The Buddha’s teachings condemn no one. Even those who appear to be the worst among us may simply have their noble qualities temporarily hidden from view—just as a lotus grows out of the mud.
True faith is not the belief that one will never suffer, but the resolve not to abandon what one knows to be good, even when suffering may follow. True goodness cannot be practised only when circumstances are favourable, safe, and comfortable.—-For the original text, see The Khadira-Embers Birth Story (Khadiraṅgāra Jātaka, Ja 40).
Some people ask what meaning there is in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. I feel that its meaning may lie in the experiences we undergo along the way: how many material desires we must experience, and how many temptations from the external world we must encounter. These experiences are then reflected in our consciousness, until we may finally come to understand that none of these things is worth clinging to.
Perhaps, then, the meaning of samsara lies in this process of experiencing. In other words, how many times must we go through these experiences before we truly understand—before we can leave behind this endless cycle of experience and no longer need to go through it again?
Sexual desire and killing are the two fundamental causes that bind all sentient beings to birth and death. Of the two, sexual desire is the most difficult to eradicate, while killing is the easiest to commit.
Between these two, a person with even a modest sense of self-respect may still restrain himself from sexual misconduct. Yet only an arhat—one who has eradicated all delusion and realized the truth—can attain complete purity of mind, entirely free from even the slightest trace of sexual desire. In everyone else, the habitual tendencies of craving and attachment, though varying in strength, remain deeply entangled and firmly rooted in consciousness. Thus, from kalpa to kalpa, they are unable to attain liberation.
As for killing, the world generally takes it for granted. Relying on our strength, we overpower the weak; taking their flesh, we fill our stomachs. We care only for the momentary pleasure of taste—but who believes that the debt must be repaid over countless kalpas?
The Śūraṅgama Sūtra says:
“When a person eats a sheep, the sheep dies and is reborn as a person, while the person dies and is reborn as a sheep. The same applies throughout the ten classes of beings: dying and being reborn again and again, they devour one another in turn. Their evil karma follows them throughout their lives, continuing without end into the boundless future.”
An ancient virtuous master said:
“If you wish the world to be free from the calamities of war, sentient beings must cease eating meat.”
It is also said:
“If you wish to understand the wars and bloodshed of this world, listen to the cries outside the slaughterhouse at midnight.”
Where a cause has been created, its corresponding result will inevitably follow. If one does not reflect upon this, nothing more need be said; but once one reflects upon it deeply, it is truly terrifying.
—Venerable Master Yinguang
The Udāna of the Khuddaka Nikāya records:
On a pitch-dark, rainy night, the Buddha sat alone meditating outdoors in the wilderness. Darkness surrounded him, and raindrops fell one by one. This was also a place where, according to local belief, a yakkha dwelt.
The yakkha, known as “Herd of Goats,” approached the Buddha, intending to make him fearful, alarmed, and terrified. Three times it cried out loudly and created a great commotion, shouting, “Ascetic, a demon is here!”
In the face of the darkness, wind, rain, and the yakkha’s intimidation, the Buddha remained completely undisturbed and declared:
“When a person has fully understood, just as they truly are, the five aggregates subject to clinging that make up his bodily and mental experience, and no longer clings to them as “I” or “mine,” he has reached the far shore of liberation. Since there is no self that needs to be anxiously protected—no self that can be harmed or lost—neither the spirit nor the fear and turmoil it creates can shake him.”
Suppose there are two people: one always remembers, while the other always forgets. Whether they meet or not, it is as though they have not met; whether they see each other or not, it is as though they have not seen.
But if both remember each other, and their remembrance grows deep, then from life to life they will remain together like a body and its shadow, never separated.
The Tathāgatas of the ten directions cherish and remember all living beings, just as a mother remembers her child. Yet if the child runs away, what use is the mother’s remembrance alone? If the child remembers the mother as deeply as the mother remembers the child, then throughout life after life, mother and child will never be far apart.
If living beings remember the Buddha and remain mindful of the Buddha, they will certainly see the Buddha, either in this life or in the future. They will not be far from the Buddha. Without relying on any other expedient means, their minds will naturally awaken.
—Mahāsthāmaprāpta Bodhisattva (Great Strength Bodhisattva)
Human beings represent a fascinating form of life. Our bodies have clearly defined front and back, upper and lower regions. Sensory and feeding organs—including the eyes, ears, nose and mouth—are concentrated in the head, with the nearby brain integrating and processing information. Food enters through the mouth and passes through a specialised digestive system, where nutrients are absorbed before waste is expelled from the other end. Meanwhile, the limbs enable the body to search for food, avoid danger and reproduce.
This structure did not arise by accident.
For animals that move actively, the front of the body is usually the first part to encounter food, danger and obstacles. Concentrating the sensory organs, mouth and central nervous system at the front therefore shortens the distance between detection, judgement and action. Having separate entrances and exits allows food to move continuously in one direction. Different sections of the digestive tract specialise in grinding, breaking down and absorbing food and eliminating waste. This prevents newly consumed food from mixing with waste while increasing the efficiency of the entire process.
The human arrangement—sensing and feeding at the front, digestion and metabolism in the middle, excretion at the rear, centralised decision-making in the brain and movement performed by the limbs—is therefore a highly efficient solution produced by the long evolution of complex, mobile animals on Earth. (Similar examples include fish, birds, mammals, insects and most worms with complete digestive tracts.)
However, the familiar “head–torso–limbs” body plan is not the only possible form of life, much less a universal model for life throughout the cosmos. The universe could conceivably contain several very different kinds of organisms:
1. Radially organised life without a clearly defined head or tail, capable of sensing its surroundings and absorbing nutrients from every direction. Such organisms would not need to move consistently in one direction; any side of the body could become the “front.” (Approximate terrestrial examples: jellyfish, sea anemones and starfish.)
2. Life without a central brain, in which sensation, memory and judgement are distributed throughout the body. Each part could process information locally before coordinating its actions through a larger network. (Approximate examples: the neural systems in octopus arms, the nerve ganglia of insects and fungal networks.)
3. Collective life composed of countless smaller individuals. Each member might function like a cell or neuron, while the entire colony constitutes the true “body” and might even develop some form of collective consciousness. (Approximate examples: ant colonies, bee colonies, slime moulds, coral colonies and highly interconnected microbial colonies.)
4. Permanently stationary life capable of sensing and influencing its surroundings through growth, chemicals, light, electricity or vibration. Its thought processes might operate much more slowly than those of animals, with one complete cycle of information processing lasting years or even centuries. (Approximate examples: plants, fungal networks and forest ecosystems that exchange chemical signals.)
5. Fluid forms of life with no fixed shape and constantly changing bodily boundaries. They might drift through oceans or dense atmospheres, continually absorbing, releasing and replacing their constituent parts. (Approximate examples: amoebas, slime moulds, plankton communities and gelatinous marine organisms.)
6. Modular life capable of dividing, merging and reorganising. Such organisms might have no fixed point of “birth” or “death”: one section could separate and develop into a new individual, while several individuals could join to form a larger living system. (Approximate examples: fungal mycelia, colonial tunicates, corals and certain animals capable of regenerating after fragmentation.)
Of course, however diverse extraterrestrial life might be, it could not exist entirely outside the laws of physics. Every form of life would probably have to solve several fundamental problems: obtaining energy, acquiring raw materials, eliminating waste, preserving information, sensing the environment, repairing itself and reproducing. The difference is that alien organisms might not use mouths, intestines, anuses, brains or limbs to perform these functions.
The present human body plan will not automatically be eliminated merely because evolution continues. Evolution does not continually replace old models with upgraded ones. If a structure allows an organism to adapt to its environment and reproduce successfully, it can persist for hundreds of millions of years. A one-way digestive tract and a centralised brain remain highly mature and efficient biological solutions.
The most fundamental future transformation of humanity may therefore involve neither redesigning the digestive tract nor growing an entirely new organ. Instead, it may consist of extending the boundaries of the “individual” beyond the biological body. This expansion could occur in several principal directions.
First, the expansion of sensory boundaries. Through sensors and neural interfaces, people might directly perceive infrared and ultraviolet light, magnetic fields, radiation, atmospheric composition, blood glucose levels, hormonal changes and the condition of their internal organs. Information that can currently be read only from instruments might become a direct experience comparable to colour, sound or touch.
Second, the expansion of memory. Personal memories may no longer be stored entirely in the brain but distributed across smartphones, cloud databases and artificial-intelligence systems. People could retrieve past experiences whenever needed and perhaps gain long-term memories exceeding the storage capacity of the biological brain.
Third, the expansion of cognition. Artificial intelligence may cease to be merely an external tool and become part of an individual’s thinking system, assisting with calculation, prediction, comparison, translation and decision-making. A person’s thought processes would then be jointly performed by the biological brain and external computational systems.
Fourth, the expansion of action. Through networks and neural interfaces, people might control distant machines, vehicles, robots and even equipment in space. The biological body could remain in one place while its “acting body” extended across great distances.
Fifth, the expansion of individuality. More direct informational connections could arise between people. Each person might retain an independent consciousness while simultaneously participating in a much larger network of collective cognition.
Sixth, the expansion of life itself. Artificial organs, genetic engineering, redesigned gut microorganisms and replaceable body parts could gradually dissolve the boundary between the “natural body” and “artificial structures.”
By then, the human being of the future might no longer consist solely of the biological body contained within the skin, but instead of:
Biological body + symbiotic microorganisms + sensors + artificial organs + remote machines + artificial intelligence + social networks.
The next stage of human evolution may therefore involve no dramatic outward change. Future humans may still look much like us, yet their senses could extend into worlds invisible to the naked eye, their memories could be stored beyond the body, their actions could reach across vast distances, and their thoughts could be jointly produced by the brain and artificial intelligence.
The body may remain largely unchanged, but the world accessible to consciousness—and the range of things included within the meaning of “I”—could become completely different.
Paṭipūjikā Kumārī lived in Sāvatthī. She married at the age of sixteen and had four sons. She was virtuous and very generous. She often:
* offered food and other necessities to the monks;
* cleaned the buildings at the monastery;
* filled the water pots and jars; and
* helped the monastic community with various daily tasks.
She could remember her previous life. She knew that she had once been one of the wives of a deva named Mālābhārī in the Tāvatiṃsa Heaven. At that time, she had been picking flowers and enjoying herself in a garden with her husband and other female devas. When her life in that heavenly realm came to an end, she was reborn in the human world.
Therefore, whenever she made an offering to the monks or performed another good deed, she made the following wish:
“May I be reborn in the Tāvatiṃsa Heaven after my death and be reunited with my former heavenly husband.”
Later, she suddenly fell ill and died that same evening. Just as she had wished, she was reborn in the Tāvatiṃsa Heaven and returned to Mālābhārī.
One day in the Tāvatiṃsa Heaven is equal to one hundred years in the human world. Although she had married, raised four sons and lived an entire lifetime on earth, not even one full day had passed in heaven. When she returned to the garden, Mālābhārī asked her:
“Where have you been all morning?”
She explained that her heavenly life had ended and that she had been reborn as a woman in Sāvatthī. She had married at sixteen, given birth to four sons, died in the human world and now returned to the Tāvatiṃsa Heaven. To her heavenly husband, she seemed to have been away for only half a day; but for her, an entire human lifetime had passed.
That very morning, she had offered food to the monks, but by evening she had suddenly died. When the monks learned of her death, they were saddened and went to report it to the Buddha. The Buddha used this event to teach them:
“The lives of living beings are very short. Before people can satisfy their desires, death has already arrived.”
The Buddha then recited Verse 48 of the Dhammapada:
“Like one gathering flowers,
a person whose mind clings to desires
and who can never be satisfied
is finally overcome by death.”
The beginning of the cycle of rebirth through which sentient beings have wandered cannot be traced. Shrouded by ignorance and bound by craving, they have long journeyed through the round of birth and death.
The Buddha used many powerful similes to illustrate the immense duration of saṃsāra:
* The tears shed by a person throughout the course of saṃsāra are greater than the waters of the four great oceans.
* The blood shed from being beheaded throughout countless lives is greater than the waters of the four great oceans.
* The bones left behind over innumerable lifetimes, if gathered together, would form a pile as high as a great mountain.
* It is difficult to find a sentient being who, at some time in the past, has not been one’s father, mother, brother, sister, son, or daughter.
* Even if the entire earth were fashioned into tiny pellets of clay, with each pellet representing one of one’s former mothers, the earth would be exhausted before their number could be counted.
Throughout saṃsāra, you have experienced gain and loss, love and separation, birth and death countless times. The suffering you have endured is already more than enough. You should therefore become disenchanted with all conditioned phenomena, relinquish craving, and seek liberation.
Since the same attachments, gains, losses, and sufferings have been repeated countless times, they should no longer be regarded as things worth pursuing forever.