Think You Know Everything?

Struggling with a brush pen with ink that doesn't want to flow all that well. Need a new tip? Just give it time? Don't know, but it still writes the sutra every day so i guess i'll just wait a while longer....

Wanted to add a few thoughts to my Kanjizai post of the other day. It has always been interesting to me that, as has been pointed out in many commentaries on the sutra, the two protagonists here are the paragons of wisdom and knowledge. Sariputra was considered by all to the be the most knowledgeable of all the Buddha's disciples. He knew the abhidharma inside and out, front to back, top to bottom. There was nothing you could ask him about abhidharma that he couldn't answer. He was, apparently, a walking dharmic encyclopedia.

Avaolokitesvara, on the other hand, is the epitome of wisdom, prajna. And that should make all first time readers stop reading, put their book down, and wonder — is there a difference between knowledge and wisdom? If Sariputra is all knowledgeable, doesn't that make him wise? In our everyday world, most people would say yes, they mean the same thing. As a Buddhist, though, they couldn't be further apart; they have completely different meanings.

Just keeping that tidbit in mind, right off the bat it is made clear that they are not only different, but that apparently wisdom has something to teach encyclopedic knowledge; or, conversely, even when you think you know everything, until you understand wisdom you are still a student.

So at the very beginning of the sutra, just after introducing Wisdom as the speaker, we are told that while he was practicing prajna paramita (顴自在菩薩行深般若波羅蜜多時...) he had an epiphany.

What does that mean, practicing prajna paramita? What does it mean to be practicing it deeply; or to be practicing the deep prajna paramita? I prefer to read it as deeply practicing but the difference is subtle. A dictionary will tell you that 'prajna' means wisdom and 'paramita' means going to the other shore, implying the shore of nirvana as opposed to this shore of samsara.

Kanjizai was seated in meditation, in a state of deep and profound samadhi. In that state, there was no longer a Kanjizai, no longer a Sariputra, no longer a meditator meditating. In that state, there was simply Being; awareness purely and simply being awareness. In that state, reality was purely and simply manifesting as what it was, no more, no less. With no filtration taking place through thought processes, predispositions, beliefs, ideas, hopes, desires, past teachings,... or anything else. This was pure, unadulterated, unchanged, untampered with, beingness, doing nothing but what it is...being.

That is the wisdom. Crossing to the other shore means not going anywhere, but simply crawling between two thoughts into that place where you are on the other side of your normal, talkative, endlessly blabbering on and on, mind. The other shore is right here on the zafu you sit on, nowhere else. And once there, seeing reality as it is, as it always has been, as it always will be, in all its naked glory (although that's just adding more useless adjectives) is the wisdom they talk about. 

Once you see this, once you see that this pure and simple awareness located on the other side of your thoughts, once you see that this is who you really and truly are, you have your fingers on wisdom. And at the start of the sutra, this is where we find Kanjizai, that one who sees the true existence of himself. And it is from this place, this deep samadhi, where he sees wisdom spread out in front of him, that the teaching comes.

I picture him speaking very slowly, with a beautiful smile on his face, as he starts by pulling Sariputra into the teaching by calling his name. "Sariputra...."

Sometimes i say to myself, 'ahhhh, to only have been there...' and then i realize i was, and i am, each and every time i sit down with a cup of tea and write out the sutra myself.