Originally,
this chapter was the first few pages of the following chapter where I will talk
about humanity’s blueprint and the Human Genome Project. By the time I finished
writing that chapter, it had become very long, so I decided to take this first
part off and make another chapter on its own. Therefore, please bear in mind
that the content in this chapter may have a close link with the next one.
Since
we are talking purely about being a human in this chapter, first of all, I
would like you to appreciate your human status and realise how lucky you are to
be one. It is very much the case when you also have a chance to bump into
Buddhism and understand the law of kamma. It is considered an extremely
fortunate circumstance. I could not see it before myself when people told me in
the past but I certainly do now and can’t help repeating it to you. Human
beings form is the realm in between the upper and lower states, which is the
only suitable state to practice the dhamma. It is very much so if you are born
perfect both physically and mentally. Being a human is the only state that
allows you to put in the right cause or right kamma for the right results. It
is the state in which you can easily understand the teaching of the Buddha, and
pursue the practice until you reach Arahantship. This is the activity that
cannot be done too easily in other realms.
Had
you been born in the lower states such as the Peta, animals, or hellish beings,
you would have no chance to practise the dhamma whatsoever because they are
states of sheer suffering and states of reaping the results of your previous
bad kamma. In other words, you do nothing but take the punishment and suffering
which is the result of what you have done in your previous lives. If you are
born in the form of an animal, you have to act upon your instinct and can
develop no further. You do not have the intelligence and the wisdom to develop
yourself like humans can. You cannot be a kind tiger or lion and choose not to
hunt and kill. Therefore, you create more kamma that will feed yourself into
the cycle of rebirth. In the human form, when you suffer too much, you can wish
to die and be free from suffering but in the peta and hellish being form, you
suffer immensely but you cannot wish to die and be free from that suffering
because you are already dead. You have to go through the term of the prison
sentence or the whole of the life span until your vipaka or result of kamma is
done before you can move on to the next rebirth. Therefore your consciousness
will be too tormented to do any positive activities like practising the dhamma.
After you pay off your debt, you may have a chance to be born as a human again
but of course your memory will be all wiped out. Please don’t ask me why. If
you don’t understand the law of kamma and go off to do bad deeds, you will
certainly be put back to the lower realms yet again which has already happened
to all of us. The Buddha said that we all have travelled into the different
realms of samsara for so long that we have gone through every one of those
states, but of course we don’t know. That’s why I keep on saying that we are
all extremely lucky to be born as humans again and bump into Buddhism. Only a fool
would let this golden chance slip through his or her fingers. Wise people will
quickly grab this extraordinarily rare opportunity and get themselves out of
samsara.
Whilst being born in the
woeful states is to be too tormented and have too much agony and suffering,
being born in the upper realms is in the other extreme. Heavenly beings from
the lower states to the higher ones are reaping their results from the good
kamma they have done previously. They live very relaxed, comfortable and
enjoyable lives. I cannot describe much because I have no experience and no
memory of what life in heaven is like. I just know that there is a great deal
of pleasure there which is far better than the pleasure on earth. However, we
can imagine that living among joy and great pleasure, we can easily get hooked
and do not want to let go. The last thing we want to do is pursue the practice
that tells us to let go of everything.
This
is the concept that even the Buddhists cannot understand correctly and a great
number of Buddhists still want to be born in heaven. The Buddha’s teaching is
not about helping us to go to heaven and become celestial beings at all. Going
to heaven is far too easy and without the Buddha’s help, sentient beings have
already helped themselves to go to heaven and go as far as the world of the
Brahma. Both the Buddha’s teachers who taught him the samatha meditation are
still living very happily in the world of the Brahma right now. And it is very
likely that they will miss the teaching of our Buddha Gotama because the span
of life of Brahmas is very long indeed. By the time they come down to earth
again, Buddhism will have been long gone. To the enlightened ones, there is no
big deal about going to heaven at all. To be more precise, it has to be asked
who would want to go to heaven if they had a chance to go to Nirvana instead?
As I said in the first chapter of A Handful of Leaves, going to heaven is like
wanting to be a different breed of tiger, the bottom line is that you are still
a tiger and have not yet transformed into a human form at all. That is not good
enough because you are still under the spell of a wicked witch. No matter how
long your life span is, there will still be a day that your life span will come
to an end and you have to leave your comfortable heaven and come down to earth
or even the lower states according to where your kamma takes you.
Indeed,
the Buddha’s teaching is about helping us to let go of everything and get out
of samsara for good. If you are born as a celestial being, you don’t want to
know and pursue the practice because you cannot easily let go of the joy
surrounding you.
So,
among all the different realms of samsara, the human realm is the most perfect
form as far as pursuing the path to Nirvana is concerned. That’s why all
Buddhas come to be born in a human form and help people here on earth. The
human realm is considered a neutral state in between the upper and lower realms
because we can see both sides of the same coin. We can have the experience of
both joy and suffering. Everyone has both experiences in all different
combinations in one lifetime. Some might have more joy than misery but some
might have more grief than happiness. It is indeed this mixed combination of
joy and sorrow or ups and downs that make a number of people think a bit deeper
about life and begin to question the true meaning of life. That is because such
a contrasting nature of up and down is the distinctive sign of illusion and
some people can see through it. This is exactly what happened to the young
prince Siddhartha before he left the palace to search for the end of suffering
or eternity. That is because he could see both the pleasure he was offered in
the palace as well as the suffering that people had to bear outside the
palace’s wall. He could see the illusive side of life which allowed him to
question life in the most profound manner. Such an extraordinary question is
indeed the beginning of the long journey of getting out of samsara.
Therefore,
I would like you to realise your fortune in just simply being born as a human
being and bumping into someone who can explain all these things for you. It
doesn’t matter in the slightest if you are not well equipped with wealth, power
or status of worldly value. You might think that you are inferior in all sorts
of ways, but you are still lucky to be born human and to be reading all these
words. You must not take it for granted that this kind of chance can easily
happen to anyone. That is not the case at all. I should know better. I have
people who live close to me but are totally oblivious of what I am doing. And I
have also heard enough people say that they don’t have time for dhamma practice
because they still have to struggle to earn a living and feed their families. That
is a poor excuse.
You
must make use of your fortune in having this human form and bumping into
Buddhism. The very least you can do for yourself is to try to be open minded
and slowly digest what I have been telling you in this book. Whatever your decision
is, it is the new kamma that you are about to invest for your own future. You
are not doing it for me or the Buddha, you are doing it for yourself alone and
for your very own future. Please be very careful about the decision you are
going to make. You can dismiss everything I said as total nonsense or, to be on
the safe side, you may give it a go and prove it for yourself. After all, you
have nothing to lose, have you? The decision is entirely yours.
I
have told you how lucky you are especially if you are born perfect both
physically and mentally. How about those who are not born physically perfect as
well as those who are born perfect but accidents happen and take away all
normality from their lives? What can you do? Although you are not physically
perfect for whatever reasons, I don’t want you to feel bad at all because you
are still lucky enough if you can get hold of this book, be convinced of what I
say and are willing to have a go at the practice. You might be luckier than
some of those who are born perfect in the sense that you can understand the
concept of suffering better than others because of your physical status. To put
your mind at rest, I will do my best in explaining to you later why you are born
as what you are. But I must ask you to be very brave and extremely open minded
about this whole issue. Please do not quickly pass judgement and condemn me
because it is not the thing you want to hear. Please remember that I can only
state the truth, the facts, no more and no less, and sometimes hearing the
truth can hurt. After all, my intention is to help you and certainly not to dig
into your wound. What I hope to
get out of this is for you to be able to let go of your grief and bitterness
and begin to build a better future for yourself. From where I can see right
now, a human lifetime is very short indeed compared to the length of samsara.
You cannot undo what you have done and what has happened to you now, but you
still have a very long future to go yet. Although you cannot see it in this
lifetime at least you want to be sure that you will be born better in your
future life, don’t you? What is better still is if you can manage the practice
that I will teach you to do, if so you can and you will certainly see the light
at the end of the tunnel right here in this lifetime.
I
am sorry that I cannot help those who are mentally handicapped and unstable. To
understand the Buddha’s teaching initially requires an acceptable level of
mental stability. I use the term ‘an acceptable level’ because no one is
mentally stable, not until reaching the state of Arahantship. Everyone’s mind
has been twisted somehow by delusion based upon perceptions. Unless you are a
Pra Arahant, your mental state is
not completely stable yet, in this extreme meaning of course. However, I am
talking about the standard of normal human beings who have certain levels of
mental normality and stability. The humans who are capable of learning,
functioning in daily tasks and developing themselves in a normal human manner:
this is the criterion of what I mean by ‘an acceptable level of mental
stability’. I hope you can understand what I am trying to say. Indeed, to
understand the Buddha’s teaching requires such an acceptable level of mental
stability. Anyone who has less than that acceptable level will not be suitable
and unfortunately cannot understand the dhamma at all. Then again, this is due
to their previous kamma.
You can be physically perfect and fit but if your mind is too tormented and twisted either with your problems or some sort of mental illness, you stand no chance to understand the dhamma either. Men are not allowed to be ordained as monks if their mental status is unsound. This is the rule that has been passed on since the Buddha’s time. This should make you realise how difficult it is for an individual to come as far as understanding the Buddha’s teaching. You need to have so many factors ready.
Now
that you are a human being and you have bumped into Buddhism, I hope you can
truly appreciate your human status and you are going to do your best to fulfil
your duty as a human being. In the next chapter, I am going to talk about how
the human blueprint is made up. This may enable you to understand why you are
born as you are.