The Eight Awarenesses of Enlightened Beings
Photo by Sarah Sheedy
In this introductory talk to a series of eight talks on the Eight Awarenesses of Enlightened Beings, Zuisei calls forth the need to investigate this last teaching of the Buddha, according to Mahayana Buddhism. Through studying the qualities of an enlightened being, we are able to sense the possibility of liberation that is available to us all.
“These sutras are describing in a very vivid way , the most vivid way, the universe inside,” Zuisei says. “They speak of that place where there is no question—no question whatsoever—that you belong. Because if you yourself are the whole universe, how could you not belong?”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
The Eight Awareness of Enlightened Beings
Birthday girl, Murakami
Imagine that today is your birthday. Let’s make it an important birthday. One when you know enough about life to know it’s not a fairy land, but when you still have most of your life ahead of you. “I can’t think of anything I’d wish for?” “Not one thing?” “That’s because you’ve already made your wish.”
Eight awarenesses of enlightened beings. Last teaching of the Buddha—according to Mahayana Buddhism. Two Mahaparinirvana sutras: Pali Canon (“Great Discourse on the Final Nirvana”—longest sutra in the Canon).
Number of teachings on doctrine, discipline. Description of Buddha’s last days: Buddha says to Ananda that a Tathagata has the power to live until the end of an eon, hinting, that if Ananda just asks, the Buddha will remain in the world. Three times he says this, but Ananda misses the boat, so the Buddha consciously renounces his remaining lifespan and says he’ll die in three months—imagine how Ananda felt afterward, in his power to ask the Buddha to stay in this world, poor guy.
Last admonition. This is what I know, this is what you should learn and cultivate and practice: 37 aids to enlightenment (mentioned in Vimalakirti Sutra):
The four foundations of mindfulness, the four right efforts, the four constituents of psychic power, the five faculties, the five powers, the seven factors of enlightenment and the Noble Eightfold Path (mindfulness, investigation into phenom, energy, bliss, tranquility, concent, & equanimity).
You should learn, cultivate and practice these. Just before he dies, do you have any questions? (three times) If you’re shy, out of respect, don’t ask, have a friend ask for you, no one answers. Everyone understands my teaching perfectly. He gave his last words:
“Behold now, friends, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish.
Strive with earnestness!” Alternate: “Experience is disappointing. [It is] through vigilance [that] you succeed. He died shortly afterwards.
Claiming the Possibility of Awakening
Mahayana version (3rd century c.e.; Sanskrit), known commonly as the Nirvana Sutra, it’s a very important sutra in the Mahayana because it deals extensively with the concept of buddha nature and tathagatagarbha (womb of the buddha)—the potential to achieve Buddhahood (and neither one of these appear in the Pali sutras). We’re so used to speaking and hearing about buddha nature, but according to the Pali canon, the Buddha himself never referred to it.
So you see how, after the death of its founder, a religion’s teachings are shaped by subsequent generations. And why is this relevant for us? Because we’re steeped in these teachings. The koans are filled with them, sutras are filled with them. Shape our understanding of practice and realization. Our understanding of what is needed to live an awakened life. They shape our view, therefore our aspiration, therefore our actions, our speech.
Enlightenment, retreat (shy, apologetic, unsure. Annoyed I had asked the question). Khandro Rinpoche: “How long do you think it will take?” She asks. “By next Sunday? What do you think is possible? What do you wish for? What do you want out of this practice? Out of your life?”
What we wish for is what we define as the possible. What we wish for is exactly what we may get. So are we clear about what we want? And if we are, let’s not be shy about it. How wonderful, if you truly wish to realize yourself in this lifetime. You should shout it from the rooftops, why not?
Why is it okay to voice your aspiration to have children, to make it big in the stock market, to travel all over the world, and not okay to say you want to wake up? What is this all for, Khandro Rinpoche asks? Why all the teachings, the precepts, the hours of silent sitting? All the liturgy, the study, the training of the mind?
When we say all the teachings, all the skillful means, are for the alleviation of suffering, what do you think that means, in relationship to enlightenment? Again, what is your wish?
The Buddha’s Final Teaching
The setting in the Nirvana Sutra, as in the other Mahayana Sutras like the Lotus, Vimalakirti, great assembly billions of disciples, buddhas and bodhisattvas in millions upon millions of worlds, all gathered to witness the Buddha’s passing.
“I’m about to enter nirvana, ask what you’d like to ask.” Emanating rays of light of many hues wash away their evil deeds, and they’re amazed. Also crying and lamenting, they definitely want to ask the Buddha to remain in world. So there’s a sense of… urgency.
“The great disciples,” the sutra says, “were unlimited in mind and could act as they willed. They saw through all illusions, and all their sense-organs were subdued. Like great naga rulers, they were perfect in great virtue. They were accomplished in the wisdom of emptiness and perfect in their own attainments. They were like the sandalwood forest with sandalwood all around, or like a lion king surrounded by lions. They were the true sons and daughters of the Buddha.
“Early in the morning, when the sun had just risen, they were up from their beds in the places where they lived and were about to use their toothbrushes (it really says this),
when they encountered the light that arose from the Buddha’s person. And they said to one another: “Hurry up with bathing and gargling, and be clean.” (Note, unsure how to end a quoted paragraph that ends with a quote.)
(We used to say this—well, not quite this—to the registrar. You’re the first person people are going to see when they walk through the door, so please shower, wear clean clothes, not ripped, comb your hair… it’s important.)
So did they say, and their hair stood on end all over their body, and their blood so ran that they looked like palasa flowers (flaming orange flower from South and Southeast Asia). Tears filled their eyes, which expressed great pain.
The disciples are very upset that the Buddha is dying and they do all go to see to beg him to stay, gives number of teachings, refers to the eight awarenesses of enlightened beings, but I couldn’t find any place in the sutra where they’re listed in their entirety or gone into in detail.
Probably referring to this other Chinese sutra called The Discourse on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings, translated and with commentary by Thich Nhat Han:
1. Awareness that the world is impermanent (political regimes inevitably fall).
2. Awareness that more desire brings more suffering.
3. The human mind is always searching for possessions and never feels fulfilled.
4. Laziness or indolence is an obstacle to practice.
5. Ignorance is the cause of the endless cycle of birth and death.
6. Poverty creates hatred and anger.
7. The five sense desires lead to conflict.
8. Fire of birth and death creates suffering.
A different version, more familiar because of Dogen’s fascicle on this same teaching, (also the last that Dogen wrote before he passed away):
1. Having few desires.
2. Knowing how to be satisfied.
3. Enjoying serenity and tranquility.
4. Exerting meticulous effort.
5. Not forgetting right thought (aspiration, intention).
6. Practicing samadhi.
7. Cultivating wisdom.
8. Avoiding idle talk.
Notice how in this version, there’s no mention of impermanence, and the last teaching is, don’t talk idly. Someone thought this was important enough to present it as the very last teaching of the Buddha. This was someone’s offering of skillful means to us as we practice, today.
As is true of many of the lists that very methodically set down the Buddhist teachings, these are not just sequential, more like a web, a spiral. A drop of ink that spreads outward affecting, coloring everything it touches. Master Dogen says each awareness contains every other, so there’s 64 awarenesses or “awakenings,” as Kaz Tanahashi translates them, are the qualities of an enlightened being, describing an enlightened being’s life, also practices. Maezumi Roshi, in his commentary to these, asks an important question—an excellent question—and that is, how do we relate to these qualities? Because how we relate to them will determine whether and how we practice them.
Beyond the Broom Closet
We can take them as the qualities of the Buddha. Historical Buddha Shakyamuni as well as of the Tathagata, the World-Honored One. How do we relate to both of these figures?
How do we relate to the founder of our religion? A man who struggled and practiced and struggled and practiced until he realized himself and whose example we can draw inspiration from? Do you? Or does he seem distant, unreachable? I think to myself, well, he was human and he did this, which means I can do it. It might take me a little longer than it took him, but that’s okay. What else would I do with my time? So how do we relate to our original teacher? How do we relate to the World-Honored One, the omniscient buddha who knows every life of every human throughout every eon, past, present and future?
Why do the world’s great religious traditions, if they’re concerned with unity, with liberation, with wisdom, resort to myths and what seem like fantastical stories. Even the koans, which are so direct, so pithy, draw upon folk tales (Senjo and Her Soul), stories of devas and land deities and speaking foxes and on and on.
Theravadin teachings are practical: Do this, you’ll see that. Don’t do this, so that doesn’t arise. Cultivate samadhi, practice the precepts, generate loving-kindness. So what’s the use of these multi-verse assemblies of the Mahayana (Arabian Nights), streaming banners, crystal palaces, beings with psychic powers?
Could it be because to put a tight frame on this is helpful in order to understand it, but not the whole picture? Not the whole picture at all?
Could it be that when these teachers say, avoid idle talk, have few desires, cultivate samadhi, they can do so because they are standing firmly on the ground of reality,
which is the ground of floating palaces and turning parasols and jeweled necklaces and light-emanating buddhas?
Could it be because what we can see and hear and touch is only a very tiny sliver of reality? Could it be because it is skillful to blow up the walls of the mind?
Sometimes we struggle and struggle, convinced that the way to stop struggling is to change our circumstances, environment, external world. And sometimes changing the environment is necessary. But most often it is what Shantideva called covering the world with leather. Why cover the world with leather when we can put sandals on our feet?
What we wish for is what we define as the possible.
These sutras are describing in a very vivid way, the most vivid way, the universe inside (and that’s just a way of speaking, not inside or outside). Describing the universes that our realm, our kingdom, our home, true home. That place where there is no question—no question whatsoever—that you belong. If you yourself are the whole universe, how could you not belong?
Standing in the middle of hundreds of acres of open fields, we’ve built ourselves a little shed—a broom closet—and called that home. It feels tight in there, but we’re used to it, and besides, it’s comforting. So used to it that when someone gives us a glimpse of the real world, as these sutras do, we think it’s fake. We think it’s a picture, a nice story, but not very believable until, one day, we finally decide we’ve had enough of living in a closet and we set out exploring.
We venture out and we run into another traveler and they say, “Well, you know, you don’t actually need as much as you think you do.” Life is easier when you know what you want, when you’re not always reaching. You do have to exert effort, yes, but the right kind. And you have to know why you’re exerting it.
It’s good if you practice tranquility, and if you let your mind settle and focus. It’s especially good if you cultivate clarity, the understanding of how things really are. And in case you run across anyone else, don’t let your energy scatter. Avoid empty talk, because it will leave you empty.
So, there’s a lot more to say about these, later. For now, let me share with you this Eskimo song.
Magic Words
In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if they wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could
happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That’s the way it was.
This is still the time when words are like magic. They can be used for good or for ill. They can have strange consequences.
But you know, we do all share a language. And our wish, fundamentally, is the same: to be at ease, to not suffer, to know in our bones, that we belong, that we’re not apart, that we’re not flawed.
It is still true, that words can come alive, suddenly. That the human mind has mysterious powers… waiting to be tapped. All we have to do is awaken to these words, awaken to our own power.
Nobody can explain how and if this happens, but whether we believe in it or not, it’s the way it is.
The Eight Awarenesses of Enlightened Beings, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.