root of
the problem of a family is the dispute of their love and desire. This dispute
of love and desire is full of the filth as mentioned above. It is full of
greedy and dark thought in their mind. Therefore, it is meaningless to judge
who is right and who is wrong. If we are wise, it is better for us to pull
ourselves away this situation of turbidity. If you are a party to this kind of
dispute, when you see the teachings of the Buddha, you should have wisdom on
how to deal with it. In chapter 23, it is mentioned that the wife is more than
a prison. The root of the problem is the love and desire which come from the
husband and wife. This problem makes the family become an invisible jail to
bind the mind of husband and wife.
The love and
desire as said above is not only about affairs of the erotic and family, but
also about the dispute and the affairs in politics, enterprises, and
organizations. It is also about the relationship of friends. When we insight
the problem caused by love and desire, we would have the better thinking and
judgment to face any problem, and then to deal with it.
No matter we are
Sramana or not, the Buddha’s teaching gives us a good teaching and inspires
ourselves wisdom. This is the invisible fortune which cannot be measured. There
is the doing and there is the no-doing. To abandon the love and desire as
mentioned is the doing and no-doing. Not to have the mean and scheming minds is also the doing and no-doing.
How to do and how not to do, there is a choice in our mind, if we are
wise.
Supplementary note: Dao is transliterated
from Chinese, meaning way and method, deeper meaning as a system of learning or
religion. Dao is Tao, which is transliterated from Chinese. The original
meaning of Dao is the way and path, and it is extended to be the truth of life
that we can learn and practice in our lives.
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