Guest-dust

From the Surangama Sutra :

“Of all the elders here in this great assembly, I was the one who was given the name ‘Ajñāta,’ meaning ‘one who understands,’ because I had come to realize what ‘visitor’ and ‘dust’ signify. It was in this way that I became a sage.”

“World-Honored One, suppose a visitor stops at an inn for a night or for a meal. Once his stay is ended or the meal is finished, he packs his bags and goes on his way. He's not at leisure to remain. But if he were the innkeeper, he would not leave. By considering this example of the visitor, the one who comes and goes, and the innkeeper, the one who remains, I understood what the visitor signifies. He represents transience.”

“Again, suppose the morning skies have cleared after a rain. Then a beam of pure light from the rising sun may shine through a crack in a door to reveal some motes of dust obscuring the air. The dust moves, but the air is still. Thus by consideration of this example — the dust, which as it moves obscures the air, and the air, which itself remains still — I understood what the dust may signify. It represents motion.”

The Buddha said, “So it is.”

When the sun has just come up,
early on a clear fresh morning,
a morning after rain,
the sun shines through a crack in the door
or perhaps a crack in the wall,
and it displays the fine bits of dust bobbing up and down in space,
moving all around in the sunshine.
If the sun doesn't shine in the crack, you can't see the dust,
although there is actually a lot of dust everywhere.
But while the dust moves, bobbing up and down,
space is still. It doesn't move.
The ability to see the dust in the light that pours through the crack
represents the attainment of the light of wisdom.
When you reach the first stage of an Arhat
and overcome the eighty-eight kinds of deluded awareness,
you have the light of wisdom.
Then you can see your ignorance, which moves like the dust in sunlight
and which causes as many afflictions
as there are sand-grains in the River Ganges.
You will also see the unmoving stillness
of your essential nature.

.................

All in the assembly became aware that their minds pervaded the ten directions and that they could see everything throughout space in all ten directions as clearly as one might see an object such as a leaf in the palm of one's hand. They saw that all things in all worlds are the wondrous, fundamental, enlightened, luminous mind that understands, and that this mind, pure, all-pervading, and perfect, contains the entire universe. They looked back upon their own bodies born of their parents and saw them to be like minute particles of dust drifting about everywhere in the air, arising and perishing, or like solitary bubbles floating on vast, calm seas, appearing and then vanishing without a trace. They fully understood that the fundamental, wondrous mind is everlasting and does not perish.

Submitted August 06, 2016 at 11:30AM by SereneMountain http://ift.tt/2atojjw