Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha

by Jack Kerouac

  An unusual incident had occured that same day, involving Ananda, that served as an impetus to start the discussion. King Prasenajit earlier that day had invited Buddha and his chief Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas (Great Wise Beings) to a special feast at the royal palace. All the other monks young and old had been invited to another feast, so that Ananda, returning to the Jetavana Monastery from a journey to a distant district found no one around and consequently went alone into Sravasti for the begging of his daily meal. While begging from door to door in his neat yellow robe the pretty daughter of a prostitute took a liking to him and implored her mother to work some trick to induce the youthful and attractive monk to come into her room. Ananda being Ananda, warm and impressionable, he soon found himself in Pchiti’s room under the influence of the maiden’s beauty and the magic spell known as bramanyika as invoked by the mother.

  Buddha, returning to the Meditation Hall and settling down with all his disciples for the continuation of the Summer Devotion and the Uposatha public confessions made by the various monks, knew all along where Ananda was and what was happening. Accordingly he sent his “other Ananda,” his other constant companion, the Great Bodhisattva of Intellectual Radiance, Manjusri, to the house of the prostitute to recite the Great Dharani (the Great Prayer) so that Ananda would not yield to temptation. As soon as Manjusri complied with his Lord’s wishes Ananda returned to self-control and saw that he was dreaming. Manjusri then encouraged both Ananda and Pchiti and they returned with him to the Buddha at the Meditation Hall.

  When Ananda came into the presence of Buddha, he bowed down to the ground in great humility, blaming himself that he had not yet fully developed the potentialities of Enlightenment, and had therefore failed to lift the curtain of mortal limitations from his true and original, shining mind, because from the beginning of his previous lives he had too much devoted himself to study and learning of words and ideas. So his mind not being concentrated on its pure essence of perfect patience and undisturbed tranquillity, the universal deep ocean of bliss, he had not been able to resist the lure of the maiden Pchiti or control his own mind and his own body and had reached for external conditions thus abandoning the bright holiness of bhikshuhood for the vain inflammations of animality that belong to the ever returning cycle of deaths and rebirths. Ananda earnestly pleaded with the Buddha and prayed to all the other Tathagatas from the ten quarters of the universe, to support him in attaining perfect Enlightenment, that is, to support him by some most fundamental and expedient means in his practice of the Three Excellencies of Dhyana (Meditation), Samadhi (ecstasy in meditation), and Samapatti (transcendental powers arising from ecstasy in meditation).

  At the same time all those in the assembly with one accord and with gleeness of heart, prepared to listen to the instruction to be given to Ananda by the Buddha. With one accord they paid homage to their Lord and then resuming their seats waited in perfect quietness and patience to receive the Sacred Teaching.

  The Buddha said: “Ananda! And all of you in this great Dharma assembly! You ought to know and appreciate that the reason why sentient beings by their previous lives since beginningless time have formed a succession of deaths and rebirths, life after life, is because they have never realized the true Essence of Mind and its self-purifying brightness.

  “On the contrary, they have been absorbed all the time busying themselves with their deluding and transient thoughts which are nothing but falsity and vanity. Hence they have prepared for themselves the conditions for this ever returning cycle of deaths and rebirths.

  “They should keep themselves one with the Tathagatas, who have ever remained, from beginningless time to endless time, of one pure Suchness, undisturbed by any complexity within their minds nor any rising thoughts of discrimination of this or that or the other.

  “Ananda, I want to question you; please listen carefully. You once said that at the time your faith in me was awakened, that it was due to seeing the Thirty Two marks of traditional excellence.

  “Let me ask you: What was it that gave you the sensation of seeing? And what was it that experienced this? And who was it that was pleased?”

  Ananda replied: “At the time I experienced the sensation of being pleased it was both through my eyes and my mind. When my eyes saw, my mind immediately experienced a feeling of being pleased.”

  The Buddha said: “From what you have just said, Ananda, your feeling of being pleased originated in your eyes yet also in your mind. Ananda, if you do not know where lies the perception of sight and where the activities of the mind originate, you will never be able to subjugate your worldly attachments and contaminations.

  “Ananda! if you do not know where the place of origination of your own perception of sight is, it is like a king whose city was pestered by robbers and who tried to put an end to the thieving but was unsuccessful because he could not locate the secret hidingplace of the robbers. So you wander about ignorantly and uncontrolled.

  “Let me ask you? Referring to your eyes and mind, do you know their secret hidingplace?”

  Ananda replied: “Noble Lord! In all the ten different orders of life, the eyes are in front of the face and the mind is hidden within the body.”

  The Buddha interrupted: “What is it you first see, as you sit here in the hall looking out the open door?”

  Ananda: “First I see my Lord and then the distinguished audience, and only afterwards do I see the trees and the park outside.”

  Buddha: “What is it that enables you, while looking outside, to distinguish these different sights that your eyes see?”

  Ananda: “It is because the door of the hall is wide open.”

  Buddha: “If your perception of sight really were located within your body, in the same way you would be able to see the inside of your body first, and only afterwards the sights outside, as we do in the hall. But there are no sentient beings who can see both the inside and outside of their bodies.”

  Ananda, bowing, said: “My mind must be like a lamp, then, a lamp outside my body illuminating the outside sights but not the inside of my body.”

  Buddha: “If so, how could your mind perceive what your body feels? For instance, as you look at the sights, it’s plain that the eyeballs that belong to your body and the perception that belongs to your mind are in perfect mutual cooperation, so what you’ve just said about the mind existing outside the body is impossible.”

  Ananda: “But my Lord, it seems that the perceiving mind must be in some locality!”

  Buddha: “But Ananda where is its abiding place?”

  Ananda: “My perceiving mind must be like a crystal bowl covering my eyes.”

  Buddha: “If so, perception being lodged in your perceiving mind, you would be able to see your own eyes without the aid of a mirror.”

  Ananda: “Lord, it must be that my perceiving mind must be abiding between my eyes and the objects of sight that I see.”

  Buddha: “Ananda, now you think that the Mind must be abiding between somethings. How can the perceiving mind be abiding between the location of the eyes and the location of the sight-objects, when the perceiving mind and the eye are as one in perfect mutual cooperation?”

  Ananda: “Some time ago when my Lord was discussing the intrinsic Dharma with the four great Wise Beings Maudgalyayana, Subhuti, Purna, and Sariputra, I overheard my Lord to say, that the essence of the discerning, perceiving conscious mind existed neither inside nor outside, nor between, in fact, that it had no location of existence.”

  Buddha: “Ananda, the essence of the discerning, perceptive, conscious mind has no definite location anywhere; it is neither in this world, in the vast open spaces, neither in water, nor on land, neither flying with wings, nor walking, nor is it anywhere.”

  Thereupon Ananda rose from his place in the midst of the assembly, adjusted his ceremonial scarf, knelt upon his right knee, placed the palms of his hands together, and respectfully addressed the Buddha, saying: “My Noble Lord! In spite of all I have gained mentally, I have not bec
ome liberated from contaminations and attachments and consequently I could not overcome the magic spell at the home of a harlot. My mind became confused and I was at the point of drowning in its defilement. I can see now that it was wholly due to my ignorance as to the right realization of what is true and essential Mind. I pray thee, O my Lord, to have pity and mercy upon me and show me the right Path to the spiritual graces that come with ecstasy in meditation, so that I may attain to self-mastery and become emancipated from the lure of evil and the sufferings of successive deaths and rebirths.”

  Then the Buddha addressed the assembly, saying: “From beginningless time, from life to life, all sentient beings have had their disturbing illusions that have been manifested in their natural development each under the conditioning power of his own individual Karma, such as the seed-pod of the okra which when opening always drops three seeds in each group.

  “The reason why all devoted disciples do not at once attain to supreme enlightenment is they do not realize the Two Primary Principles and because of it some attain only to limited saintship, or to partial understanding of the novice, and some become confused in mind and fall into wrong practices. It is as if they were trying to cook fine delicacies by boiling stones or sand which of course they could never do if they tried for countless kalpas of time.

  “These two Fundamental Principles are:

  “One, the primary cause of the succession of deaths and rebirths from beginningless time. From the working out of this Principle there has resulted the various differentiation of minds of all sentient beings, and all the time they have been taking these limited and perturbed and contaminated minds to be their true and natural Essence of Mind.

  “Two, the primary cause of the pure unity of Enlightenment and Nirvana that has existed from beginningless time. By the indrawing of this Principle within the brightness of your own nature, its unifying spirit can be discovered and developed and realized under all varieties of conditions. The reason why this unifying spirit is so quickly lost amongst the conditions is because you so quickly forget the brightness and purity of your own essential nature, and amid the activities of the day, you cease to realize its existence. That is why, Ananda, you and all sentient beings have fallen through ignorance into misfortune and into different realms of existence.”

  The Tathagata raised one of his arms with hand and fingers clenched, saying: “Ananda, while you are looking at my fist closely, what is it that reveals the existence of your Essential Mind?”

  Ananda replied: “This thinking and reasoning being which enables me to perceive your shining fist, is what is meant as ‘my mind.’ ”

  The Buddha rebuked Ananda sharply and said: “Surely that is nonsense, to assert that your being is your mind.”

  Ananda stood up with hands pressed together and said with astonishment: “Why, my Lord, if my being is not my mind, what else can be my mind? Myself is my mind! If I should give up my perceptions and consciousness, there would be nothing left that could be regarded as myself or my mind.”

  Thereupon the Blessed One laid his hand affectionately upon the head of Ananda: “Now that I have removed my fist, and its sight has vanished from your thinkings and reasonings, does your mind vanish, also, and become like hair on a tortoise, or a horn on a rabbit?

  “Since your mind goes on discriminating the memory of those perceptions and consciousness of my fist, it has not vanished.

  “Ananda and all my disciples! With reference to Ananda saying that his mind is himself, I have always taught you that all phenomena is simply a manifestation of mind essence. So it is with what you call, self, it is simply a manifestation of mind essence.

  “If we examine the origin of anything in all the universe, we find that it is but a manifestation of some primal essence. Even the tiny leaves of herbs, knots of thread, everything, if we examine these carefully we find that there is some essence in its originality.

  “The essence of ripples on the sea, is the sea. Just so, the essence of thoughts in the mind, is the mind.

  “Self and objects and developments of self, are not permanent, like all objects and thoughts, which are as ripples; as they vanish, should I ask again does your mind essence vanish, also, and become like hair on a tortoise, or a horn on a rabbit?

  “If the mind essence vanished there would be nothing and no sentient beings to discuss it.

  “The mind essence does not vanish because it transcends and is beyond phenomena and is free from all discriminating thoughts of self and not-self.

  “As soon as the mind discriminates, all causes and effects from the great universes on down to the fine dust only seen in the sunlight, come into apparent existence, like ripples forming on the surface of the sea.

  “This we know about ripples on the surface of the sea, and that is to say, about this apparently existing world which we see like ripples on the surface of the sea of Universal Mind Essence: we know that the ripples bear the three marks of existence. These three marks of existence that the ripples bear, are, one, Transiency, their being short-lived; two, Infelicity, their being troubled, non-peaceful, and ever changing; and three, Unreality, their having no substantial existence in themselves as ripples, being mere manifestations of form in water due to wind. In the same way this phenomenal world is mere manifestation of Mind Essence due to Ignorance.

  “Therefore, Ananda, what revealed the existence of your Essential Mind when you looked at my fist, was neither yes or no the appearance of my fist as discriminated by your discriminating mind, for both of these are just ripples on the surface; naturally, it is your Essential Mind that is the basis, as the sea for the waves, in this revelation of sight.

  “As long as you grasp this brain-mind of discriminating consciousness that is dependent upon the different sense organs as being the same as Essential Mind, as long as you grasp at this deceiving conception of discriminative thinking that is based on unrealities, as long as you go on mistaking the delusion as being the reality, you will not be free from the intoxicants arising from worldly contaminations and attachments and will ever be in bondage to the wheel of grief in this transmigratory, evil, Sangsara world, which is as but a smirch in the shining reality.”

  Ananda was in tears and sorrowful and apologized for his great learning and his great vexation too, which he called the two great hindrances.

  Again the Buddha made a fist and held it up in the bright sunshine: “By what means does the brightness of the sight of this fist manifest itself?”

  Ananda: “Because of the brightness I see it with my eyes and my mind conceives its brightness.”

  Buddha: “Does your perception of sight depend on brightness?”

  Ananda: “Without brightness I wouldn’t see anything.”

  Buddha: “In his blindness a blind man sees darkness and nothing else. There is no loss of his conception of sight but his conception is of darkness. He simply sees as any seeing man who is shut up in a dark room. Close your eyes, Ananda, what do you perceive but darkness?”

  Ananda admitted that he perceived the darkness.

  Buddha: “If the blind man were suddenly to recover his sight, it would be as though a lamp had been brought into a dark room and we would say that the man again sees objects by means of the lamp. But the perception of sight, perception itself, does not depend on either of these two arbitrary conceptions of brightness or darkness, nor on the lamp, nor on the eyes, because the perception of sight, perception itself, originates in your Essential Original Perfect Mind. Essential Mind transcends and abides throughout phenomena of causes and conditions such as brightness, darkness, eyes, and lamps, and is free from them and responds freely to them as their occasion arises, just like the sea transcends and abides throughout its ripples yet responds freely to them as their occasion of rippling arises.

  “In a true sense, therefore, it is neither conception of brightness in your mind, nor your eyes, that perceived my fist.”

  Ananda sat dazed hoping for a clearer interpretation of this instruction in th
e kind and gentle tones of the Master and he waited with a pure and expectant heart.

  The Blessed One, in great kindness, let his hand rest kindly on the head of Ananda and said to him: “The reason why all sentient beings fail to attain enlightenment until they become Buddhas, is because they have been led astray by false conceptions regarding phenomena and objects, which defiled their minds. Deeply absorbed in their dream, they cannot wake up to the reality of the perfect bright emptiness of their Essential Mind which is everywhere. They do not know that everything is seen of the mind itself.

  “They concentrate on the dream instead of on the Mind that makes it.

  “Essential Mind is like open space, permanent and motionless; the dream of existence is like particles of dust shifting and appearing and disappearing in open space.

  “Essential Mind is like the inn; but the dream of existence is like the impermanent traveler who can only stay overnight and has to move on, ever-changing.

  The Buddha, raising his hand, opened his fingers and then closed them: “Ananda, what is in motion and what is still?”

  Ananda saw that it was the Blessed One’s hand opening and closing, not his “seeing” that moved. “My Lord, it was the fingers that were in motion, not the perception of my eyes.”

  “Ananda,” said the Buddha, “can you not see the difference in nature in that which moves and changes, and that which is motionless and unchanging? It is body which moves and changes, not Mind.

  “Why do you so persistently look upon motion as appertaining to body and mind both? Why do you permit your thoughts to rise and fall, letting the body rule the mind, instead of Mind ruling the body?

  “Why do you let your senses deceive you as to the true unchanging nature of Mind and then to do things in a reversed order in the direction of the Principle of Ignorance which leads to motion and confusion and suffering?

  “As one forgets the true nature of Mind, so he mistakes the ripple-like objects on its illimitable bosom as being his whole mind, he mistakes the reflections of objects as being his own mind, thus binding him to the endless restless movements and impermanent changes and suffering of the recurrent cycles of deaths and rebirths that are of his own causing.