Spoken by Supreme
Master Ching Hai
Santimen, Pingtung, Formosa December 21, 1992
(Originally in English)
Q: I have one
question, which is purely theoretical, but I've stuck with it for over ten
years. I understood with the mind that we don't have an I; our feelings
are not us and our thinking is not us and so on. So what is the thing that
goes from one reincarnation to another, and what causes karma and collects
it, and what causes merit and collects it? Is it our mind?
M: Our mind, and our soul that clings to that mind. For example, if the
car goes wrong and the driver doesn't jump out of the car, then he gets
done with, together with the car. If he jumps out in time, if he doesn't
feel so attached to the car that he tries to save the car, then he might
save his life. Some people love the car more than their life. That's the
same trouble with most of us; we love our garbage collector more than our
soul, more than our real Self. We are always in touch with the outside world,
with the collecting of thoughts, with all kinds of preconceived ideas, with
all kinds of nonsense, but we are not in touch with our real Lord, our real
Self. So we have trouble.
I will try to
explain more. In your life, do you understand who is living now? It's the
awareness, the real 'I' that is living through the perceiving agents of
the hands, the feet, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the feelings, and the
brain. That's it. And should 'I', this awareness, always get stuck with
these feelings, with this thinking, with this information, then the 'I'
cannot be free from the feelings, from the thinking, from the preconceived
collective ideas of society, of the environment, of the habits. And of course,
that true awareness, that true 'I' has to come back again. But should this
true 'I' always understand that he, the true 'I', the true awareness, is
only the witness of all these feelings, all this thinking, all these collective
thoughts, then this 'I' never gets stuck with these feelings or ideas, and
is always free. So when he dies, he knows absolutely that he is not these
feelings, not these bindings, not these surroundings, not these ideas; then
he is free. He marches back to the whole, to the whole river of life, and
doesn't get stuck in that corner of so-called thinking, feeling, hate and
love. So we have to awaken our awareness again, pull it back and keep reminding
it all the time, "You are not this feeling, you are not this idea,
you are not this, and you are not that." Understand? Nothing is you!
Q: Is it the same with pain?
M: Yes, because the body feels pain; the nerves feel pain because the nerves
are made to feel things. The awareness enjoys these feelings and enjoys
knowing outside things. Otherwise, how can we be aware? This is the awareness
that experiences pain through the body, but the awareness itself never has
pain! If you eat an apple, it's the apple that is sweet; it's not your tongue
that is sweet. It's not you who are sweet! The sweetness is not you, it's
from the apple; you are the one who enjoys the sweetness. Similarly, we
ourselves, the awareness, enjoy the pleasure, know the pain and reject the
unpleasant things. But all these things don't matter. You enjoy it or you
reject it; you experience the unpleasant or the pleasant, but that's it.
You are not the pleasant or unpleasant. These are only circumstances.
So why should
you get stuck there, and be bound life after life? Because you are not satisfied.
You have to know that these things are fleeting. Today it comes, tomorrow
it goes. Okay, that's it. If I have enjoyed, I enjoy it. If I experience
an unpleasant thing, then I endure it, and that's it. When I'm gone, I'm
gone. When I don't have them, I don't have them. Otherwise if we, the awareness,
keep chasing after pleasure, then we reincarnate. The awareness is trying
to catch the last leftover feeling, so it tries to put itself into a frame
again and enjoy it or suffer, always clinging to this sweet or bitter feeling,
chasing after it.
If someone gives
you an apple, and you eat it: Oh, you love it so much! But now you don't
have another one, and you go everywhere searching for an apple; every day
your mind says only, "Apple, apple, apple!" You cannot do anything
else, and you lose yourself. You lose yourself in the sweetness of the apple.
It's the same thing with our life: The awareness is chasing after the pleasant
and hating the unpleasant, and we get stuck there. The awareness cannot
free itself from these feelings; therefore, we are bound, we are not liberated.
If we know that at every moment, and especially at the time of death, we
are not this feeling, we don't care about this feeling, and we are done
with all these feelings, then we are free. We are always free! We have never
been unfree. (Audience applauds)
So, cry when
you want to cry, and laugh when you want to laugh, but understand that the
crying and laughing are not you. You just experience them, for the sake
of knowing things, for the sake of existence. Otherwise you don't exist;
otherwise the world doesn't exist. We say that the world is full of suffering
and it shouldn't exist, but why shouldn't it exist? If it didn't exist,
it would also be boring. There's nothing else to do, and you enjoy all the
time: "Oh, I am this, I am that, (Audience laughs) I am God, that's
it, I am Almighty, and I know it! I have no suffering, nothing. I am always
blissful." So what? Don't bother about nirvana, so what? If you are
happy every day, so what?
But because
you still want nirvana, so work for it. Work until you don't want it any
more, until you're fed up with it, and then you'll be free. (Master and
audience laugh) I only want you to work for nirvana because I want you to
know that you don't need nirvana. But as long as you need it, then work
for it. If you still want the dummy, the plastic one, then just have it.
But have it until your mouth is dry and you have no milk, nothing, and then
one day you will throw it away. And realize that you didn't even need it
in the beginning. Because you are always free of that, you don't need it.
