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As you progress with your sadhana you may find it necessary to change your occupation. Or you may find that it is only necessary to change the way in which you perform your current occupation in order to bring it into line with your new understanding of how it all is. The more conscious that a being becomes, the more he can use any occupation as a vehicle for spreading light. The next true being of Buddha-nature that you meet may appear as a bus driver, a doctor, a weaver, an insurance salesman, a musician, a chef, a teacher, or any of the thousands of roles that are required in a complex society — the many parts of Christ’s body. You will know him because the simple dance that may transpire between you — such as handing him change as you board the bus — will strengthen in you the faith in the divinity of man. It’s as simple as that.
The vast array of methods and techniques which comprise Buddhism, particularly the Tibetan tradition, are all to help us come to know simply what we are, buddha, awake and aware. Time and time again, we are told that we are buddha, that the buddha qualities are present now, but that we just don’t know it. The problem, for many of us, is that this knowing is not a form of knowing that we are used to. We need tools and methods to dismantle the emotional blocks, the habitual patterns, the worries, concerns, expectations, and hopes that keep us from trusting and knowing what we are.
To find a buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a buddha. If you don't see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddha's results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory; keeping precepts results in a good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings–but no buddha.
The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Awareness-Bliss-for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to. And then I remembered a passage I had read in one of Suzuki's essays. “What is the Dharma-Body of the Buddha?” ('“the Dharma-Body of the Buddha” is another way of saying Mind, Suchness, the Void, the Godhead.) The question is asked in a Zen monastery by an earnest and bewildered novice. And with the prompt irrelevance of one of the Marx Brothers, the Master answers, “The hedge at the bottom of the garden.” “And the man who realizes this truth,” the novice dubiously inquires, “what, may I ask, is he?” Groucho gives him a whack over the shoulders with his staff and answers, “A golden-haired lion.”
The Buddha’s two realizations demonstrate his high degree of recognition in the value of life as well as firm faith in sentient beings, which is a deep faith in the truth of the world. If we are able to experience this wisdom of life as realized by the Buddha, then we will have more faith in viewing life, understanding that if we are willing to strive to act well as humans, the future will change for the better. We will have more confidence in dealing with people from all walks of life because all beings have Buddha Nature. Every person is a future buddha and should be accorded respect.
Because earth, grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles in the world of phenomena in the ten directions all engage in buddha activity, those who receive the benefits of the wind and water are inconceivably helped by the buddha's transformation, splendid and unthinkable, and intimately manifest enlightenment.Those who receive these benefits of water and fire widely engage in circulating the buddha's transformation based on original realization.
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Denying miracles, the Teacher pointed out the concealed powers of human nature which, when developed, can produce the so-called miracles.
The method of developing these powers is interpreted in Buddhist books and is known under the name of the science “Iddhi-Vidhanana,” which points out two forms of manifestation of these powers and two ways to attain them. One, the lower, is reached by way of various ascetic and other physical practices; the other higher one, embracing all possible manifestations, is attained by the power of inner development. The first method of developing these powers is not lasting and may be lost, whereas inner development can never be lost. Its mastery is attained by following the noble way indicated by Buddha. All these hidden powers gradually unfold in man, usually of themselves, in proportion to man’s mastery of the lower expressions of his nature in a whole series of previous lives.
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