Vinaire's Blog

Reference: Buddhism
Reference: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith

[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]

Once the other shore of Enlightenment is attained there is no further need for the raft that carried them across the stream. The doctrine of Buddhism is simply a tool to be cast away and forsaken once it has served the purpose for which it was made.

We have looked at three modes of transport in Buddhism: the Little Raft; the Big Raft, with special attention to Zen; and, though it sounds odd in the context of a flotilla, the Diamond Raft. These vehicles are so different that we must ask in closing whether, on any grounds other than historical lineage, they deserve to be considered aspects of a single religion. 

There are two respects in which they should be so regarded. They all revere a single founder from whom they claim their teachings derive. And all three can be subsumed under a single metaphor. This is the image of the crossing, the simple everyday experience of crossing a river on a ferryboat. 

All three aspects of Buddhism can be subsumed under a single metaphor of crossing a river on a ferryboat. 

To appreciate the force of this image we must remember the role the ferry played in traditional Asian life. In lands laced by rivers and canals, almost every considerable journey required a ferry. This routine fact underlies and inspires every school of Buddhism, as the use of the word yana by all of them attests. Buddhism is a voyage across life’s river, a transport from the common-sense shore of ignorance, grasping, and death, to the further bank of wisdom and enlightenment. Compared with this settled fact, the differences within Buddhism are no more than variations in the kind of vehicle one boards, or the stage one has reached on the journey. 

Buddhism is a voyage across life’s river, a transport from the common-sense shore of ignorance, grasping, and death, to the further bank of wisdom and enlightenment.

What are these stages?

While we are on the first bank it is in effect the world for us. Its earth underfoot is solid and reassuring. The rewards and disappointments of its social life are vivid and compelling. The opposite shore is barely visible and has no impact on our dealings. 

If, however, something prompts us to see what the other side is like, we may decide to attempt a crossing. If we are of independent bent, we may decide to make it on our own. In this case we are Theravadins; we follow the Buddha’s design for a sturdy craft, but we build ours ourself. Most of us, however, have neither the time nor the talent for a project of such proportions. We are Mahayanists and move down the bank to where a readymade ferryboat is expected. As the group of explorers clamber aboard at the landing there is an air of excitement. Attention is focused on the distant bank, still indistinct, but the voyagers are still very much like citizens of this side of the river. 

The ferry pushes off and moves across the water. The bank we are leaving behind is losing its substance. The shops and streets and ant-like figures are blending together and releasing their hold on us. Meanwhile, the shore toward which we are headed is not in focus either; it seems almost as far away as it ever was. There is an interval in the crossing when the only tangible realities are the water, with its treacherous currents, and the boat, which is stoutly but precariously contending with them. This is the moment for Buddhism’s Three Vows: I take refuge in the Buddha, the fact that there was an explorer who made this trip and proved to us that it can succeed. I take refuge in the dharma, the vehicle of transport, this boat to which we have committed our lives in the conviction that it is seaworthy. I take refuge in the sangha, the order, the crew that is navigating this ship, in whom we have confidence. The shoreline of the world has been left behind. Until we set foot on the further bank, these are the only things in which we can trust. 

During the voyage we do not have the firmness of the ground underneath our feet. Only firmness comes from Buddhism’s Three Vows: I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the dharma,  I take refuge in the sangha.

The further shore draws near, becomes real. The craft jolts onto the sand and we step onto solid ground. The land, which had been misty and unsubstantial as a dream, is now fact. And the shore that we left behind, which was so palpable and real, is now only a slender horizontal line, a visual patch, a memory without substance. 

Impatient to explore our new surroundings, we nevertheless remember our gratitude for the splendid ship and crew who have brought us safely to what promises to be a rewarding land. It will not be gratitude, however, to insist on packing the boat with us as we plunge into the woods. “Would he be a clever man,” the Buddha asked, “if out of gratitude for the raft that has carried him across the stream to safety he, having reached the other shore, should cling to it, take it on his back, and walk about with the weight of it? Would not the clever man be the one who left the raft, no longer of use to him, to the current of the stream and walked ahead without turning back to look at it? Is it not simply a tool to be cast away and forsaken once it has served the purpose for which it was made? In the same way the vehicle of the doctrine is to be cast away and forsaken once the other shore of Enlightenment has been attained.”

Once the other shore of Enlightenment is attained there is no further need for the raft that carried them across the stream. The doctrine of Buddhism is simply a tool to be cast away and forsaken once it has served the purpose for which it was made.

Here we come to the Prajnaparamita or Perfection of Wisdom sutras, which are widely considered to be the culminating texts of Buddhism. The Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path; the technical terminology of dukkha, karma, nirvana, and their like; the committed order and the person of the Buddha himself—all these are vitally important to the individual in the act of making the crossing. They lose their relevance for those who have arrived. Indeed, to the traveler who has not only reached the promised shore but who keeps moving into its interior, there comes a time when not only the raft but the river itself drops from view. When such a one turns around to look for the land that has been left behind, what appears? What of that land can appear to one who has crossed a horizon beyond which the river dividing this shore from that shore has vanished? One looks, and there is no other shore. There is no separating river. There is no raft, no ferryman. These things are not a part of the new world. 

After reaching the promised shore ones keep moving into its interior. No more is there a separating river. There is no raft, no ferryman. These things are not a part of the new world. 

Before the river was crossed the two shores, human and divine, had to appear distinct from each other, different as life and death, as day and night. But once the crossing has been made, no dichotomy remains. The realm of the gods is not a distinct place. It is where the traveler stands; and if that stance happens to be in this world, the world itself is transmuted. It is in this sense that we are to read the avowals in The Perfection of Wisdom that “this our worldly life is an activity of Nirvana itself; not the slightest distinction exists between them.” Introspection having led to a condition described positively as nirvana and negatively as Emptiness because it transcends all forms, the “stream-winner” now finds in the world itself this same Emptiness that he discovered within. “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is not different from form, form is not different from emptiness.” The noisy disjunction between acceptance and rejection having been stilled, every moment is affirmed for what it actually is. It is Indra’s cosmic net, laced with jewels at every juncture. Each jewel reflects the others, together with all the reflections in the others. In such a vision the categories of good and evil disappear. “That which is sin is also Wisdom” we read; and once again, “the realm of Becoming is Nirvana.”

This earth on which we stand
is the promised Lotus Land,
And this very body
is the body of the Buddha.

The realm of the gods is not a distinct place. It is where the traveler stands; and if that stance happens to be in this world, the world itself is transmuted. The noisy disjunction between acceptance and rejection having been stilled, every moment is affirmed for what it actually is. 

This new-found shore throws light on the bodhisattva’s vow not to enter nirvana “until the grass itself be enlightened.” As grass keeps coming, does this mean that the bodhisattva will never be enlightened? Not exactly. It means, rather, that he (or she) has risen to the point where the distinction between time and eternity has lost its force. That distinction, drawn by the rational mind, is dissolved in the lightning-and-thunder insight that annihilates opposites. Time and eternity are now two aspects of the same experiential whole, two sides of the same coin. “The jewel of eternity is in the lotus of birth and death.”

The bodhisattva has risen to the point where the distinction between time and eternity has lost its force. 

From the standpoint of normal, worldly consciousness there must always remain an inconsistency between this climactic insight and worldly prudence. This, though, should not surprise us, for it would be flatly contradictory if the world looked exactly the same to those who have crossed the river of ignorance. Only they can dissolve the world’s distinctions—or, perhaps we should say, take them in their stride, for the distinctions persist, but now without difference. Where to eagle vision the river can still be seen, it is seen as connecting the two banks rather than dividing them.

Only those who have crossed the river of ignorance can dissolve the world’s distinctions—or, perhaps we should say, take them in their stride.

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