Too many spiritual books crowd the shelf, books that tell us how to live, how to love, how to heal ourselves or, failing that, how to die; books that promise to change the world yet feed no one, topple no tyrants, change nothing.
Why read another one? Perhaps because I was intrigued by the photograph of the author, a slightly built monk of sixty-three who wears saffron robes and looks out at us with kind eyes and an enigmatic smile, a long-suffering smile that says so little, so much. Perhaps because he speaks charitably of his enemies; or because he’s been called the Gandhi of Cambodia; or because, as someone has written, Maha Ghosananda “would and has offered the robes off his back and the food in his bowl to anyone who needs them.”
Maha Ghosananda, whose talks and writings have been assembled in a slim volume entitled Step by Step: Meditations on Wisdom and Compassion, has been a Buddhist monk for more than fifty years. Born in Cambodia, he received much of his training in India and then traveled extensively throughout southeast Asia. He was in a forest monastery in Thailand when the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia in the mid-seventies. Being out of the country no doubt saved his life. More than fifty thousand Buddhist monks, as well as most of Maha Ghosananda’s own family members, were killed by the Khmer Rouge, who decimated Cambodian Buddhism and began an extreme program of social reconstruction, forcing all city dwellers to march to the countryside to live and work as peasants. More than two million Cambodians died as a result of starvation, disease, torture, and executions.
Maha Ghosananda came to the United States in 1980 at the invitation of the United Nations, and has worked since then with Cambodian refugee communities around the world. He has met several times with Pope Paul II, and sees no conflict between Buddhism and Christianity. “The truth is one,” he says. “We call it Dharma. Dharma embraces everything, including God, including Christ. God is in the belly of the Dharma.”
Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield relates this story:
“Some years ago, in the dusty, barren heat of Cambodian refugee camps that hold hundreds of thousands of shell-shocked survivors, I saw the greatness of Maha Ghosananda’s heart and the Buddha’s shine as one. In the camps of the Khmer Rouge, where people were warned not to cooperate at the cost of their lives, Maha Ghosananda opened a Buddhist temple. He wanted to bring the Dharma back to these people who had suffered as deeply as any on earth. In spite of the threats, when the large bamboo temple was completed nearly twenty thousand refugees gathered to recite again the lost chants of two thousand years — left behind when their own villages were burned and temples destroyed. Maha Ghosananda chanted the traditional chants as thousands wept. Then it was time to speak, to proclaim the holy Dharma, to bring the teachings of the Buddha to bear witness to the unspeakable sorrows of their lives. Maha Ghosananda spoke with utmost simplicity to those who had suffered, reciting over and over in the ancient language of the Buddha and in Cambodian this verse from the Dhammapada:
Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law.”
— Ed.
Balancing Wisdom And Compassion
Wisdom must always be balanced by compassion, and compassion must be balanced by wisdom. We cannot have peace without this balance. I would like to share three stories to illustrate this.
One day, a violent dragon king met a bodhisattva on the path. The bodhisattva said, “My son, do not kill. If you keep the five precepts and care for all life, you will be happy.” Hearing just these few words, the dragon became totally nonviolent.
The children who tended animals at the foot of the Himalayan mountains had been very afraid of the dragon. But when the dragon became gentle, they lost their fear and soon began to jump on him, pull his tail, and stuff stones and dirt into his mouth. After a while, the dragon could not eat, and he became very sick.
The next time the dragon king met the bodhisattva, he shouted, “You told me that if I kept the precepts and was compassionate, I would be happy. But now I suffer, and I am not happy at all.”
The bodhisattva replied, “My son, if you have compassion, morality, and virtue, you must also have wisdom and intelligence. This is the way to protect yourself. The next time the children make you suffer, show them your fire. After that, they will trouble you no more.”
Who was harmed when the dragon lacked wisdom? Both the dragon and the children suffered.
The balance of wisdom and compassion is called the middle path. Here is another story. Once an old farmer found a dying cobra in his ricefield. Seeing the cobra’s suffering, the farmer was filled with compassion. He picked up the snake and carried him home. Then he fed the cobra warm milk, wrapped him in a soft blanket, and lovingly placed the snake beside him in his bed as he went to sleep. In the morning, the farmer was dead.
Why was he killed? Because he used only compassion and not wisdom. If you pick up a cobra, it will bite you. When you find a way to save the dying cobra without lifting it, you have balanced wisdom with compassion. Then you are happy, and the cobra is happy, too.
Here is the third story: there was a farmer who went into the forest with his friend to gather wood. When the farmer struck a tree with his ax, he disturbed a beehive, and a swarm of angry bees flew out and began stinging him.
The farmer’s friend was filled with compassion. He grabbed his ax and killed the bees with swift, mighty blows. Unfortunately, he also killed the farmer.
Compassion without wisdom can cause great suffering. We might even say, “It is better to have a wise enemy than a foolish friend.”
Wisdom and compassion must walk together. Having one without the other is like walking with one foot. You may hop a few times, but eventually you will fall. Balancing wisdom with compassion, you will walk very well — slowly and elegantly, step by step.
We Must Eat Time
What is life? Life is eating and drinking through all of our senses. And life is keeping from being eaten. What eats us? Time! What is time? Time is living in the past or living in the future, feeding on the emotions. Beings who can say that they have been mentally healthy for even one minute are rare in the world. Most of us suffer from clinging to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings, and from hunger and thirst. Most living beings have to eat and drink every second through their eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin, and nerves. We eat twenty-four hours a day without stopping! We crave food for the body, food for feeling, food for volitional action, and food for rebirth. We are what we eat. We are the world, and we eat the world.
The Buddha cried when he saw this endless cycle of suffering: the fly eats the flower; the frog eats the fly; the snake eats the frog; the bird eats the snake; the tiger eats the bird; the hunter kills the tiger; the tiger’s body becomes swollen; flies come and eat the tiger’s corpse; the flies lay eggs in the corpse; the eggs become more flies; the flies eat the flowers; and the frogs eat the flies. . . .
And so the Buddha said, “I teach only two things — suffering and the end of suffering.” Suffering, eating, and feeling are exactly the same.
Feeling eats everything. Feeling has six mouths — the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind. The first mouth eats forms through the eye. The second mouth eats sounds. The third mouth eats smells. The fourth mouth eats tastes. The fifth mouth eats physical contact. And the last mouth eats ideas. That is feeling.
Time is also an eater. In traditional Cambodian stories, there is often a giant with many mouths who eats everything. This giant is time. If you eat time, you gain nirvana. You can eat time by living in the moment. When you live just in this moment, time cannot eat you.
Everything is causational. There is no you, only causes and conditions. Therefore, you cannot hear or see. When sound and ear come together, there is hearing. When form and eye meet, there is seeing.
When eye, form, and consciousness meet, there is eye contact. Eye contact conditions feeling. Feeling conditions perception. Perception conditions thinking, and thinking is I, my, me — the painful misconception that I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think.
Feeling uses the eye to eat shapes. If a shape is beautiful, a pleasant feeling enters the eye. If a shape is not beautiful, it brings an unpleasant feeling. If we are not attentive to a shape, a neutral feeling comes. The ear is the same: sweet sounds bring pleasant feelings, harsh sounds bring unpleasant feelings, and inattention brings neutral feelings.
Again, you may think, “I am seeing, I am hearing, I am feeling.” But it is not you, it is only contact, the meeting of the eye, form, and eye-consciousness. It is only the Dharma.
A man once asked the Buddha, “Who feels?” The Buddha answered, “This is not a real question.” No one feels. Feeling feels. There is no I, my, or me. There is only the Dharma.
All kinds of feelings are suffering, filled with vanity, filled with “I am.” If we can penetrate the nature of sensations, we can realize the pure happiness of nirvana.
Feelings and sensations cause us to suffer, because we fail to realize that they are impermanent. The Buddha asked, “How can feeling be permanent if it depends upon the body, which is impermanent?” When we do not control our feelings, we are controlled by them. If we live in the moment, we can see things just as they are. Doing so, we can put an end to all desire, break our bondage, and realize peace.
To understand pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings, we have to put the four foundations of mindfulness into practice. Mindfulness can transform pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings into wisdom.
The world is created by the mind. If we can control feeling, then we can control the mind. If we can control the mind, then we can rule the world.
In meditation, we relax our body, but we sit up straight, and, by following our breathing or another object of concentration, we stop most of our thinking. Therefore, we stop being pushed around by our feelings. Thinking creates feeling, and feeling creates thinking. To be free from clinging to thinking and feeling is nirvana — the highest, supreme happiness.
To live without suffering means to live always in the present. The highest happiness is here and now. There is no time at all unless we cling to it. Brothers and sisters, please eat time!
Universal Love
M any religious leaders preach that theirs is the only way to salvation. I listen with a smile, but I do not agree.
Two thousand five hundred years ago, the Buddha told his disciple Kalama,
Do not accept anything simply because it has been said by your teacher, Or because it has been written in your sacred book, Or because it has been believed by many, Or because it has been handed down by your ancestors. Accept and live only according to what will enable you to see truth face to face.
At our Providence temple we have a good friend called Bodhisattva, who teaches English to the monks. Bodhisattva is a wise and patient teacher, but he also has a great challenge — he stutters when he speaks.
One day Bodhisattva was giving the monks a lesson. “H-h-house,” he said. And all of the monks repeated exactly, “H-h-house!” Bodhisattva was startled. “N-n-no!” he said. And all of the monks said, “N-n-no!” in unison.
Bodhisattva showed the monks the way to enlightenment. Truth is not just what we hear. We cannot know truth from teachers, books, or dogma only. The Buddha advises us to test the truth on the touchstone of our experience. Truth can be known only through our own mindful experience.
No religion is higher than truth. Our goal as humans is to realize our universal brotherhood and sisterhood. I pray that this realization will be spread throughout our troubled world. I pray that we can learn to support each other in our quest for peace.
We’re thankful to Parallax Press for permission to reprint the following excerpts from Step by Step ($11, postpaid, from P.O. Box 7355, Berkeley, CA 94707). The book includes a foreword by Dith Pran, the New York Times photographer whose story was told in the film The Killing Fields.
— Ed.
