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...once the stains and aberrations of one's own mind have been purified in the mind's own final nature, liberation is achieved. |
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What does Buddhism have to contribute to the human quest for spiritual knowledge?
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The root of the buddhadharma is the teaching of the four noble truths discerned by the Enlightened Beings. These four are: the nature of suffering, its causes, liberation from or the cessation of suffering, and the path to such liberation. The truth of suffering invokes the topic of the various levels of hardship, frustration and pain that we living beings experience and that we must learn to recognize. Usually we mistake suffering, especially in its subtle forms, and mis-identify it as pleasure or entertainment. When the nature of suffering has been understood, the mind takes on a quality of indifference toward it.
Therefor after speaking of suffering, the Buddha taught its source, its cause. First of all we must investigate that we experience arise from cause, or if they arise without causes. Secondly, if they have causes and these can be identified, can they also be eliminated ? These are important questions. When one perceives that in fact there are various ways to eliminate all inner causes of misery, one gains a certain conviction in one's own spiritual potential. From this is born a mind that will work for liberation. Therefore, the Buddha taught the third truth of cessation, or the liberation from suffering. By understanding that a state of inner illumination totally beyond suffering can be generated, one appreciates the fact that liberation is something to be achieved within the mind itself, and not through any other object. Once the stains and aberrations of one's own mind have been purified in the mind's own final nature, liberation is achieved. This being so, we should cultivate the liberation techniques within our own mindstream and eradicate all distorting factors and obscurations, such as attachment and the other delusions, that so strongly influence our present mode of existence. We must reverse deluded habits of thought born from misunderstanding reality, and actualize the pristinely clear level of mind. Here 'pristinely clear mind' refers to the consciousness that has totally eradicated the mental habits of incorrectly apprehending objects of knowledge. To accomplish this, one must generate an awareness of emptiness, the way things actually exist. When this awareness arises, the mind that mistakenly apprehends its objects can be put to rest. We should use our ability to destroy from within ourselves the confused habits of thought of wrongly perceiving things-of seeing them other than the way they exist-by generating this awareness of the ultimate mode of existence of reality. The Buddha taught that by generating this awareness of the ultimate mode, and then meditating on it single-pointedly, all forms of mental distortion are destroyed.
by The 14th Dalai Lama - Tenzin
Gyatso | ||
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18 Poole Road. Singapore 437505. Fax: (65) 63450912 |
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