Entrance to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas
One person quit our local Zen sitting group with the question: Why should I sit and torture myself when I could be out and about, having a good time? The question was posed by email, and this is the response I provided by email:
Dharma Master Hsuan Hua, founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas and the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association (please click on the photo), says that people who are able to go out and have a good time are reaping the reward of previous goodness. And people who spend most of their life in prison or in some other situation that prevents them from enjoying themselves immensely are suffering the consequences of previous badness. The previous goodness or badness may have arisen in prior lives as well as the current one.
So if we have the time and the money, why should we sit in a zendo with a sore back and aching ankles for hours on end when we could be sitting in the sunshine at a comfy sidewalk cafe in Paris?
Dharma Master Hsuan Hua’s answer should send us to the meditation cushion. Those who are enjoying their blessings are using up those blessings, he explains. When the blessing are used up, they’re gone and suffering returns.
Those who suffer, however, are using up their sufferings. When the suffering is used up, it’s gone.
Sitting in a zendo is far from serious suffering; about the only suffering it provides is the discomfort of sitting and even that discomfort goes away with prolonged sitting. Probably the most serious suffering provided in a zendo are thoughts of all the fun in the great big world outside that is being missed.
So we sit until the desire to go places and do frivolous things disappears. By then the discomfort of sitting itself will have gone away as well. Then we can sit and deepen our practice without having to fight the external lures that pull us from the zendo. That’s when true cultivation actually begins.
Master Hsuan Hua’s answer, as reiterated by me, was no good. That person never returned to the zendo.
Some people, like Master Hsuan Hua, think cultivation is the most important thing in the world. Most people think it is important, but not the most important thing. A few think it is not important at all.
The wise will learn from Master Hsuan Hua.
The Ten Dharma Realms Are Not Beyond A Single Thought
