what the buddha said

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WHAT THE BUDDHA SAID

PRESENTED BY:the WANDERLING

"The Buddha's Teaching was recorded in the Tipitaka

several hundred years after the Buddha passed away,

and this text was then copied and recopied over a period

of thousands of years. The teachings were probably

recorded very well, but it is possible to doubt that thereader will now understand what those who recorded

the teachings meant. For me to refer merely to the

texts all the time would be like guaranteeing the truth

of the claims of another, claims of which I am not

certain. But the things that I tell you I am able to

guarantee, because I speak from my own direct

experience." (source)

According to Fa-tsang, (643-712) of the Hau-yen school,

nobody understood a word of what ended up being the

Buddha's first Sutra, so the Enlightened one resorted

to a series of teachings which took into consideration

the limitations of sentient beings, with the intention of

gradually leading them to overcome those limitations.

Thus each subsequent teaching renders obsolete theprevious ones, though they all continue to function so as

to accomodate the greatest number of sentient beings.

at The Buddha Said http://the-wanderling.com/BuddhaSaid.html

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With the help of similes, metaphors, and comparisons as

an effective part of his teaching method, the Buddha

explains his ethico-philosophical contepts to his audience.

These figures of speech are significant and important

both from the preaching point of view and literary point

of view.

For the preaching point of view, the Buddha has utilized

comparisons, similes and metaphors to enable the hearer

understanding the "Dharma which is profound, difficult

to realize, hard to understand, not to grasped by mere

logic, subtle and comprehensible only by the wise."

Without these figurative images the hearer may havedifficulties in understanding the meaning of his

teachings.

With reference to literary point of view, these

figurative images used by the Buddha are to make the

little-known and unfamiliar, theUpamana, of an

unfamiliar abstract object, familiar. Upamanas thus

presented sometimes illuminate and beautify the objectto be compared, and sometimes vividly present before us

the unfamiliar. In short, we can say that similes (and

metaphors) concretize the most abstract things.(source)

When in accordance with worldy convention one speaks

of a self, it is not spoken from the standpoint of the

supreme and actual meaning. For this reason, although

Dharmas are empty and devoid of a self, there is no

fault in speaking of an "I" simply to take into account the

dictates of worldly convention.(source)

People equate what the Buddha said and did and call it Buddhism.Actually, what the Buddha said and did, which was later written down and


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translated into the sutras, was string together a group of words aroundalready in place phenomenon veiled to others by the samsaraworld. In asense it was really not much different than what Albert Einsteindid when

he wrote the Theory of General Relativity and Special Relativity. Einsteindid not create a system of master laws and then force nature to follow, butinstead, 'intuitively figured out' what went around the already in place

existing occurrences, then wrote his theories to fit accordingly. No offenseto the 10,000 things, but for lack of more indepth discourse, bottom line,what Sakyamuni's Enlightenment did was awaken him to the Void orEmptiness, period, that's it, Emptiness. That is, that all things areinherently Empty...which goes hand in hand with what is called for themost part, Dependent Origination, or Arising Due To Conditions. Again, allbeing simply written or spoken words giving verbal syntax expressionaround existing phenomenon FOR THOSE INTERESTED in pursuingsome understanding of the Enlightenment, Awakening experience.

When speaking of Einstein and the Buddha and what either or bothaccomplished do not confuse the two issues. They are quite different.Einstein's efforts were a product of the intellect while the Buddha's werenot. True, everyday conscious intellect may have driven Shakyamuni'sinitial thrust, but in the end, for Einstein, his theories were an outcome thatwere expressed and shared exclusively through thought processes andlanguage, mathematical language true, but language nontheless. IfShakyamuni's Awakening was nothing more than some intellectual mentalconstruct applied over a "Law of Nature" that just happened to be waitingto be discovered by the first person to come across it, any rational personcould, using logical intellect could "learn" Awakening in the same fashionone can "learn" Einstein's theory of relativity. Such does not seem to bethe case, however.

If our minds have created dualism, they should be

able to un-create or deconstruct it. This is not a

devious intellectual trick which claims to solve the

problem logically, while leaving our anguish as deep

as before.(source)

Master of the Law Ch'ung-yuan asked, "What is the

Void? If you tell me that it exists, then you are

implying that it is resistant and solid. If you saythat it is something that does not exist, then why

go to it for help?" Shen-hui replied, "One talks of


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the Void for the benefit of those who have not

seen their own Buddha-natures. For those who have

seen their own Buddha-natures the Void does not

exist."

If there was such a thing as a fence on which one side was found thosenot-Enlightened and on the other those Enlightened, then those on thenot-Enlightened side, seeking to cross over, would be greatly assisted inthe endeavor by assimulating into their being, as a second nature, theFour Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path. Once they crossed over theFour and Eight would no longer be needed nor exist. The same is true ofeverything. Throughout the centuries people have concocted variousroutes to pursue Enlightenment from the traditional to Zen, but the

ultimate result, once experienced, is the same. Zen short circuits the routeby endeavoring to bring forth the Enlightening experience outside thescriptures, which is a concrete, non-abstract cut-straight-to-the-bonelightning approach. The Zen way, however quick, instant or gradual, isbased on the same Buddha insights before they became excessively overencumbered by scripture. A person seeking the Zen experience mustsomehow come to recognize the same insights as Siddhartha Gautamaexperienced when he Awakened to become the Buddha, which laterinturn, gave birth to the scriptures. If Enlightenment doesn't come out of

the blue, then laying the groundwork is the next best thing. Before hisEnlightenment experience under the Bodhi Tree the Buddha tried many,many different things in his attempt to 'cross over.' After Awakening hecould see what was to avail and what was to no avail. That is what heattempted to put into words for his followers. That is how the Four NobleTruths and the Eightfold Noble Path took root. An old saying goes: we arethe results of what we were; we will be the results of what we are. A Palitext called The Anguttara says it best:

"It cannot come to pass that the fruit of a deed well-doneby the body, speech, and thought should have for a result

that which is unpleasant, hateful, or distasteful. But that it

should be otherwise is quite possible."

People go on and on, batting their gums about everything under the sunand beyond, and most of it never adds up to very much about anything.People ask, "Why do I have to do anything about anything? The sixthpatriarch, Hui-neng, as a young boy minding his own business delivering

wood for his mother, overheard a stanza from the Diamond Cutter Sutraand was Awakened. Sri Ramana Maharshinever bothered with anything


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formal and he was awakened to the Absolute out of nowhere, so whybother to do anything about anything?"

Not a bad question. Actually it is a very good question framed in all thebest samsaraclothes. The short response is of course, you don't. But,what if a person did want to do something about it? Is the Enlightenment

experience preordained or destined? Or can a person of their own volitionpersuade or exert an influence on the outcome. If a person steps in frontof an oncoming passenger train and is killed, could that same person haveselected not to step in front of the train and acted upon that selection byactually not doing so instead? Is it Karma, destiny, fate?

For the most part Hindu and Indian-based religious

schools of thought, especially early ones, believe and

promote the concept that Karma operates in a straight line,with actions from the past influencing the present, and

present actions influencing the future. As a result, they

saw little room for free will. A lot of that interpretation has

permeated into western culture and thought, with Karma

ending up being an unbending "fate" or "destiny" type of

concept.

However, Karma operates more closely with the Buddhist

view as formulated by the Buddha, acting more or less infeedback loops, with the present moment being shaped

both by past and by present actions; present actions shape

not only the future but also the present. This constant

opening for present input into the causal process makes

free will possible. This freedom is symbolized in the

imagery that Buddhists use to explain the process: flowing

water. Sometimes the flow from the past is so strong that

little can be done except to stand fast, but there are also

times when the flow is gentle enough to be diverted inalmost any direction.(source)

"The present moment being shaped both by past and by

present actions; present actions shape not only the future

but also the present."

With that in mind, there is an axiom that goes:


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This being present, that arises; without this, that does not

occur.

Which is elaborated on from Pali and Sanskrit texts:

Acts do not perish, even after hundreds and thousands ofyears. On meeting the right combination of conditions and

time, they bear fruit.

Vasubandhu the great Indian Abhidharma master wrote:

Material and mental elements uniterruptedly succeed one

another in a series, a procession that has action asoriginating cause

He continues to write, and this is the punchline:

The successive moments of this procession are different;

therefore there is an evolution or transformation of the

series.

The successive moments aredifferent, that is they are not the same. If

they were the same they would not be different. On a fine grainlevel thedifferences are practically imperceptible. On a coarse grainlevel thedifferences manifest themselves more readily. Take those differences andstick them into their operating field of conditionsand the evolution ortransformation compounds itself. Conditions? Now we have conditions!

What the heck are conditions? The word conditionsis an english wordused in our context from the sutras for the sanskrit word Pratyaya whichroughly translates into: "the pre-existing conditions that allowprimary

causes to function." Which basically means if the conditions are

absent, then the causes are prevented. Conditions are the milieu, stage

set, or playing field where acts or impulses unfold. They can be increasedby other conditions, decreased by other conditions, or replaced by otherconditions to accelerate or postpone results in the stream of events.Which means that conditions can be, but not necessarily do modify. They

arise primarily on a broader scale from causes in the distant past. Whenconditions do manifest themselves they are for the most part not defined,that is, they are undefined or spent, meaning they cannot create or impactfiguratively further downstream responses. However, even though they are


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spent, they are still extremely powerful in how they impose themselves onthe immediate circumstances in which they are operating. To wit:

Anyshift in anyfashion in the conditions up or down or across the

stream relative to the cause will impact the resultant outcome of

that cause.

How do we know this? Just go back to the Einstein analogy above wherehe just 'intuitively figured it out.' Over periods of thousands and thousandsof years observant people have seen rise to the same thing over and overand have placed words around the phenomenons observed. For more in asimilar vein refer to David Hume who said knowledge is not attained byreasoning a priori, but arises ENTIRELYfrom experience, when we find

that any particular objects (or phenomenon) are constantly conjoined witheach other.

Again, to illustrate: Two people are master jugglers. They are each able tojuggle eight or ten balls at one time. With much practice and perfect timingeach of the jugglers has been able to toss a ball from their group of ballswhile in the midst of juggling to the other juggler without missing a beat,switching balls one at a time to the other person while still themselves inmid juggle. They have done it over and over for up to an hour and nevermissed. They are fifteen minutes into their act when the lights go out andthey are plunged into total darkness. The next thing you know one of the

jugglers misses a catch. Now he is down one ball and the timing starts togo haywire because instead of ten balls he now has nine while his fellow

juggler still has ten. In addition the sound of the ball falling is unsettlingimpacting concentration. The next thing you know the balls are all over thefloor. Everything was the same at the start between the two jugglers, theonly thing that changed was the conditions, that is, the lights went out,causing the outcome of their juggling to be different than all the othertimes they had performed the act.

For any of it to work though, there would have to be "moments" and"successive moments." Vasubandhu, mentioned above, writes ofsuccesive moments, using the plural of moment, suggesting that momentsare made up of more than one, with moment in this case, seeming to bemutually interchangeable with what is typically called "the present" or"now." But what isthe present? Everytime anyone says "now" they have

to say it again because the first now is gone, ad infinitum. Well, and it maynot hold water, but if one has to use words, the present is probably bestdescribed as that which is performing it's own function afterthe

dissoulution of the previous becoming, but beforethe arising of the nextbecoming, also ad infinitum. Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga writes ofthepresent of continuityand the Samyutta Reciters say it is of twokinds: material and immaterial. Material continuity "lasts as long as the


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muddy line of water touching the bank when one treads in the water tomake clear." Immaterial continuity "consists of two or three rounds ofimpulsions." Nagarjuna, taking issue with the Abhidhramists however,

implies if time is composed of separate parts such as past, present (thatis, now), and future, time would lose it's coherence. If present and futureare considered products of the past, both present and future would be

inseparably enmeshed in the past, hence not be able to be separateentities. If, on the other hand, the present and future are separate featuresfrom the past, that would make them unconnected, thus not caused byand without reference to the past. Nagarjuna thus implies the present andfuture do not exist, there is no actual graspable "static moment" of time,while at the same time not denying the "unmediated experience ofchange." Although the stages of time have a before and after, each heconcedes, has it's own integrity. That is where I come in and say it is theown integritythat becomes focused on smaller and smaller by humans to

become known orally among men as "moments" or "successivemoments." Dogen writes in the Shobogenzo:

Life is a stage in time and death is a stage in time, like, for

example, winter and spring. We do not suppose that winter

becomes spring, or say that spring becomes summer

In the flow of things there is no specific concrete instant when winter is

suddenly not anymore and wham, spring all of a sudden exists. Eventhough an actual standing alone moment in time is not a truly existingthing because it cannot exist independently of other moments in time, ofwhich there are none, hence it can't, there is though still, the unmediatedexperience of change.It is that experiencethat becomes artificially

contrived and delineated by human concepts into smaller and smallerincrements that when small enough become practically non-existant andfor that are called "moments" and when strung together "successivemoments."

It is commonly held to be the case that what was in the past are gone,what are at present are transient, and what will come have not yetoccurred. Consequently, even though after having accepted theDependent Origination View that all dharmas are mutually dependent ascauses and conditions for their coexistence, one still regardsDharmadhatuas a flow of dharmas. Past dharmas have faded away,present dharmas are apparent but transient, and future dharmas have notarrived and are unpredictable. This view of Dharmadhatu is under the

limitation of the notion of time, and as such it deviates from the correctmeaning of the Buddhist Dharmadhatu. Dharmadhatu is neither limited byspace nor by time. According to the correct view of Dharmadhatu alldharmas in the past, all dharmas at present and all dharmas in the future


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are all together in the Dharmadhatu. Ordinarily people can experience onlya mi-nute part of all dharmas at present (becoming "moments" asdescribed above), and therefore people sustain the view that dharmas inthe past are gone and future is unpredictable. If one practices accordingto Buddhist teachings and thereby comes out of the bondage of the fixedview of a space-and-time framework, then it is possible to experience or

witness dharmas in the past as well as dharmas in the future.

THE WORD "RIGHT." What Does It Mean?

Before moving on there is another thing. Again, it has to do with wordsand their meaning. The fourth of the the Four Noble Truths refers to eightprecepts prescribed by the Buddha: right view, right intention, rightspeech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and

right concentration.The first thing everybody starts jumping up and downabout is that's a lot of rights, especially coming from the all time

champion of non-dualism. But, you have to remember the Buddha isframing in words from his Enlightened state what he would like his

non-enlightened peers to experience, so he has to use words he hopesthey will understand. The problem is that the non-enlightened take issuewith the words saying that as soon as a word is used, "right" for example,then dualism raises it's ugly head, because "right" has an opposite"wrong." Buddha knows that but doesn't experience it so he doesn't havea problem with it because he knows the meaning he means about theword "right" from his Enlightened state. The problem is in his nonenlightenedpeers experiencing it. The thing is the word we translate into"right" from the sanskrit word "samma" does not translate exactly into

"right" so realistically there is no opposite "wrong." What happens in thiscase right viewis not dualisticly opposed by wrong viewper se', rightintentionis not opposed by wrong intentionper se' etc., etc. Doesn'tmatter much anyway because they are actually no more than conceptualabstracts culled out of the samephenomenon, bracketed in a given

section of that phenomenon, and then clothed in the words right view,wrong view, right intention, wrong intention.

If rightdoesn't translate into right with wrong being the dualistic opposite,then just what is meant when the word rightis used by the Buddha like heuses it in the Eightfold Noble Path? For the answer to that we will againhave to go to an illustration:


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Back in the old days when a dollar was a dollar a farmer had borrowed$200.00 against his land in order to bring in a crop. With the money hehad used half to buy seed and half to live on for the year knowing he couldtake his crop to market and sell it for $400.00, doubling his money. Withthe double amount of money he would pay back the loan and still have$200.00 left to replant a new crop and get by the entire following year,

except without the need to borrow any money. He also knew if he didn'tpay back his loan he would lose his farm. The crop came in as expected.He divided the grain into ten bags he figured were worth about $40.00each, loaded the ten bags on his wagon, hooked up his draft animal andheaded toward the grain market in the big city.

Part way there one of the wheels hit a rather large stone in the road. Thefarmer got out of the wagon and checked the wheel. He noticed the axlewas somewhat bent, but to fix it would require him to unload the entire

wagon because the weight of the grain was too heavy to jack it up. He didnotice that part way through one revolution of the wheel it leaned in towardthe top and in the rest of the revolution it leaned out. He was sure thewheel would not fall off however, so he continued on his journey. What hedidn't notice was that on each revolution the wheel went around andleaned in at the top the rim rubbed across two of the cloth bags filled withgrain. After awhile the wheel wore a hole in both of the bags and unknownto the farmer the grain began to fall out. By the time he reached themarket the two bags were totally empty.

Now the farmer had eight bags, each bag worth $40.00 for a total of$320.00. Needless to say he was a tad upset. With the wagon empty hereturned home without incident. He paid off the debt he owed which lefthim $120.00. To have it end up the way he hoped he knew he needed$200.00, $100.00 for grain, $100.00 to live on through the year. Being$80.00 short meant a lot of compromises. Did he just buy $60.00 in grainand try to live on $60.00; did he buy the full amount of grain he neededand scrape by on even less; did he borrow the amount he was short?What? You can see all the various ramifications. But the punchline is thatwhen the wheel was not out of kilter it could be considered "right" becausea wheel that is true is the way it is supposed to be. But, after the axle wasbent the mere fact that the wheel ended up rubbing the grain sacks untilthey lost their grain doesn't exactly make it "wrong." The farmer mighthave not liked it, and true, it impacted his long term situation adversely,but other factors entered into it. What about the stone? What role did itplay? How did it get in the road just at the place the wheel ran over it?What about the farmers driving, why didn't he go around the thing in thefirst place? How about his decision not to unload the wagon and fix theaxle? Why wasn't he more alert the rest of the trip to the market when heknew the wheel wobbled? I could go on and on, but what I'm getting at isthat in order for a wheel to work at it's best, being out of kilter is probably


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not the best way to go. So, now, if you have carefully followed the thread Ihave weaved up to this point, you should have arrived at a fairly goodinsight into the use of the word rightas intended by the Buddha. Armedwith that understanding we should be able to move along...

When I was sixteen years old or so and had first crossed paths with things

Zen, envying my soon to be mentor's lifestyle living on a trust fund, Iasked him how I could do the same. He told me to faithfully put $100.00 amonth into a savings account every month and never touch it. One day itwould accumulate into a rather tidy sum, of from which, one could live offthe interest.

He was drawing an analogy between that and what we have beendiscussing above in that what one does at any given moment can produceimpulseswhich inturn, meeting the right combination of conditions willbear fruit. Thus said, the rightaction, speech, and thought [rightas usedin the way we have previously suggested] at this momentcan impact

one's futurepositively like saving $100.00 a month faithfully might.

The Enlightened sage Luangpor Teeanalways said that the past is gone,

incapable of being changed or rectified, while the future has not yetarrived: whatever we do, it must be done in the present. If we act well now,today will constitute a good past for tomorrow. And tomorrow, when itcomes, will turn out to be a good future for this day in which we havealready done good. It is useless to worry about things that are past and

cannot be put right and just as useless to worry about things that have notyet happened: to worry about things that cannot eliminate suffering in theonly place it is found, in the present.

What is important to consider of course, is having set into motion thecorrect set of principals in thepast,so the fruit beared from thoseendeavors would be impacting one'spresent.To have that present be apositive experience my mentor's suggestion, extracted from the sutras,went something like:

1.) From the first generate only thoughts with the right

escort.

2.) Support right thoughts already risen.

3.) From where thoughts arise, generate no thoughts that

carry negative escort.

4.) Dispell any negative thoughts already risen.


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Right action and speech should follow, inturn easily meetingthe preceptsof the Eightfold Noble Path and the results therein. Simple, simple stuff.

People come to me and ask how do we know any of the above is true? Inthe end can we even trust something or anything to be true since theword-concept truepops up just like rightpops up with all of it's relative and

dualistic ramifications? Well, lets try another illustration before proceeding:

Although they are not found as hunted or hunter in the same environment,both tigers and zebras are striped. The zebra is striped, it seems, so thatwhile running in a herd to escape being preyed upon, the confusion ofstripes from animal to animal as they overlap makes unclear to the hunteran individual animal. The tiger's stripes, on the other hand, is to makeitself unclear to it's prey as it uses stealth to come within leathal strikingdistance. In each case both the seeking tiger and the sought upon zebrais trying to infer it is not there.

Therein lays the rub. Infer it is not there. If the tiger is there but infering itis not, it has to be there to inorder to infer it is not there. In other words, itis not not there even though it's prey may be being deceived by beliving itis not. If the tiger is there, then in both cases it is there, that is, the tiger isthere because it is there andit is still there even though through

camouflage and deception it is attempting to infer to it's prey it is not. It isthat implied not being therewhen it is that is the deception, that is nottrue. The actual fact of the tiger being there, regardless of what the tiger's

prey thinks or doesn't think is the truth. If the tiger were a human andusing camouflage and deception as a ruse it would be lying.

Dualist and relativists would argue there is no truth, real or otherwise,especially so, absolute truth. For the most part arguing with words againsta word based argument is to enter into a battleground basicallyunarmed...or at the most, armed only with weapons your host opponentgives you. But, if you go back to my illustration and not battle over truthexisting or not existing and see, for example, that if the tiger is there and

thatis reality inturn taken for the truth, and agree that in the deceptioninfered toward it's prey it is still there, then perpetrating the fact that it isnot there would be in fact, not true.

People also have a problem with the meaning of originating causeandsuccessive moments being different.

'Originating cause' does not have the same meaning as caused byor tobe caused by. For example, a generally accepted axiomatic statement has

been made that goes something like "From a tiny acorn the mightyoaktree grows."...which suggest that for every oaktree tree that existsthere was once an acorn that existed before it. But where do acorns comefrom? For the most part they fall from the limbs of oaktrees, which by


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inference would indicate that before every acorn was, an oaktree was. Buthow can that be? Before the firstfirst oaktree what was there?

That which makes an oaktree eventually an oaktree includes not just theacorn and the acorn only, but requires the right soil, moisture, nutriments,weather, temperature, location, etc. All of that stuff is called determinants.

A determinant does not necessarily mean a sequential order of things,that is, one thing in order first before the other. For example, for theoaktree and the acorn before it to be the acorn or oaktree they are or areto become, the various determinants, soil, moisture, nutriments, etc., mustall be in place and exist all at the sametime, not first one and then theother sequentially. The originating causeis like an acorn from which an

oaktree springs. But, without the various determinants in place I wouldn'thold my breath.

Now lets try 'successive moments being different'. Again, fairly simplestuff. At the coarse grain level, lets say you the reader for example, aresitting in front of a computer and haven't left the room or moved from yourchair for several hours, so engrossed are you reading my material. Youhaven't left the room yet if you think about it you are hundreds, perhapsthousands of miles away from the exactspot you were when you first satdown. How so? Simply put, the earth rotates while it orbits the sun. Thesun moves in it's own direction while being swept along in the rotatinggalaxy, the galaxy itself moving on it's own path while being swept up inthe inflation/expansion of the universe, etc., etc. At the fine grain leveleach of the billions of electron clouds clumped together to form themental/material enity that represents that which you are are whispingaround each of their own successive nuclei, none of them in their locked inorbits ever returning to the exact same spot because they too, like youand the overall vast expanse of the universe are being swept along andaway from where they were. Nothing anywhere at anytime can ever be thesame, from the minutest charmed quark being in the exact spot once onceupon a time, to any two snowflakes ever beingjust alike. Fine grain,course grain? How could that be so?

In Zen lore Pai-chang Huai-hai (724-814) was a great Zen master,especially known for Hyakujo's Foxand the following No Ducksstory:

Prior to his awakening experience Pai-Chang was a student

of the also great Zen master Ma-tsu Ta-chi (709-788). Oneday while Pai-chang was still his student the two were out

walking together and saw in the sky a formation of wild

ducks. Ma-tsu asked, "What is that?" Pai-chang said, "Wild


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ducks." Ma-tsu said, "Where have they gone?" Pai-chang

replied, "They have flown away." Ma-tsu then twisted

Pai-chang's nose, of from which Pai-chang cried out in

pain. Ma-tsu said, "When have they ever flown away, they

have been here since the beginning."

When have they ever flown away, they have been here since thebeginning! Sounds like fairly straightforward Zen-type discourse betweenmaster and student, except from the first not a thing is, which is, by theway, the same thing as having been here since the beginning. Ma-tsu wastestingthe awareness of his student. When asking 'what is that?'Pai-chang answered 'wild ducks.' To substantiate his level ofunderstanding that all is One, that is, that his answer 'wild ducks' was inthe Absolute, that his reply encompassed ALLabout the scene of the

ducks: 'clouds on the mountains and the moon on the sea,' etc., etc.Instead Pai-chang replied 'they have flown away' showing Ma-tsu thatPai-chang missed it twice. To Pai-chang the thatin 'what is that?' was onlywild ducks over there, mountains over there, sky over there, him overhere. Hence, they, the ducks, could fly away. To Ma-tsu, all is One, howcould anything fly away (or electron clouds orbit or be swept up in theinflation/expansion of the universe?). No over here, no over there, noMa-tsu, no ducks.

Wild ducks may be One with the universe, but they still are what they are,regardless of how they may or may not be separated out or what they arecalled or not called. Although all is One, a given duck is unique in theuniverse because at the moment it is, it is nothing else, nothing else it.

Like Shen-hui said:

"One talks of the Void for the benefit of those who have not seen

their own Buddha-natures. For those who have seen their own

Buddha-natures the Void does not exist."

So, added all together how does all of it work and what, if anything, does itmean to you? Again, another illustration:

You go to Las Vegas on a certain day on a certain time and select a givenvideo poker machine out of all of the machines in all of the casinos in all ofLas Vegas. You buy twenty dollars in quarters and start putting the coinsinto the machine. Pretty soon the quarters are all gone, you haven't won

anything, get up and leave. What has happened? Of the money that youhave or had you are now out twenty dollars, twenty dollars you won'tspend somewhere else with all of it's downstream ramifications.Ramifications such as items you could have possibly purchased and their


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use thereof or taken out of circulation for others not to use. You also tooknot just twenty dollars, but twenty dollars in quarters out of circulation andput them into a video machine, plus, you using the machine at a giventime at a given place prevented others from using the same machine atthe same time, which bumped them to some other machine or none at all,impacting their own and others downstream flow. Now, as money, those

quarters have inherent downstream impact anyway, but now they aresitting in a video poker machine waiting to impact the next person, or thenext, or the next. But, lets say instead of losing your quarters you hit aroyal flush and won four thousand quarters for a total of one thousanddollars. Now youhave a thousand dollars youwill distribute and spend in

yourown lifestream activities, impacting those who come in contact with

the money from you just like you have been impacted by having athousand to spend you didn't have before, etc., etc. Plus, by you winning,you have denied the further use of that money by anybody else who may

have accessed the machine and how any of it may have impacted themand others and others and others.

So, what am I getting at? I am just pointing out that everything isinterconnected. No matter what you do or don't do, in doing it or not

doing it, everything is impacted because everything is interconnected.

And that is the answer to why you are. If you were not, at this moment,

and did not tie up or ever tie up all the aggregates or constituents thatmake you up, then those aggregates or constituents either might not have

ever existed, or if they did, would be split up and usedsomewhere else,bumping everythingfrom where it is to some other place to some other

place to some other place...because if you were not, that is, never existed,then everything and every part that ever proceeded leading up to youbeing you would not have unfolded the way it has or be where it is or wasor be impacted by what you are or have done or will do. The mere fact youare tying up the aggregates or constituents you are tying up is WHYthe

universe is the way it is. See how important you are? If it wasn't for you

nothing else would be the same. In other words:

This being present, that arises; without this, that does not occur.

Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zenmaster's. Where

we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto thatexperience

and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" inand of itself.


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