For more than ten years, I have participated in two or three short-term meditation activities every year. However, sometimes someone asked me, "Are you a Buddhist?" I would hesitate to answer because I didn't know if I was qualified to claim that I was "following the Buddha's teachings."
Until one day when I was attending a seven-day meditation retreat at Dharma Drum Mountain, I heard from Master Sheng Yen’s video teaching:
"Impermanence is suffering, impermanence is emptiness, and impermanence is no self. This is the basic principle of Buddhism. Those who can accept the principles of suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and no self are true Buddhists."
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At that moment, a strong feeling of emotion welled up in my heart and my eyes filled with tears. From then on, I had the confidence to be a Buddhist.
After that, I had a similar experience almost every time I heard Master Sheng Yen’s discussion on “suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self” during meditation activities.
The Buddhists I know all felt the suffering of life and then developed the intention to seek the ultimate truth of life, and then had the good fortune to receive the Buddha's teachings. This suffering in life may be a personal painful experience, or it may be the inexplicable spiritual emptiness and depression, or it may be the feeling of the essential dilemma of all human beings' existence.
The fundamental survival dilemma in life comes from the lack of wisdom. We do not understand impermanence, do not understand non-self, and cannot see through the illusion. We often get caught in our own trap and create the cause of suffering without knowing it.
I still remember that when I first went to a Buddhist temple, I did not understand the "equality of all beings" and "great compassion without cause and great sympathy for all beings". There was a senior brother named Chen who took special care of me and tried his best to explain to me: "I am empty, you are empty, the master is empty, and the fly that just flew around in a circle was also empty, so we are all the same in the meaning, and therefore equal." It was as if I suddenly understood everything at that time, and I was very grateful. Brother Chen knew that I was studying philosophy, and he once said to me, "We practitioners should learn from each other. If you have any opinions about my explanations, you can raise them immediately. Confucius said, 'I am happy to hear criticism!'"
Later, this brother explained the relationship between cause and effect to his new fellow disciples: "You reap what you sow. This is a difficult principle. Ordinary people fear the cause, while Bodhisattvas fear the result. If you hurt someone, in your next life, that person will hurt you in the same way."
"Brother, from my understanding, the cause and effect relationship seems to be complicated and may not react directly like this. Moreover, cause and condition will change with each other. When the mentality changes, the cause and condition will also change. Brother, do you think so?" I was standing by that day and couldn't help but interrupt.
I didn't expect this fellow to immediately blush, speak angrily, and refute me with anger in his eyes: "You are confusing the newcomers by saying this. I am talking about convenient methods. If you don't understand, just keep quiet."
I didn't know what terrible reply I gave him at that time, which angered him again. He pulled me aside and said to me, "Do you understand or do I understand now?"
I apologized afterwards, but I showed up less frequently after that, and left the dojo a few months later.
A few years later, I met Brother Chen again at a public lecture. After exchanging pleasantries, he talked about his recent situation:
"I rarely go to the temple now. When I was young, I learned Zen meditation. When I got old, I practiced Pure Land Buddhism."
I didn't say much, and we wished each other well and said goodbye. I was very grateful for the opportunity to reconcile like this.
Life is unpredictable. It is a great blessing to be able to get along with someone to a certain extent and achieve harmony without regrets at a certain stage.
In fact, after studying Buddhism, I gradually understood that I should avoid creating causes of suffering. The smoother my life became, the more I could feel the "suffering of life" that the Buddha talked about: the suffering of impermanence, which is everywhere and at all times, and does not even interfere with my daily worldly joy.
How many Buddhist teachings must one listen to, how many meditation sessions must one participate in, and how many times must one confess in private before one can comprehend the true meaning of "suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self"? There should be no standard answer to this.
However, every experience in life should be an opportunity to realize "suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self". I am very grateful to Brother Chen for giving me a profound lesson in reflection that day. "Self-pride" has always been deeply hidden in our behavior. One pride will trigger many prides. If we really want to transform and dissolve it, we should still put self-reflection first.
Note: This article is a reprint of an article published by the author in a magazine "Buddhist Door" 《佛門網》. We respect the copyright of the original author, and the copyright belongs to the original author and the magazine where the content originated.
