From Zhuan Falun
Falundafa.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LECTURE NINE A Clear and Clean Mind
Many people cannot achieve a tranquil mind during practice, and they go everywhere to ask qigong masters: "Teacher, I can’t attain tranquility no matter how I practice. Once I settle down, I’ll think of everything, including odd thoughts and ideas." It is like overturning rivers and seas with everything surfacing, and one cannot attain tranquility whatsoever. Why is one unable to attain tranquility? Some people cannot understand it and believe that there must be some secret tricks. They will find well-known masters: "Please teach me some advanced tricks so that I can have a mind of tranquility." In my view, that is looking for external help. If you want to improve yourself, you should search your inner self and work hard on your heart—only then can you truly ascend and achieve tranquility in sitting meditation. The ability to achieve tranquility is gong, and the depth of ding indicates one’s level.
How can an everyday person attain tranquility at will? One cannot do it at all unless one has very good inborn quality. In other words, the fundamental reason for one’s being unable to achieve tranquility is not an issue of techniques, but that your mind and heart are not clean. In ordinary human society and in interpersonal conflicts, you compete and fight for personal gain, all kinds of human sentimentality, and your attachments to desires. If you do not let go of these things and take them lightly, how can you easily achieve tranquility? While practicing qigong, someone claims: "I just don’t believe it. I’ve got to calm down and stop thinking." As soon as that is said, all thoughts will pop up again, as it is your mind that is not clean. You are therefore unable to have a tranquil mind.
Some people might disagree with my stance: "Don’t some qigong masters teach people to use certain techniques? One can concentrate, visualize something, focus one’s mind on dantian, look internally at dantian, chant the Buddha’s name, and so on." These are types of techniques. Yet they are not merely techniques, but also reflections of one’s abilities. Accordingly, these abilities are directly related to our xinxing cultivation and the level of our improvement. Moreover, one cannot attain tranquility by using such techniques alone. If you do not believe it, you can give it a try. With different strong desires and attachments and without being able to give up everything, you may try and see if you can achieve tranquility. Some people say that it will work to chant the Buddha’s name. Can you attain tranquility by chanting the Buddha’s name? Someone claims: "It’s easy to practice Buddha Amitabha’s school of practice. It’ll work just by chanting the Buddha’s name." Why don’t you try chanting like that? I would call it an ability. You say that it is easy, but I say that it is not easy, as no school of practice is easy.
Everyone knows that Sakyamuni taught "samadhi." What did he teach prior to samadhi? He taught "precept" and abandoning all desires and addictions until nothing is left—then one can achieve samadhi. Isn’t it such a principle? But "samadhi" is also an ability, as you are unable to completely achieve "precept" all at once. With the gradual abandonment of all bad things, one’s ability to concentrate will also improve from shallow to deep. When one chants the Buddha’s name, one must do it single-mindedly with nothing else in mind until other portions of the brain become numb and one becomes unaware of anything, with one thought replacing thousands of others, or until each word of "Buddha Amitabha" shows up before one’s eyes. Isn’t this an ability? Can one do this at the very beginning? One cannot. If one cannot do it, one will certainly be unable to achieve tranquility. If you do not believe it, you can give it a try. While chanting the Buddha’s name repeatedly with one’s mouth, one’s mind thinks about everything: "Why does my boss in the workplace dislike me so much? My bonus for this month is so little." The more one thinks about it, the angrier one becomes, while one’s mouth is still chanting the Buddha’s name. Do you think this person can practice qigong? Isn’t this a matter of ability? Isn’t it an issue of your mind being unclean? Some people’s Celestial Eye are open, and they can look internally at dantian. As to the dan that accumulates in one’s lower abdominal area, the purer this energy matter is, the brighter it becomes. The less pure it is, the more opaque and more dark it is. Can one attain tranquility just by looking internally at that dan in the dantian? One cannot attain it. It is not up to the technique itself. The key is that one’s mind and thoughts are not clear and clean. When you look internally at dantian, the dan looks bright and pretty. In a second, this dan transforms into an apartment: "This room will be for my son when he gets married. That room is for my daughter. As an old couple, we’ll live in the other room, and the room in the center will be a living room. It’s just great! Will this apartment be assigned to me? I have to think of a way to get it. What should be done?" People are just attached to these things. Do you think that you can achieve tranquility this way? It has been said: "When I come to this ordinary human society, it’s just like checking into a hotel for a few days. Then I leave in a hurry." Some people are just obsessed with this place and have forgotten their own homes.
In genuine cultivation practice one must cultivate one’s own heart and inner self. One should search inside oneself rather than outside. Some schools of practice say that Buddha is in one’s heart, and this also has some truth. Some people have misunderstood this statement and say that there is Buddha in their hearts, as though they themselves are Buddhas, or as if there is a Buddha in their hearts—they have understood it in this way. Isn’t that wrong? How could it be understood like that? It means that you must cultivate your heart if you are to succeed in cultivation—it tells this principle. How can there be a Buddha in your body? You must practice cultivation to succeed.
The reason that you cannot achieve tranquility is that your mind is not empty and you have not reached that high a level, which can only be achieved step by step. It goes hand in hand with the level of your improvement. When you give up attachments, your level will be upgraded, and your ability to concentrate will also improve. If you want to achieve tranquility through some techniques or methods, I would call this searching for external help. In qigong practice, however, going awry and following an evil way simply refer to people searching for external help. With Buddhism in particular, if you search for external help, you are said to have taken a demonic way. In genuine cultivation practice one must cultivate the heart: Only when you upgrade your xinxing can you attain a clear and clean mind, and a state free of intention (wuwei). Only when your xinxing is upgraded can you assimilate to the characteristic of the universe and remove different human desires, attachments, and other bad things. Only then will you be able to abandon the bad things in yourself and ascend so that you will not be restricted by the characteristic of the universe. Then the substance of de can be transformed into gong. Don’t they go hand in hand? It’s just such a principle!
This is the reason on the individual’s part why he is unable to achieve tranquility, as he cannot meet a practitioner’s standard. In terms of external factors, there is presently a situation that seriously interferes with your practicing cultivation toward high levels, and it seriously affects practitioners. You know that with the reforms and openness, the economy has become flexible and policies are also less restrictive. Many new technologies have been introduced, and people’s living standard has improved. All everyday people think that it is a good thing. But things should be looked at dialectically, in both ways. With the reforms and openness, bad things of different forms have also been imported. If a piece of literary work is not written with some sexual content, the book seems unable to sell since the issue of sales quantity is involved. If movies and television programs do not show footage of bedroom scenes, in terms of the audience ratings no one seems to watch them. As for artwork, nobody can tell whether it is genuine art or something else. There were no such things in our ancient Chinese traditional arts. The traditions of our Chinese nationality were not invented or created by any one person. In addressing prehistoric culture, I mentioned that everything has its origin. Human moral values have been distorted and changed. The standards that measure good and bad have all changed. Those are matters of everyday people. Yet this universe’s characteristic, Zhen-Shan-Ren, remains unchanged as the sole criterion to differentiate good and bad persons. As a practitioner, if you want to rise above and beyond, you must use this criterion—not the standard of everyday people—to assess things. Thus, there is this external interference. There is more to it, such as homosexuality, sexual freedom, and drug abuse.
When human society has developed to this step today, think about it: What will happen if it goes on like this? Can it be allowed to exist like this forever? If humankind does not do something about it, heaven will. Whenever humankind experiences catastrophes, it is always under such conditions. With so many lectures, I have not brought up the issue of humankind’s great catastrophes. This hot topic has been discussed in religions and by many people. I am raising this question to everyone, so think about it, everyone: In our ordinary human society, the human moral standard has undergone such a change! Tensions among one another have reached such an extent! Don’t you think that it’s come to an extremely dangerous point? Therefore, this present, objectively existing environment seriously interferes with our practitioners’ cultivation toward high levels. Nude pictures are displayed right over there, hanging in the middle of the street. Once you look up, you will see them.
Lao Zi once made this statement: "When a wise person hears the Tao, this person will practice it diligently." When a wise person learns of the Tao, he thinks: "Finally I’ve obtained a righteous cultivation method. Why wait and not start to practice today?" The complex environment, in my view, is instead a good thing. The more complex it is, the greater the persons it will produce. If one can elevate oneself above and beyond it, one’s cultivation will be the most solid.
For a practitioner who is truly determined to practice cultivation, I would say that it turns out to be a good thing. Without conflicts arising or opportunities to improve your xinxing, you cannot make progress. If everyone is nice to one another, how do you practice cultivation? As for one who is an average practitioner, one is "an average person who hears the Tao," and one for whom it will be fine to either practice or not practice cultivation; it is most likely he will fail in cultivation. Some people who are here listening find what Teacher says reasonable. Upon returning to ordinary human society, they will still think that those immediate gains are more practical and real. They are real. Not only you, but also many Western millionaires and wealthy people have discovered that there is nothing left after death. Material wealth does not come with birth, and neither will it go with you after death—they are very hollow. Yet why is gong so precious? This is because it is attached to the body of your Primordial Spirit, and it comes with you at birth and goes with you after death. We have said that one’s Primordial Spirit does not become extinct, and this is not a superstition. After the cells in our physical bodies have come off, the particles smaller than cells in other physical dimensions have not become extinct. Only a shell has come off.
All of what I have just addressed belongs to the issue of one’s xinxing. Sakyamuni once made this statement, as did Boddhidarma: "This oriental land of China is a place where people of great virtues are produced." Throughout history, many monks and a lot of Chinese people have been very proud about this; it seems to suggest that they can cultivate high-level gong, and thus many people are pleased and feel flattered: "Alright us Chinese people! The land of China can produce people of great inborn quality and great virtue." In fact, many people have not understood the meaning behind it. Why does the land of China produce people of great virtues and high-level gong? Many people do not understand the genuine meaning of what those high-level people have said, and neither do they understand the realm or mindset of those people at high levels and in lofty realms. Of course, we have said that we will not point out what it means. Think about it, everyone: Only by being among the most complex group of people and in the most complex environment can one cultivate the high-level gong—it implies this.
|