The Tathagata asks Ananda about his resolve

F2 He explains the path of Shamatha, causing Ananda to awaken to the secret cause and have a great blossoming forth of complete understanding.
G1 He destroys upside-down thinking by speaking of the empty Tathagata store.
H1 The Tathagata smashes the false and reveals the true.
I1 He casts out and destroys the false mind to which Ananda attaches by opening the way to Shamatha.
J1 He establishes that Ananda grasps at the mind.
K1 He asks him about his resolve based on grasping at the appearance he saw.

Sutra:

The Buddha said to Ananda, “You and I are of the same family and share the affection of a natural relationship. At the time of your initial resolve, what were the outstanding characteristics which you saw in my dharma that caused you to suddenly cast aside the deep kindness and love found in the world?”

Commentary:

Ananda waited humbly to receive the Buddha’s compassionate instruction. But first the Buddha questioned him about his reasons for leaving the home-life.

The Buddha said to Ananda, “You and I are of the same family and share the affection of a natural relationship.” Ananda and the Buddha were paternal first cousins. The Buddha was saying, “You and I are like brothers.” One speaks of the “affection of a natural relationship” because in the world, natural relationships take precedent over everything else. Such relationships form a natural cycle. After being a son or daughter you become a father or mother and then you become a grandfather or grandmother, and if you are filial to your father and mother, your children will be filial to you. If you aren’t filial to your parents, your sons and daughters won’t be filial to you. It is said:

Of all the kinds of good practices
Filial piety is the first.
Of all the myriad evils,
Licentiousness is the worst.

In China, filial feeling is considered the root of goodness, its most fundamental form. There are twenty-four paragons of filial virtue in Chinese history, among whom some of the most notable were Tan Xiang, Meng Zhong, and Wang Xiang.

Tan Xiang’s father and mother were sick and wanted some sweet melon to eat, of a kind grown in northern China. However, it was winter and the snow was heavy on the ground, so how could there be any melons? Tan Xiang planted a melon seed in the frozen earth, stretched out on top of it to warm the ground, and began to cry. “How can I get this melon to grow quickly so I can harvest it for my parents?” he lamented. He cried and cried until suddenly something very strange happened. It’s not certain whether it was a response evoked from a Bodhisattva or from a Buddha or from a ghost or spirit, but right then and there a melon grew, blossomed, and bore fruit for Tan Xiang to harvest and carry home to his parents, a miraculous response to his one true thought of sincere filial regard. So it’s said, “Tan Xiang cried for melons.”

Meng Zhong’s parents wanted some bamboo shoots to eat, and unable to find any, he began to weep. He wept until he suddenly saw tender bamboo shoot sprouting in the spots where his tears had fallen. Such strange events are incomprehensible. Don’t try to use your thinking mind to figure them out. “Meng Zhong’s tears sprouted the bamboo.”

In the dead of winter, Wang Xiang’s parents both fell ill and wanted some carp to eat. Wang Xiang didn’t have any money to buy fish, and all the waters were frozen over, so he opened his clothing and lay down on the ice. In northern China the ice gets very thick in the winter, but his warm skin melted the ice through. It was his plan to fish for a carp through the hole, but suddenly a carp jumped out of the hole all by itself. Wang Xiang hurried home with it and told his parents what had happened. “We won’t eat the carp,” his parents decided, “because it is probably the son or grandson of the Dragon King who sent it to us.” Although they didn’t eat the carp, their illness was cured nevertheless. “Wang Hsiang lay down to catch a carp.”

True filial conduct can move heaven. Sons and daughters should pay particular attention to the practice of filial piety. The great Emperor Shun of China was so filial that elephants were moved to plow for him and birds did his weeding.

At the time of your initial resolve, what were the outstanding characteristics which you saw in my dharma that caused you to suddenly cast aside the deep kindness and love found in the world? The Buddha asked Ananda what first made him decide to renounce worldly love and leave the home-life; what good states of mind did he experience that led to his resolve.

In this world the kindness of parents is very great and the love between couples is particularly intense. If people could transform the love which exists between married couples into love for the study and practice of the Buddhadharma, then there wouldn’t be anyone who didn’t realize Buddhahood. Unfortunately, most people can’t do that. If you can, that is inconceivably fine.

What made Ananda pay no further attention to his parent’s deep kindness or his wife’s emotional love? What made him totally disregard everything except following the Buddha and leaving the home-life?

 

Sutra:

Ananda said to the Buddha, “I saw the Tathagata’s thirty-two characteristics, which were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable, that his entire body had a shimmering transparence just like that of crystal.

Commentary:

”Speak up! Quickly!” the Buddha said. “Don’t think about it, just tell me straight out about what made you decide to leave home.”

Since he was supposed to speak plainly, Ananda said to the Buddha, “I saw the Tathagata’s thirty-two characteristics.” From the invisible crown on the top of his head down to his level, well-proportioned feet, thirty-two major and eighty minor characteristics adorn the Buddha’s body.

”These thirty-two characteristics were so supremely wonderful, so incomparable, finer than anything I’d ever seen,” Ananda said. “Nothing in the world can compare to the wondrous adornment of your appearance, Buddha.”

The Buddha’s reward body, his entire body had a shimmering transparence just like that of crystal.

 

Sutra:

”I often thought to myself that these characteristics cannot be born of desire and love. Why? The vapors of desire are coarse and murky. From foul and putrid intercourse comes a turbid mixture of pus and blood which cannot give off such a magnificent, pure, and brilliant concentration of purple-golden light. And so I thirstily gazed upward, followed the Buddha, and let the hair fall from my head.”

Commentary:

When Ananda often thought to himself that these characteristics cannot be born of desire and love, he used his ordinary discriminating consciousness, his ordinary mind which is subject to production and extinction. How, he thought, could the thirty-two special characteristics of the Buddha be born from emotional, lustful, desire and thoughts of love? The vapors of desire are coarse and murky. From foul and putrid intercourse comes a turbid mixture of pus and blood. Men and women have intercourse and think it is good, but it actually gives off vapors which are extremely rancid. We can’t rely on our bodies born from the desire of men and women to give off such a magnificent, pure, and brilliant concentration of purple-golden light, the color of distant mountains, which constantly illumines the Buddha’s body.

Thinking this, Ananda thirstily gazed upward, followed the Buddha, and let the hair fall from his head. Ananda forsook one kind of love, his emotional love for his family, and took up another kind: he fell in love with the Buddha’s appearance. And that is the reason Ananda left the home-life.

Right here is where Ananda made his mistake. He didn’t leave home out of a genuine desire to cultivate the Way and after he left home he concentrated too heavily on studying the sutras. Earlier, I said that you should change the love which exists between married couples into a love for the Buddhadharma. But that doesn’t mean that merely by love alone you can put an end to birth and death.

”What must be done?” you ask.

You need to genuinely cultivate the Way. You have to be mindful of what you are doing at all times and in all places. You must never forget for even a moment to practice and uphold the Buddhadharma. Early in the morning and late at night you should be studying the Shurangama Sutra, sitting in meditation, and listening to the sutra lectures. Don’t have false thinking and don’t talk so much, since neither can help you at all in your study of the sutra or your investigation of Chan. You should stake your very lives on the work and sacrifice everything else in order to study Buddhism. Then the understanding you gain will enable you to be genuinely wise and truly intelligent.

But since Ananda was solely concerned with loving the Buddha, he didn’t cultivate samadhi. He thought (as he confesses in the text), “The Buddha is my older cousin. When the time comes the Buddha will give me samadhi power.” He didn’t realize that no one could stand in for him, in body or in mind. Ananda was very intelligent, probably more intelligent than any of us, but when he concentrated on studying the sutras at the expense of cultivating samadhi, he was too smart for his own good. He mastered the words but not the substance. He could remember all the dharma the Buddha had spoken and never got one word of it wrong, but without any samadhi-power, he fell under the spell of the Brahma Heaven mantra of Matangi’s daughter.

Instead of imitating the Buddha’s wisdom, his awakening, and his Way-virtue, Ananda just modeled himself on the Buddha’s appearance. In past lives he was probably attached to appearances, and so he concentrated on the superficial aspect of things. Although he remembered the sutras the Buddha spoke, he didn’t pay a lot of attention to what they said. He was more concerned with the Buddha’s appearance to the point that if on any given day he just saw the Buddha, that was enough to make him happy.

Anyone who wants to obtain genuine samadhi power must first cast love aside. But to replace love with hate is another mistake. “I don’t love anything,” you say. “I despise whoever I see. Stay away from me! I want to be alone. I want to cultivate by myself.” With this attitude, you’ll never obtain samadhi. You must neither hate nor love. It should be as if there were no difference between you and other people. Everyone is equal. If you are one with and equal to other people, who is there to love? Who is there to hate? No one.

”I can’t manage that,” you say. “That’s hard work.”

If you can work hard, then you can obtain what is true. If you don’t work hard, you won’t obtain it. Follow the teachings, and don’t listen to your own thoughts about it. The ordinary mind is the Way.

Because Ananda liked the Buddha’s adorned appearance, he was able to reject the deep compulsion for worldly kindness and love and let the hair fall from his head. When the Buddha was in the world, those who left home under him did not have to shave their heads. The Buddha simply said, “Good man, you are now renouncing worldly life and leaving home. Let your beard and hair fall of itself and let you be robed in the kashaya.” As soon as the Buddha said this the bhikshu’s hair and beard would fall out, because the Buddha used his spiritual penetrations to cause it to fall. Now that the Buddha has entered nirvana we have to receive the precepts at a precept-platform, but when the Buddha was in the world one became possessed of the precept substance when he spoke those few words, and one was robed in the precept sash.

In China the precept-platform used to be three years long. But three years eventually proved too long, so a scientific method was adopted to speed up the process so that one could receive the precepts in fifty-three days. Now some places transmit the precepts in eighteen days, and there are even places that will do it in a week. Now from mechanization we’ve advanced to electronics, to the point that in Hong Kong on Ta Yu mountain there are places where the precepts are transmitted in three days’ time. Actually, a three-day precept-platform is not in accord with dharma.