Rev. Heng Sure's Articles on Lions Roar

The Avatamsaka, or Flower Garland Sutra, details the path and practices of the bodhisattva. Among these are ten powers that arise from the awakened human mind. Rev. Heng Sure on how teacher and student alike might realize them. I began formal Buddhist practice in 1969, studying at Antaiji, a tiny Soto Zen temple in what was, at the time, the northern edge of Kyoto, Japan. Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (1912–1998) taught shikantaza, “only mind your sitting,” yet in his public lectures he praised Kanzeon Bosatsu, Guan Yin Bodhisattva, the Awakened Being of Great Compassion; Jizo Bosatsu, Earth Treasury Bodhisattva, the Awakened Being of Great Vows; Munjo (Manjushri) Bosatsu and Fugen (Samantabhadra) Bosatsu, identified with Great Wisdom and Great Practices, respectively. His presentation of Zen was embedded in the larger framework of the Mahayana teachings, replete with admiration for the four great “celestial bodhisattvas” of the Mahayana. Uchiyama Roshi said that if Buddhism had a contribution to make to the twentieth-century world, it was going to come from the limitless hearts of the bodhisattvas, who cultivated the Way and dedicated their merit on behalf of all beings—humans, animals, ghosts, and gods alike. Three years later, when I made my way across the Bay from Berkeley to Gold Mountain Monastery in San Francisco’s Mission District, I immersed myself in the full banquet of traditional Chinese Mahayana practices: Chan meditation, Pure Land recitation, mantra practices, monastic Vinaya observances, and the study of the Buddha’s words in the Mahayana sutras. Seemingly quixotic, an impossible task, bodhisattvas, with their expansive, inclusive hearts, amass practices that mark progress toward reaching the impossible dream. Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua (1918–1995) gave line-by-line exegesis of the big three sutras—the Avatamsaka or Flower Garland, the Lotus of the Wonderful Dharma, and the Shurangama Sutras—for ninety minutes every night. He was a reformer of the Tiantai School’s lecturing style; he explained directly from the sutra text, instead of the standard Asian style, which relies primarily on a written commentary on the original sutra itself. Master Hua wanted to “let the Buddha’s voice be heard in the West,” and he encouraged us to translate into English every word of his explanation, which he delivered in Mandarin Chinese. “We want to see if the Buddha can speak English; further, since I don’t speak English, I want you young Americans to translate these sutras into all the major languages of the world,” he said. “Once people understand the magnanimous compassionate heart of the bodhisattvas, they won’t want to go to war any longer.” Even with a schedule of eight weekly lectures, Master Hua required nine years to complete his explanation of the Avatamsaka Sutra. The Avatamsaka describes the path of the bodhisattva in great detail, including the many practices that bodhisattvas use to teach sentient beings. Among those is one set of remarkable practices shared with buddhas: the Ten Wisdom Powers. The Ten Wisdom Powers appear in multiple sutras, and vary in slight detail. In the Indian works that discuss them, including the Commentary on the Great Prajna Paramita Sutra, the Mahaprajnaparamitopadesa, the Dazhi Dulun, and the Yogacarabhumi-sastra, among others, these powers come with a variety of names, including the Tathagata’s Ten Powers, the Buddha’s Ten Powers, the Buddha’s Ten Wisdom Powers, and the Bodhisattva’s Ten Powers. To reduce confusion with such long lists, and among the various millennia-old discussions of their sources, I’m going to employ the lens of the Avatamsaka Sutra and treat various names and the powers they describe as a single set. Master Cheng Guan (738–839), a Tang Dynasty translator and commentator on the Avatamsaka Sutra, cited two Indian Buddhist shastras in his Avatamsaka exegesis as his sources of knowledge on the Ten Powers. The Buddha’s Ten Wisdom Powers from the Avatamsaka Sutra include: The wisdom power that knows what is the case and what is not the case. The wisdom power that knows karmic retribution in the three periods of time. The wisdom power that knows the dhyanas, the samadhis, and the liberations. The wisdom power that knows the quality of an individual’s sense faculties. The wisdom power that knows the variety of sentient beings’ understandings. The wisdom power that knows the variety of living beings’ realms. The wisdom power that knows where all paths lead. The wisdom power that knows the unobstructed function of the deva’s eye / celestial vision. The wisdom power that knows past lives without errors. The wisdom power that knows how to end bad habits forever. Although they appear by description to be superhuman, these abilities all arise from the awakened human mind. They are tools buddhas and bodhisattvas use to teach beings, developed through precepts and samadhi and motivated by vows and compassion. The Avatamsaka Sutra presents the ten powers as advanced diagnostic tools. They allow the buddha or bodhisattva to target a sentient being’s strengths and weaknesses so the teacher knows exactly where to employ expedient means to lead that being toward awakening. The Centrality of the Bodhi Resolve The Bodhi Resolve, bodhicitta, the Thought for Awakening, is the foundation of these accomplishments. The traditional definition of this pivot point of the bodhisattva path comes in two four-character phrases: 上成佛道 (above/accomplish/Buddha/Path) and 下化眾生 (below/teach/sentient/beings). For years, I’d felt uneasy with the word-by-word translation because it proposed a duality and directionality—that the Buddha was above us, maybe in the heavens, and living beings were separate, below both the Buddha and the practitioner. This translation seemed vaguely theistic, giving us a godlike celestial Buddha and an inferior lot of sentients, whereas the Chan School’s assertion envisions the Buddha, the mind, and living beings as one entity, not three. We can translate the first character of each phrase as temporal, rather than directional, though, interpreting “above” in Chinese as “ultimate,” “foremost,” “highest,” and “below” as “right now” or “immediately.” This reading gives us the Bodhi Resolve as a motivator and a method: “Ultimately I can become a Buddha, and immediately I will get to work ‘taking beings across.’” This version makes sense, dividing the Bodhi Resolve into two parts. First is a question that every fledgling bodhisattva asks: “What is my highest potential? Can I uncover my capacity for great wisdom?” With the awareness that everybody has the buddhanature, and the potential, to awaken great wisdom, comes the second part of the resolve: the awareness that “taking beings across” is the path to realizing that potential. Taking beings across is Buddhist jargon for resolving the troubles that afflict body and mind. What Does It Mean to “Take Beings Across”? The second half of the Bodhi Resolve, “immediately I will teach sentient beings,” leans on the Chinese verb hua, which means to change, to transform, or to teach. In the descriptions of the Ten Powers, the Mahayana texts say that bodhisattvas take across (du) or save or rescue (jiu) or instruct (jiao) sentient beings. All of these words appear in the sutra to describe the process of realizing a bodhisattva’s vows. The idea is that a bodhisattva’s own liberation depends on first fulfilling their vows. Those vows, most significantly the Bodhi Resolve, require them to “teach living beings,” “take beings across,” or “rescue” them. “Taking across” is a Buddhist metaphor that imagines a river. Sentient beings stand on the closer shore, immersed in rebirth, death, and rebirth, the continuous cycles of samsara. On the distant shore is nirvana, where the miseries of samsara come to an end. Flowing between the two shores is the violent flood of afflictions, troubles, worries, and pain. The bodhisattva in this metaphor is the captain of a ferryboat, whose job is to navigate across from samsara to nirvana. The captain knows how to do so safely, and most remarkably, after docking in the safe harbor of nirvana, the bodhisattva stays on board the boat, turns around, and heads back into the chaotic turbidity of samsara. Content to navigate back and forth, to be last in line for liberation, the captain knows that with each boatload of passengers delivered to nirvana, their vows come closer to fulfillment and the suffering of the world is reduced. They can do this because bodhisattvas, through perfecting their samadhi and wisdom, have emptied out both the illusion of the self and the perception of phenomena. Both self and dharmas have been seen through and put down. For them, suffering has nowhere to land. Here is a description of the Avatamsaka bodhisattva’s rewards for this selfless service to the world: Within a single particle of dust, they made appear everywhere all the states of the world and never missed the right moment to teach and transform all beings. Within a single skin pore they emitted the sounds of all Thus Come Ones speaking the Dharma.They knew that beings are like an illusion. They knew that Buddhas are like a reflection. They knew that the destinies and paths of rebirth are like a dream. They knew that karmic retributions are like the reflection in a mirror. They knew that all of creation is like a summer mirage. They knew that worlds are like changes and transformations. They accomplished the Thus Come One’s Ten Powers, his fearlessnesses, his courage, and his self-mastery, and with a lion’s roar, they profoundly entered the great ocean of limitless eloquence. —Avatamsaka Sutra, Chapter 39, Entering the Dharma Realm, Section 1. Rooted in that resolve to accomplish one’s highest potential, and savvy about the means to get there, a bodhisattva makes great vows. The most familiar four begin with this one: “Even though sentient beings are infinite in number, still I vow to take them all across.” It is followed by...

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