{Note: This reading was offered at Joyful Mountain Sangha on Mar. 11, and at PVTWS FB on Mar. 22, 2023.}
Excerpt from The Other Shore by Thich Nhat Hanh. Apple Books.
Read The Other Shore by Thich Nhat Hanh. Parallax Press.
Excerpts from Chapter 14: Chasing Butterflies
[From the Heart Sutra:]
Insight and attainment are also not separate self-entities.
Whoever can see this no longer needs anything to attain.
Insight comes unexpectedly, not necessarily when you are sitting on your meditation cushion. We prepare the ground with the practice of mindfulness and concentration in our daily life. We allow ourself to be deeply in touch with our body, our feelings, our perceptions. And during the process of practice, the power of our mindfulness and concentration become stronger and stronger. When insight comes, you may burst out laughing. You may have the feeling that it was in your pocket the whole time, but somehow you hadn’t noticed it yet. When it comes, it’s a moment of joy, a moment of satisfaction.
Insight arises from the coming together of many causes and conditions, and one of those conditions is delusion […]. Without ignorance, there can be no insight, no enlightenment. If there were not misunderstanding and wrong views, what could we wake up from in order to be enlightened? Insight arises from our daily practice of mindfulness, concentration, and deep looking. Insight is made of non-insight elements. If there were no mud, there would be no lotuses, and if there were no delusion and suffering, there would be no wisdom and understanding. We have to see everything in its interbeing nature; otherwise, true insight has not been realized.
Aimlessness
There’s a tendency to think of nirvāṇa or enlightenment as something to be attained. The word “attainment” in the sūtra refers to the idea that we can attain nirvāṇa or enlightenment. But nirvāṇa or enlightenment cannot be grasped by the mind. They can only be experienced by letting go of grasping. As long as we grasp or run after them, we shall never experience them.
Aimlessness […] is the third of The Three Doors of Liberation. Practicing aimlessness can help us realize non-attainment. Aimlessness means not running after things, not putting an object in front of you, and continually reaching for it. Whether that object is fame, profit, riches, or sensual pleasure, or even enlightenment, as long as we are attached to seeking it, we will never experience freedom from ill-being.
The teaching of aimlessness is a deep and wonderful teaching. Some people chase enlightenment. But enlightenment is already there inside you, so there is no need to run after it. What you run toward is just the idea of enlightenment. If we cannot stop running, we will miss the miracles of life available inside and around us.
We are always trying to do something or to be somebody because we are not satisfied with ourself or with things around us. Practicing aimlessness, you don’t need to run after anything anymore. You may say that you need to do it because what you’re running toward is good, but running toward what you think is good is still running, and so you will still suffer. Life in the present moment is already wonderful enough. All the wonders of life are available in the present moment. To be awake to these wonders is already enough to bring us freedom, peace, and joy.…
Merely Human
In 1963, I wrote a poem which has the line: “The work that may take one thousand years to complete: look and you will see it has already been completed one thousand years ago.”* The most important thing a flower can do is to be a flower. If you are a human being, it is quite enough to be a human being. Why do you have to become Buddha? If you are a human being and you are aware that human beings contain the awakened nature, you will see that you do not need to “run after anything anymore. The things you’re running after, you already have. The Buddha nature is present in its entirety in the nature of a human being. You do not need to become something because you already are what you want to become. This is the door of aimlessness that can free us from running. The [Heart] Sutra continues:
Whoever can see this no longer needs anything to attain.
There is no object of attainment and nothing that needs to be attained. There is no such thing as attainment that is independent from all other realities. Attainment is caused and conditioned and can only manifest when its causes and conditions manifest. When you realize this, then you no longer run after attainment.
We need to look deeply into our perceptions of phenomena. When we perceive something, we tend to grasp onto it as a sign, as an object of perception in our mind. Grasping onto signs is like trying to catch butterflies. We grasp after shadows of reality, trying to catch our sensations, objects of happiness, attainment, or success. We try to grasp at our beloved or even at nirvāṇa. We are not always grasping out of longing or craving; sometimes, we also grasp out of fear. We grasp onto an idea of a separate self, our identity, and we are afraid to lose this identity, to lose our “self.” Our practice is to give ourselves the chance to sit still, to stop, and to look deeply to see that the nature of all phenomena is ungraspable and signless. We will get the insight that grasping only makes us suffer. This is the insight of aimlessness. When you clearly see the true nature of something, you will no longer try to grasp at it, reject it, or run after it. You will no longer need anything to attain, grasp, or run after.
What Dream Am I Following?
Our grasping makes us run. We run into the future, we run from the present moment, and we run from ourselves. We run away from our true home. We run away from our ancestors, our parents, and our culture. That is, we have a seed of a hungry ghost in us, of a wandering spirit. And sometimes when we run away like that, life offers us a last opportunity to return home. Throughout our life, we never stop running away. Sometimes we’re running away because of a very small reason. Maybe we’re chasing after a cloud, or we’re chasing after a butterfly. Maybe we’re chasing after a position, a degree, fame, or money.…
Each of us should take time to sit down, reflect, and ask: How have I been playing the game of grasping? What have I grasped at in the past? What am I grasping at now? Are we chasing a butterfly? Are we chasing a cloud? So many things can pull us away from our loved ones and make us run away from our home. And when we wake up, thanks to a spiritual teacher, we know that this is the time to come home. We have been wandering long enough already; we have destroyed enough of our life already. This is the time to return to our roots, to our ancestors, to our true home. This is the time to return to peace, to happiness, and to freedom.
If you’re still demanding something, thinking it’s essential to your happiness, or rushing around in search of something, then you are still caught in the idea of attainment. A lotus is very beautiful as a lotus. It doesn’t need to become a daffodil. The truth is that in the lotus there is a daffodil and in the daffodil there is a lotus. We can be the flower and we can be ourselves at the same time. We are the deer, the fish, the squirrel; and the squirrel, the deer, and the fish are us. Our suffering is the suffering of the deer, the fish, and the squirrel. When we are able to see that the nature of all things is our own true nature, we become free.
* “Butterflies over the Golden Mustard Fields” in Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh. Parallax Press, 1993.