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In chapter 8–15, Śāntideva turns to the topic of purification and discusses the various practices bodhisattvas can engage in to purify themselves of sinful actions and afflictive emotions. These actions include: confession and atonement, the practice of patience, putting forth effort in study and learning, purifying the mind through meditation, and applying the mind to the practice of mindfulness.
Chapter 14: Purification of the Body
Śantideva continues the discussion of meditation on emptiness in this chapter by citing many sūtras and declaring that meditation on emptiness has endless benefits. He first cites The Sūtra on the Buddha's Secrets to underscore the point that if the notion of the self is eliminated through meditation on emptiness, all major and minor afflictive emotions will be eliminated, just as the branches, shoots, and leaves will die if the root of the tree is cut. A person who is able to eliminate the notion of self through meditation on emptiness will not violate the precepts, will not fall for distractions but will find joy in the teachings of the Buddha, will know peace, will become a leader, a physician who gives health, a remover of suffering, and so forth.
He cites The Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra, exhorting a bodhisattva who wishes to attain the wonderful body of a buddha with the thirty-two marks and eighty tokens, remember all lifetimes, uphold bodhicitta, engage in bodhisattva conduct, eschew all sinful actions and evil company, please the buddhas, bodhisattvas, and teachers, tame the evil forces, and cleanse all impurities to train in the perfection of wisdom, which is the realization of emptiness. Śāntideva then goes on to point out how, without any self, actions and their results are connected and tenable and how, without true nature, all phenomena are perceivable. He cites The Sūtra on the Meeting of Father and Son at great length in order to illustrate this point. A person, according to this sūtra, is composed of six elements (earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness), six sense-fields of contact (form, sound, smell, taste, touch, and phenomena), and eighteen mental engagements, including engagement of the visual faculty in form, auditory faculty in sound, olfactory faculty in smell, gustatory faculty in taste, tactile faculty in touch, and mental faculty in phenomena, each of them divided further into pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral ones.
Having listed the phenomena, the sūtra queries the nature or composition of each phenomenon. Earth, for instance, is divided into two types. The inner earth element is the solidity of one's body as seen in hair and nails, and the outer earth element is the solidity of things outside of oneself. A man may think of the solidity of his body within and also hold the solidity of the body of a woman without. Having done so, he may crave for the body of the woman, plan to meet, have intercourse, and give rise to an embryo, etc. However, the man, woman, embryo, solidity, and thoughts of these do not exist in reality. They do not come from anywhere and go anywhere. "O King! This body will see a time when it is discarded at the cemetery. When its solidity will disintegrate and cease, it does not go to the east, south, west, north, above, below or between cardinal directions. O King! View the inner earth element likewise,"[1] advises the Buddha. The solidity of the external world from the Brahmā realm downward to mountains on earth in the trichiliocosm and in the whole universe will disintegrate and disappear being burned by fire, washed away by water, blown off by wind, and nothing, even a speck of dust, would remain. In reality, the earth element is empty, its arising and disintegration are empty, and the earth element cannot be apprehended.
The same is applied to the water element, which is divided into the inner water element of the liquidity and wetness of the body (including blood, oil, pus, tear, mucus, bile, milk, and urine) and the outer water element, which includes liquid and water outside the body. The liquidity of the water element will also disappear as heat rises, but the liquidity does not go anywhere. Just as man and woman are empty and mere labels, the water element is also empty and a mere label. The fire element includes heat within the body, which keeps the body warm and helps digest food, and heat outside the body, produced from different sources such as firewood, dung, grass, etc. Similarly, the air element includes the breath and air in the body, which helps lightness, agility, and mobility, and the air and wind outside. The inner space element refers to the cavities and gaps within the body and the outer space element refers to the spatial area outside.
These elements do not come from anywhere and do not go anywhere. For example, if a man digs a pit, the empty space does not come from anywhere, but it occurs. When he fills the pit, the space disappears. Thus, the elements are, in reality, without arising or ceasing and empty of real existence. The consciousness element is the cognition of something, such as a red or blue color or a large or small size, with things such as form as object and faculties such as eyes as an agentive condition. In reality, such cognition does not come from the object, faculty, inside, outside, or in between. Apart from a designation, the consciousness element is empty of consciousness element.
The same procedure of presentation and reductive logic and analysis is applied to the six sense-fields of contact to conclude that there are no real sense-fields and one merely assumes that there are sense-fields when one does not analyze. "O King! Assumption is the domain of the evil force. Having no assumption is the domain of the buddhas, for all phenomena are free from assumptions,"[2] states the sūtra. In the same manner, the eighteen mental engagements are also established to be empty and without real existence. The Buddha compares the experience of pleasant mental engagements to a person indulging in the pleasure of intercourse with a beautiful woman in a dream. That woman, intercourse, and pleasure do not exist in reality. Similarly, a man may dream about fighting with an enemy, but neither the enemy nor the fight really exists. He may dream of a ghost and of being bewildered by fear in his dream, but neither the ghost nor the bewilderment exists in reality. Yet, sentient beings assume things to exist with real nature and give in to attachment, aversion, and ignorance, which lead to the ten negative actions and then to rebirth in cyclic existence.
Not knowing the empty nature of things, sentient beings succumb to unquenching thirst and craving, like the case of King Amitayaśas, who rose to the extent of sharing the celestial throne with Indra and yet could not be content and fell to lower realms. Thus, a bodhisattva, knowing the nonessentiality of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral objects, must not give rise to attachment, aversion, and ignorance but to the altruistic thought of bringing benefit to sentient beings and eventually liberating them.
Śāntideva cites The Sūtra on the Meeting of Father and Son to bring up the topic of the two truths, which forms the most important philosophical scheme to present the ontological theory in Mahāyāna Buddhism in general and the Madhyamaka tradition in particular. The relative or conventional truth is presented as what the world engages in, while the ultimate truth is the unknowable, ineffable, and inapprehensible nature of things. The conventional truth is taught to lead sentient beings as mere conventions and designations, while the ultimate truth is the empty nature of things. If one thinks that the Buddha proclaimed form, sound, etc. to have the nature of perfect enlightenment, one is wrong, for form, sound, etc. are mere conventional designations as are the Buddha and the state of enlightenment. To have the nature of enlightenment is to have no nature. They do not arise and cannot be perceived; there is nothing to be attached to.
Suppose in a dream a hungry man finds delicious food and enjoys it until he is full. In reality, there is no man, food, or the act of eating. Brahmā praises the Buddha as one who sees all phenomena like such a dream. The Buddha sees no sentient beings, happiness, or suffering on the ultimate level, and yet he cultivates and teaches loving-kindness, compassion, joy, calm-abiding, and insight on the conventional level, particularly for those who have strong clinging to existence to enter the path. On the ultimate level, there is no arising, abiding, or ceasing; everything is utterly empty, including emptiness itself.
The purport of the many citations presented in this chapter of The Compendium of Training is captured by Śāntideva in his very cryptic verse at the beginning of the chapter on the perfection of wisdom in his Way of the Bodhisattva. There, he states the following:
Relative and ultimate, These the two truths are declared to be. The ultimate is not within the reach of intellect, For intellect is said to be the relative.107Tibetan habitually uses two expressions to refer to the relative truth: kun rdzob and tha snyad. Although they are often employed interchangeably as synonyms, these terms have slightly different connotations. Kun rdzob kyi bden pa literally means the ‟all-concealing truth.” It refers to phenomena as they are encountered in everyday life, and to the fact that their appearance (as independently existing entities) conceals their true nature (i.e., their emptiness of such independent and intrinsic being). In so far as the things and situations encountered in life are accepted as genuine in the common consensus (as contrasted with magical illusions, mirages, etc.), they are ‟true,” but only relatively so, since the way they appear does not correspond with their actual status. We have therefore systematically translated kun rdzob kyi bden pa as ‟relative truth.” Tha snyad, on the other hand, means ‟name,” ‟conventional expression.” Tha snyad kyi bden pa (which we have translated as ‟conventional truth”) refers to phenomena insofar as they can be conceived by the ordinary mind and spoken of within the limits of conventional discourse.
Page(s) 137
Blankleder, Helena, and Wulstan Fletcher (Padmakara Translation Group), trans. The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra. By Śāntideva. Rev. ed. Shambhala Classics. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006.
ཀུན་རྫོབ་དང་ནི་དོན་དམ་སྟེ། །
འདི་ནི་བདེན་པ་གཉིས་སུ་འདོད། ། དོན་དམ་བློ་ཡི་སྤྱོད་ཡུལ་མིན། །
བློ་ནི་ཀུན་རྫོབ་ཡིན་པར་བརྗོད། །kun rdzob dang ni don dam ste/_/
'di ni bden pa gnyis su 'dod/_/ don dam blo yi spyod yul min/_/
blo ni kun rdzob yin par brjod/_/The third line defining the ultimate truth as beyond intellect and thought and the fourth line describing intellect and thought to be in the domain of relative or conventional truth have become pivotal for philosophical and ontological theories in the Madhyamaka tradition among Tibetan Buddhist thinkers and have given rise to a long history of serious polemical exchanges. The debates on whether the ultimate reality of emptiness is without any ontic status and transcends the realm of all forms of thinking continue to this day, with major implications for practical application.
According to The Compendium of Dharma Sūtra, one who expounds emptiness abides nowhere and is not moved by worldly affairs to become happy with gain or unhappy with loss, happy with fame and unhappy with infamy, happy with praise and unhappy with criticism, and happy with pleasure and unhappy with displeasure. Thus, one who sees emptiness remains in equanimity without attachment or aversion. Only those who do not understand emptiness engage in quarrel and disputes. One who knows emptiness avoids cherishing oneself and hating others and praising oneself and criticizing others. Instead, such a person respects others and disregards oneself. Through such training of the mind, one is then able to avoid attachment, hatred, ignorance, arrogance, jealousy, and stinginess, which would otherwise provoke a lot of harm, displeasure, and censure. This would, in turn, help purify the negativity and problems associated with the body.
Additional resources
Here we need to think about what would be particularly useful to the student/reader at this point. Link to key terms found in chapter one? Any thoughts?
The Way of the Bodhisattva
Notes
- ↑ Derge Tanjur, Khi, f. 135a: རྒྱལ་པོ་ཆེན་པོ་འདི་ལྟར་གང་ལུས་འདི་དུར་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་མཐར་འགྱུར་བའི་དུས་དེ་ཡོད་དོ། །དེའི་སྲ་བ་དེ་འཇིག་ཅིང་འགག་པར་འགྱུར་བའི་ཚེ། ཤར་ཕྱོགས་སུ་མི་འགྲོ། ལྷོ་ཕྱོགས་དང་། ནུབ་ཕྱོགས་དང་། བྱང་ཕྱོགས་དང་། སྟེང་དང་འོག་དང་། ཕྱོགས་མཚམས་རྣམས་སུ་ཡང་མི་འགྲོ་སྟེ། རྒྱལ་པོ་ཆེན་པོ་ནང་གི་སའི་ཁམས་ནི་དེ་ལྟར་བལྟའོ། །
- ↑ Derge Tanjur, Khi, f. 139b: རྒྱལ་པོ་ཆེན་པོ་རློམ་སེམས་ནི་བདུད་ཀྱི་སྤྱོད་ཡུལ་ལོ། །རློམ་སེམས་མེད་པ་ནི་སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་སྤྱོད་ཡུལ་ལོ། །དེ་ཅིའི་ཕྱིར་ཞེ་ན། ཆོས་ཐམས་ཅད་ནི་རློམ་སེམས་དང་བྲལ་བའོ། །
