Where does Tao come from

Where does Tao come from

Oct / 29 / 2022 US Oct / 30 / 2022 CN

Hello everyone, welcome to our Dharma talk at Dharma Rain Meditation Center.Last week we started a new topic, perform according to the Tao. We discussed what is Tao and this week we will continue and see more about where does Tao come from.

In the Flower Sermon, the Gridhakutta Dharma gathering, the Brahma, the lord of the Saha world, whose name is Fangguang, was standing there, put his palms together devoutly when he saw Buddha was coming, he made a respectful bow, knee down and prostrated himself before Buddha’s feet. He stood up and held the golden lotus, magically born with the worlds of the trichiliocosm as root on his hand everently,offered to the Buddha. After that prostrated himself before Buddha again and asked: Buddha, you have achieved the enlightenment and spread your Dharma teachings for over 50 years, you taught us different kinds of Dharma and skills to approach the enlightenment, do you have anything other advanced Dharma that we did not hear before? Please show your mercy and let us know, we are the regular people and bodhisattva from the saddharma-vipralopa (degenerated age of Buddha’s Dharma),
but we sincerely want to follow you and cultivate the Dharma. After saying that, the Brahma turned himself into a seat for Dharma talks; his embroidered cloths decorated the position glistening and stately.
Buddha walked to the seat slowly and sat down; he kept silent and held up the golden lotus in his hands. He looked up and raised his head, passed the lotus to the people beside him and let them hand on to the next. There were 84000 heavenly beings in the Gridhakutta Assembly, everyone held their breath, waiting for Buddha to start his Dharma talk, but no one understood Buddha’s intention. After a while, when the golden lotus passed onto elder Maha Kassapa, a smile played on his lips, his eyes were like waning moons, the gold lotus was shining on his monk robe and the wrinkles on his old face. Maha Kassapa looked up to Buddha; Buddha also looked at Maha Kassapa at that moment, he said: “I possess the true Dharma eye-treasury, the marvellous mind of Nirvana, the true form of the formless, the subtle Dharma gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. I entrust to Maha Kassapa”. With that said, Buddha went back to silence.

We can see that the first truth, the supreme Dharma, the way to attain Buddhahood,is not able to be expressed in words. The Flower Sermon is exactly the Buddha’s teaching from a heart to another heart– to awaken one heart with another, to use energy to awaken energy by resonating at the same frequency, and eventually return to the origin where has no beginning and no end.

Lao Tzu and Shakyamuni Buddha talked about the way to Buddhahood and the way to liberation. owever, all roads lead to Rome, and other roads also exist. Greed,anger, ignorance and suspicion will inevitably inspire the road of reincarnation.Therefore, although the Tao of the universe is the ultimate path that every being will eventually choose, it is also a choice.

Where does Tao come from?

The Tao of cosmic is a law and a choice. It has no beginning, no end, neither birth nor death. And because of the inertia of thinking on the earth, we tend to accustomed to concretizing the “Tao” and asking where it came from and who invented or discovered the “Tao”. In fact, before thinking about this question, we should ask another question: Can human beings think about the world beyond the boundary of the
universe? For example, can we think about or imagine what the universe looked like before the Big Bang? The answer is probably: “No.” This is exactly what Lao Tzu said: “Indescribable, is the beginning of heaven and earth.” Human’s intelligence cannot stand outside the universe to see our own world, nor can we think about the time before time is born, just like we cannot hold our hair and leave the ground. In
one sentence of Wittgenstein: “Death is not a thing in life. We cannot experience death while we are alive.”

This principle is similar to what Bodhidharma said in the “Breakthrough Sermon. “: Someone asked: “The Three Realms are vast and boundless. How can the infinite suffering be relieved by observing the mind?” Bodhidharma replied, “You are wrong.

The Three Realms are not outside of you; they are in your heart.” The man was surprised: “Why are the Three Realms in my heart?” Bodhidharma explained: “The so-called Three Realms are the three poisons. Greed is the realm of desire; anger is the realm of form; ignorance is the realm of formlessness. Suppose you can subdue the three thieves of greed, anger, ignorance by cultivating the mind. In that case, you
can jump out of the three realms and escape the suffering of the six reincarnations.”

Bodhidharma pointed directly at the human heart. In other words: the three Realms exist by relying on our “greed, anger, ignorance”, they cannot exist independently of our subjective consciousness. The Tao is the same. It is always there, but our hearts are accustomed to vacillating and can’t see the Tao. We are also getting used to the reversed dreams in life and will not approach the Tao.

Thank you for the listening!