Sun of Wisdom (eBook)

Fromthe Introduction

Whateveractivity we engage in,ourmotivation is very important. According to the tradition of Mahayana (GreatVehicle) Buddhism, the motivation we should cultivate is bodhichitta—,themindturned toward supreme enlightenment. One way to do so is to think first of ourfather and mother in this lifetime, and then extend the love and compassion wefeel for them to all sentient beings, including even our enemies. It is thecase that all sentient beings, including our enemies, have been our own fatherand mother countless times, and therefore they have been indescribably kind tous countless times. The greatest thing we can do to repay sentient beings'kindness is to lead them all to the state of complete and perfectenlightenment, the state of buddhahood, and in order to do this, we must listento, reflect upon, and meditate on the teachings of the genuine Dharma with allthe enthusiasm we can muster. This is the supreme motivation ofbodhichitta—,please give rise to it as a first step whenever you read, reflecton, or meditate upon the teachings in this book.

Thetopic of this book is the text known as TheFundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, composedby the noble protector Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna is a special teacher in the historyof Buddhism. The Buddha himself prophesied that Nagarjuna would be born fourhundred years after the Buddha's own passing and that he would give vast andperfect explanations of the Buddha's teachings. Nagarjuna fulfilled thisprophecy both as a teacher of many students who went on to become great mastersthemselves and as an author of texts that expound and clarify the meaning ofthe Buddha's words. Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike have studied these textsfrom Nagarjuna's time to the present.

Nagarjuna'scommentaries form three main collections of texts that explain, respectively,the Buddha's own three series of teachings known as the three turnings of thewheel of Dharma. Thus, in the set of compositions known as TheCollections of Advice, Nagarjuna'sfocus is the first turning of the wheel. He describes how a human life givesone the invaluable opportunity to practice the Dharma, how this life andeverything one knows of and experiences within it are impermanent, howsamsara—,the cycle of existence in which confused sentient beings endlesslywander from one lifetime to the next—,is characterized by constant suffering,in both gross and subtle forms, and how practicing the Dharma leads to theattainment of nirvana, the state of liberation that transcends samsara'ssuffering once and for all. This is a brief summary of the teachings the Buddhagave in his first turning of the wheel of Dharma. These are teachings from theperspective that appearances truly exist in just the way they seem to—,that theindividual, the individual's past and future lives, the suffering theindividual experiences in samsara, and the liberation the individual can attainin nirvana all exist in precisely the way they appear.

Inthe middle and final turnings of the wheel, the Buddha described the truenature of reality, explaining that the way things appear to be is differentfrom the way they actually are. The Buddha taught that of all the progressivelysubtle ways of explaining the true nature of reality, the ultimate descriptionone can make is that the true nature of reality is the true nature of mind, theunion of luminous clarity and emptiness. It is difficult, however, tounderstand what 'the union of luminous clarity and emptiness' meansas an initial statement, and therefore the Buddha taught about the two aspectsof emptiness and...