The Compass of Zen (Shambhala Dragon Editions) - Softcover

First attain enlightenment, then instruct all beings.

Many centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates used to walk through the streets and marketplaces of Athens, teaching his students. He would say to them, "You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself." Then one day a student said, "Sir, you always say we must understand ourselves. But do you understand your self?"

"No, I don't know myself," Socrates replied. "But I understand this 'don't know.'" This is very interesting teaching. Buddhist practice points at the same experience, because most human beings pass through their lives without the slightest sense of what they are.

We understand many things about this world, but we don't understand ourselves. So why do human beings come into this world? Why do we live in this world? For love? For money? For respect or fame? Do you live for your wife, husband, or children? Why do you live in this world? If someone asked you these questions, you might very well answer, "I live for my children. I live to earn enough money for them, or maybe just to have a good life." Most people think like this. They live only for their family, for some fleeting social respectability, perhaps to enjoy art or to get some powerful position. Everyone wants to have a good situation for themselves. If you look at this world very closely, it is easy to see that most people eat and sleep and live merely for their own personal happiness. Yet these things are not the real purpose of human beings' life. They are just temporary means for living in the world. If human beings cannot find out who they are, how can they ever be truly happy? The Buddha came from a royal family in India some twenty-five hundred years ago. He was a prince, named Siddhartha Gautama. He had a very good situation. In the palace he had everything he wanted: good food, good clothes, many beautiful women, a high seat, and a very good position. He was the son of the king, and someday he would inherit a powerful kingdom. That's very wonderful! But inside, Siddhartha was very unhappy, because he could not understand who he was. He could not understand life or death. He was deeply saddened that all beings must eventually get sick, grow old, and die. This gave him a big question about his own nature and the nature of all beings. "What am I? I don't know. . . ." At that time in India, the Brahmin religion of Hinduism was followed by nearly everyone. But Brahmanism could not give the young prince the correct answer to his burning question. So he was even more unhappy. "Why do human beings come into this world? Why do we eat every day? What am I?" He ate food, but there was no taste. Heard music, but it gave him no pleasure. The beautiful palace became like a prison.

One night, Siddhartha left the palace. He left his family, his beautiful wife, and his infant child, cut off all his hair, and became a monk. Then he went to the mountains. For six years he practiced very, very hard. "What am I? Don't know . . ." He courageously kept this question with one-pointed determination. Then one morning, while sitting in meditation under the Bodhi tree, he saw the morning star in the eastern sky. At that moment--BOOM!--Siddhartha and this star completely became one. He realized his true substance. He realized that his mind was the universe--infinite in time and space--and the whole universe was nothing other than his own mind. He realized there is no life and no death. Nothing ever comes or goes. We say that he woke up and attained his true nature. He completely attained human consciousness: he saw that when ignorance appears, mind appears. When mind appears, desire appears. When any kind of desire appears, life and death, coming and going, happiness and sadness all appear. By completely keeping a don't-know mind one hundred percent--only go straight, don't know--the Buddha saw how to completely stop this endless cycle. He attained complete liberation from the eternal round of birth and death in which all beings trap themselves. He completely attained his correct way, he attained truth, and he attained the correct kind of life he should lead. The name for that is enlightenment. But this truth that the Buddha attained was a very high-class realization. How could he make it function to help this suffering world? When he got enlightenment, the Buddha perceived all sentient beings being born, suffering, and dying; being born again, suffering, and dying; being born, again suffering, and again dying in an endless round of torment. He saw billions upon billions of beings caught in the beginningless cycle of birth, old age, sickness, and death, wandering around and around and around and around, nonstop, only following their desire, anger, and ignorance. The name for this is samsara. "I want this. I want that. I like this. I don't like that." When he attained enlightenment, the Buddha perceived every sentient being in a terrible state of suffering. It was a condition to which they had become so accustomed that it seemed normal. How would anyone ever believe what he had seen? "How can I teach this to other people?" he thought. It was like a man with a very high-class Ph.D. trying to teach little children what he'd learned: how would they ever understand? Sentient beings were so controlled by their desire minds, and so attached to their suffering way, he wondered if anyone would ever connect with this teaching. Sutras say that for several moments the Buddha doubted whether he should attempt to teach this. Perhaps people would have laughed at him, or worse, killed him for his heretical insight. The Buddha saw all this too. He could have stayed in this nirvana, his enlightenment, a state of infinite stillness and bliss, and never come out.

But the Buddha had profound compassion for sentient beings. He got up from his seat under the Bodhi tree, he left the stillness and bliss of nirvana, and he went into the contentious cities and towns to teach human beings. He left his "good situation." He did not attach to stillness and quiet. He did not attach to his bliss. He did not stay in nirvana, a state where there is no suffering or life or death. The Buddha returned to the noisy, fractious world to save all beings from suffering by showing them that it was possible to completely attain their own original nature, just as he had done. His enlightenment experience was not for him alone. That is a very important point. The characters for that are dae ja, dae bi: Great Love and Great Compassion. The Buddha attained enlightenment, which means that he attained his great function and the function of all beings. This was the beginning of Buddhism in this world.