The absolute essence

Using relative language to speak of the Absolute Essence is difficult, easily causes misunderstanding and sometimes betrays the truth. Language can carry the teaching, but language is also an obstacle to realising the truth directly. Nirvana is by nature nameless, yet people have given it the name Nirvana. Buddha-nature is by nature nameless, yet people have given it the name Buddha-nature. Then this very name holds people where they stand, unable to go beyond it to the wondrous spiritual place without thought or words.

But if we did not speak of this ultimate truth, the Buddhas would be guilty of miserliness, as if they still kept their hands clenched. This supreme teaching must be proclaimed so that everyone aspires towards it and ends complacency with halfway stages. For those who make the reasoning conscious mind their life's work, they must be shown that there is also a deep, hidden unconscious with great, extraordinary effects. The effects of the unconscious can break the laws of physical space.

For those who have attained deep concentration and entered the world of the unconscious, they must be told that there is also the Absolute Essence of all things in the universe. This Essence is the very end of the road for the seeker of truth.

Some religions hold that there is a supreme deity whom human beings can only obey and can never be equal to. Human beings must worship and plead in order to receive favour from that supreme deity.

Buddhism and some Eastern religions reject this view. For the supreme is not a deity but the Absolute Essence itself. Anyone can realise the Absolute Essence and be fully liberated, equal with one another. The Buddha is one who realised it and taught the path again. Anyone with sufficient will who goes the right way will become a Buddha.

Physical space is thoroughly objective because its laws exist independently of human wishes. By contrast, spiritual space is thoroughly subjective because its effects depend entirely on human wishes.

In physical space, if people want to fly high, they must rely on the laws of science to build flying machines with wings that rest on the air, with thrust, lift and so on; that is, their wish must rely on the law. In spiritual space, if they have enough spiritual power, they need only give rise to the wish to fly and they can rise, paying no heed to the earth's gravity. Here, their wish is the deciding factor. Many scientists have tried to study spiritual space objectively, overlooking its thoroughly subjective character, and they have lost their way and not found the key to the problem. They put forward theories of multidimensional space-time and of many kinds of universe to explain it, and they have gone too far.

The Absolute Essence, however, is both subjective and objective.

The Essence is objective because only someone who has completely escaped attachment to self can realise it. Having no attachment to self, the Essence has no subjectivity and seems truly objective. In the Essence there is no separate SELF; all is one in harmony. In physical space, each thing displays its own differences, is present separately and acts on its environment through physical relations. A tree growing alone, unlike anything around it, still has an effect on the environment through filtering the air, absorbing light and so on. In the Essence, however, all things harmonise and respond to one another. There is no longer separateness, and no dry physical interaction.

A person who merges into the Essence at that moment has become the whole universe, no longer dry physical interaction.

A person who merges into the Essence at that moment has become the whole universe, no longer an isolated individual.

Standing in physical space, we see a tree and a stone as two separate things. In the Essence, the tree and the stone are one. In saying "one", we should not understand that the tree and the stone no longer exist, or that they have vanished. They still exist, are still not confused with each other, yet are still one together. Language cannot express this point. Those who have realised it "see" it clearly; those who have not must have intuition to sense in part that subtle place.

All space and time are one together in the Essence.

In physical space we see space spreading boundlessly and time extending without limit. But in the Essence every position is one with every other, no longer distant, and every moment gathers together, not far apart. To say so does not mean that every position and every moment disappears. No, they still exist, not confused. But they are still "as if" in one place together in this wondrous Essence. The sun is still the sun. The star Lalande is still the star Lalande (eight light years apart), not confused, yet still "as if" in one place together in the Essence.

Time is the same: the year 1990 is still 1990, not confused with the year 2000, yet still as if in one place together in the Essence.

The American science-fiction film "Back to the Future" presents a scientist who builds a machine to take living people back into the past. He and a young friend relive a time nearly 100 years ago. They bring the views, thinking and clothing of this century to live among people living in the previous century. After many complications, they find a way to return to the future from which they set out.

The idea of the film is bold; in it, the scriptwriter treats time as if it were space, so that if one had the means, one could travel from one point in time to another.

In truth, this does not fit the Essence, because it contains a confusion about the person who travels through time. A century ago, that person already existed, living with the thoughts, views and clothing of that time. It is impossible to erase that figure and put in his place a person from a century in the future with different thoughts, views and clothing. That is a confusion of the matter: the same person, but in a past that has been erased, replaced by a person of the future who has returned to the past by machine to live.

In the Essence there is harmony and oneness, but no confusion.

Or take a Hong Kong fantasy film called "Hoa Sơn Thánh Mẫu" (Holy Mother of Mount Hua). To destroy the Holy Mother of Mount Hua, the Demon King went back 500 lives to destroy her previous incarnation. If the previous incarnation was destroyed, her present body would immediately fall apart. This too is a mistaken understanding, because it confuses time. In the Essence, all moments lie in one place, but each moment is still that moment. A person at this moment cannot be mixed up with the person at that moment. The Demon King in the present moment cannot take his wicked intent back 500 lives, because at that time he had been present with a different thought. We can only go back to the past by Knowing.

We say the Essence is both objective and subjective, because the Essence is without self (as the Venerable Thiện Siêu said, no-self is Nirvana) and therefore objective; but within that no-self, one who has attained the Way still has a responsiveness that sees through every event if that person wishes. So the Essence still seems to have a subjective character. For example, if one who has attained the Way wants to know about a distant planet, from within the absolute stillness of the Essence there arises a transcendent responsiveness, and in this responsiveness that person becomes one with the planet and sees it plainly, "like looking at a mango in the palm of the hand". Here, responsiveness is like knowing, and in this knowing the knower and the object known are not divided into two; there is knowing, yet still no self.

It is because of this "knowing-responsiveness" that the Essence seems subjective, but because it is without self it seems objective.

In physical space we see time flowing on without stopping. Billions upon billions of years have passed, and billions more are to come. What belongs to the distant past seems to have vanished, decayed, changed. What belongs to the long future seems faint, unclear, not yet existing. But in truth, in the Essence everything is "as if in one place, not separated from one another". Therefore a person who has attained the Way can abide in this Absolute Essence to understand clearly what has passed or what is to come.

Standing in physical space, people have an objective view and disinterestedly search for all the laws of the universe. That is the admirable thing about science today. They cannot use their wishes to change those laws. Sometimes they make guesses, but they verify them again. For example, the ancients once held that the sun revolves around the earth. But people then verified that the earth revolves around the sun. Or, earlier, Le Verrier relied on the perturbed motion of Mercury to argue that there was a planet, named Vulcan, between Mercury and the sun. But then Einstein rejected that, using the theory of relativity to explain Mercury's perturbation by other causes. In this physical space, people cannot use their wishes to change laws. They can only apply those laws.

But when we step into spiritual space, matters suddenly reverse: human wishes create everything. With strong spiritual power, people have supernormal powers and miracles. They can fly high, dissolve mass, move objects from afar without touching them, guess other people's thoughts, hypnotise and command others, prophesy, heal illness... Countless forms of supernormal transformation appear according to the subjective wish of the person. Even when they want a soul to leave the body and roam everywhere, a soul will immediately take shape. Even when they believe in and want a splendid heaven, immediately a realm of heaven will take shape. So in spiritual space, human belief and subjective wish cover over the truth. If from the start they were given a firm belief that a deity named Krish created the universe and is ruling it, then later, when they can concentrate the mind and have strong concentration and spiritual power appears, if this person wants to meet that Krish, the subjective spirit will immediately produce the figure of Krish in a sky of radiant glory.

It is because this extreme subjectivity easily covers over the truth and gives rise to wrong views that wise masters all warn their disciples to be careful about the articles of faith fed to them long ago, to dissolve all hidden desires, and to take only virtuous conduct (precepts), a pure mind (concentration) and no-self (wisdom) as the guiding principle throughout the course of practice. Only when they go beyond attachment to self, realise the Absolute Essence and are no longer driven by subjective desires will they not be mistaken about the universe and human beings.

Earlier articles of faith, such as the belief that every person has an unchanging soul, or that the universe contains many metaphysical realms where deities dwell, always cause danger when people enter spiritual space. Spiritual power will follow belief and desire to create everything. That is why in the world there are so many beliefs, so many deities worshipped, so many strange dogmas. Most were created from the spiritual space of the founder, and each founder had his own belief, his own desires and his own rich imagination.

Science relies on physical space with its objective laws, so wherever people are, they can repeat the same experiments. Belief, on the other hand, relies on spiritual space with its extreme subjectivity, so no one's experience is like anyone else's. Because each person has different wishes.

Only when they go beyond attachment to self and realise the Essence is their seeing and knowing no longer mistaken, because it is no longer governed by belief and desire.

The Essence is also the support of all things in the universe.

Just as all the flowers, leaves and branches must rely on the root, so all things in their endless arising and transforming rely on the Essence. Just as vehicles run relying on the ground, so all things in their endless arising and transforming rest on the Essence and are not separate from it. The Essence is the invisible support, the invisible root governing all arising and transformation in spiritual space and physical space.

We should not think that a falling leaf or a crawling ant has no connection with the Essence. In truth there is not one speck of dust that does not rely on the Essence in order to exist. All is one, in harmony, interacting with one another, whether it is a drop of water, a pebble, an insect or a thought.

This physical space seems turbulent, changing rapidly. Water is flowing, clouds drifting, planets moving, living beings developing and perishing.

Spiritual space seems quieter, more invisible, more extraordinary, but it is still governed by the beliefs and desires of everyone in order to take effect.

At the Essence there remains only absolute stillness and boundless, immeasurable "responsive knowing". Yet it is this very place of absolute stillness that is the firm support of the objects, effects and phenomena in physical space and spiritual space.

Turbulence makes the human mind narrow and short-sighted, unable to see a problem as a whole. The deeper one goes into purity and stillness, the wider, clearer and sharper the human mind becomes. And when it is completely still, the person becomes the whole universe. This is the highest human value, which no one can deny. In physical space, a human being is only a tiny, meaningless speck of dust compared with the vast universe. But on "entering" the Essence, that small person suddenly is the universe.

So those who know only how to look at people in terms of physical space will look down on people, valuing them as a tool of the common machine, as capital in common property. If they seize power, they will use people as a superior sort of object to serve their ambition. When needed, they discard the objects of lesser value.

But from the standpoint of the Essence, a human being already holds an absolute value. What remains is how to bring everyone to attain that absolute value by practising deep meditation to realise the Essence.

If this view were widely spread, people would love one another more, respect one another more and help one another more. Love will truly exist when people know that all have the capacity to become absolute. This physical space is only a shallow surface in the structure of the universe; it changes erratically, is fragile and easily decays. Relying on it to live, people must bear much insecurity, agitation and suffering. Only the Absolute Essence, the depth in the structure of the universe, the firm support of all things, absolute stillness and boundless responsiveness, is truly the real home of human beings. Here, all people are in communion, one together. There is no need to speak the words "love", yet love is boundless and overflowing.

Since ancient times the sages have all called on people to love one another. At the beginning level, in this love there is still a division into two: the one who loves and the one who is loved. Only when the Essence is attained and attachment to self dissolves will people know how to love one another with a new love, not divided into one who loves and one who is loved. In it, the one who loves and the one loved have become one. That is the Compassionate Mind arising from the Absolute Essence.

The Essence is absolute stillness. Precisely because it is absolute stillness, it is also absolute Knowing (Responsiveness), it is also absolute love (compassion) and it is also absolute fairness.

It is in this ABSOLUTE fairness that the law of karmic consequences operates and governs everything.

We would like to retell the story of the Old Fox because of its profound meaning.

During his talks on the Dharma, Zen master Huaihai Baizhang often saw a strange old man who came in with the assembly to listen. Once, after a talk, the assembly had withdrawn but the old man still lingered.

Baizhang asked:

- Who are you?

The old man replied:

- Venerable Master! I am not a human being; I am a fox from behind the mountain. Five hundred lives ago, in the time of the Buddha Kāśyapa, I too was a practitioner. Someone asked me: "Does one who has attained the Way still fall within Cause and Effect?" I answered: "Does not fall within Cause and Effect." From then on I fell into a fox's body, and for five hundred lives until now I have not known where I went wrong. I hope the Venerable Master will instruct me so that I can escape this mistaken understanding and escape the fox's body.

- Then ask me again.

- Venerable Master! Does one who has attained the Way still fall within Cause and Effect?

Master Baizhang answered:

- Is not deluded about Cause and Effect! (Bất muội Nhân Quả: no longer misunderstanding Cause and Effect)

At that the old man was greatly awakened, and said:

- Venerable Master, so from now on I escape the fox's body. Please conduct my funeral with the rites for a monk.

Having spoken, the old man vanished.

After the midday meal, Master Baizhang led the assembly round to the cave behind the mountain, poked out the body of a fox with his staff, and had it brought back for cremation.

There are meditators who, hearing that everything is empty, end by denying Cause and Effect. They think the law of karmic consequences governs ordinary beings but cannot govern a saint. This wrong view is not correct.

In truth, the law of karmic consequences comes from the hidden Essence. One who knows only spiritual space has not yet seen the law of karmic consequences clearly. Only a master who has realised the Essence can understand thoroughly the course of karmic consequences. Every deed has its karmic result, whether it is the deed of a saint or of an ordinary person. Bodhisattvas who have realised the Way and manifest within birth and death to teach everyone must also rely on the law of karmic consequences. They must sow good affinities with everyone so as to be loved by them, and only afterwards use the teaching to instruct them. To lead them into deep meditation and liberation, a Bodhisattva must guide them in how to create merit at the start and how to practise, and cannot use his own supernormal powers to make them see. There is no gap in the actions of a Bodhisattva. Every action of a Bodhisattva is used to create good karmic results later. They never act carelessly, because since realising the Essence, the Bodhisattva has seen clearly how the law of karmic consequences flows out.

The philosopher Spinoza (1632-1667, Netherlands) held that the Essence is the sum of the objective scientific laws of the universe. This is right, because both physical space and spiritual space rely on the Essence to move. However, in these two spaces the law of karmic consequences does not yet appear. From within the Essence, the law of karmic consequences quietly governs the operation of all things in physical and spiritual space. But the law of karmic consequences hides its face deep within the Essence. All things operate by the arranging hand of the law of karmic consequences, but we never see clearly what face or form that law has. That is why people are reluctant to accept the law of karmic consequences. The other scientific laws belonging to physical space are being found gradually. But the law of karmic consequences cannot be found unless one "stands" in the Essence.

Science has a very long way to go to find the law of karmic consequences, because science still stands in physical space, has not stepped into spiritual space, and has not yet thought of the Absolute Essence. In truth, it is not necessary to finish going through one space before stepping into another. Science can research all three realms (physical, spiritual and the Essence) at the same time, and research in one realm helps research in another go faster.

However, many scholars of the Way will not agree to taking spiritual matters and the Essence as objects of research, because the spirit is extremely subjective and the Essence is absolute stillness with nothing to hold on to.

To speak of research does not mean researching spiritual matters and the Essence in the way one researches physics. Each realm has its own way of being researched. It is enough that there are people ahead who grasp the matter clearly and so give humankind more knowledge, more direction and more benefit.

When humankind has more understanding of spiritual space and the Essence, people will live more deeply, more profoundly, more purely and more ethically.

According to reports of contact with extraterrestrials, we learn that they have very strong spiritual abilities: they can hypnotise and command us, can erase our memory of the encounter, can know our thoughts, can transmit thoughts into our minds. (Compiled from many foreign sources, "Con người và Trường Sinh Học" by Nguyễn Hoàng Phương)

Might a true civilisation be one that has developed to a high degree in all three realms: Science, Meditation and Ethics? Their flying machines show remarkable progress in the physical science of their planet; their spiritual abilities show wisdom in the spirit. As for whether they have any concept of the Essence, that is very hard to judge. If they have knowledge and a concept of the Essence, they will understand the law of karmic consequences well and will of course have a highly developed ethics. If on their planet there really are many people who have realised the Essence, we will be astonished beyond measure, for the Buddhist scriptures have long spoken of enlightened beings in the worlds of the ten directions.

The moment a wholesome act appears, a joyful result is immediately established in the Essence. The moment an unwholesome act appears, a painful result is immediately formed in the Essence.

In the Essence, past, present and future are all in one place and not confused with one another. A deed in the present immediately has a karmic result in the future. All of it remains in the Essence. But in order to appear in physical space, getting from the present to the future involves a long separation in time.

For example, out of pity for a neighbour's suffering after a house fire, Mr Tư Quậu gave them a large sum of money that he had scrimped and saved for a long time. Immediately in the Essence a result was formed: forty years later, when Mr Tư Quậu is twenty years old in his next life, he wins the lottery jackpot.

For example, Mrs Hai Nhăn, out of jealousy of her husband's child by another marriage, secretly killed the child and disposed of the body. Immediately two karmic results appear in the Essence: first, in her next life she is killed while still small; second, in the life after that, her own child is killed, causing her terrible grief.

Because all of time is in one place, the moment a karmic cause is present, a karmic result appears. However, to appear in this physical space, they need a considerable interval.

Sometimes we can compare the Essence to a supercomputer: the moment a problem is entered, there is an answer; the moment data is entered, there is a plan to carry out. A programmer enters data on the distribution and planning of agricultural regions, and immediately the computer gives the best plans to carry out. But to carry out those plans, the ministry of agriculture needs much time. The Essence is the same: the moment a karmic cause is created, a karmic result is formed.

However, people's karmic conditions are very complex. An act of giving immediately forms a result of wealth. After that the person goes on to create many further wholesome and unwholesome karmas. The later karmas deform the earlier result of wealth. For example, through well-practised giving, Mr Sáu receives the result of wealth. Besides giving, Mr Sáu also bears hatred towards a neighbour and brings about the neighbour's bitter death. Afterwards he repents, goes to a temple to take refuge, recites sutras and gradually practises. The result formed for him is that in the next life, in the midst of a wealthy life, his wife and children die in an accident. In grief, he leaves home to become a monk. Then in yet another life, he himself is killed, and so repays all the old karma.

Each karma of the present, one by one, paints the picture of future life. Each karma is like a brushstroke. Depending on whether the strokes are skilful or clumsy, the painting is beautiful or ugly. Depending on whether the karma is unwholesome or wholesome, life will be painful or happy.

Each person creates a great deal of karma, forming a great many complex karmic results that overlap and change one another. An unwholesome act forms a karmic result stored ready in the Essence. But the wholesome acts that follow restrict that painful result, deforming it so that it is no longer as it was at first.

For example, a person who wanders into a deep forest lacks drinking water and food and struggles to evade wild beasts. Death hovers before him. But then he is saved by a group of hunters.

Perhaps in a previous life he created an unwholesome karma that should have meant dying of hunger or from wild animals in a deep forest. But afterwards he created much wholesome karma, which deformed the result so that he was saved.

If we could build a supercomputer to calculate karmic results and then feed into it all of a person's wholesome and unwholesome conduct in deed, word and thought, the machine would perhaps show us a very fascinating picture of karmic results in the future, in which karmas offset one another to make a richness of endless variety.

But the complexity does not end there: besides each person's own karma, there are the relationships between people. It is called wholesome when we bring benefit to others.

It is called unwholesome when we cause others suffering. So when we create wholesome or unwholesome karma, we are acting on people, not on empty space. A karma created always involves other people. Wholesome and unwholesome karma become our own property of merit and wrongdoing, set aside for our own future; but the relationship between us and others forms the AFFINITY for later lives. Karma and Affinity always go together.

We have created countless karmas, which also means we have created countless Affinities with others. Because of those affinities, who will be our parents and who our friends in later lives is already arranged, from now, in the Essence.

A computer always has limits on its capacity for calculation. It cannot calculate a problem so complex that it exceeds its processing ability. The Essence, however, has this ability without limit. There are countless people, each creating countless karmas and countless affinities that overlap and interweave; then new karma deforms and changes the results of old karma. The Essence still objectively arranges everything tightly to form a picture of the whole society, the whole world, the whole universe without the slightest error; whether society prospers or declines, whether the world advances or retreats, whether the universe is stable or in turmoil... all is created by the shared karma of everyone.

In saying "the Essence arranges everything", we should not understand the Essence as becoming a new deity doing this and arranging that... The Essence is still absolute stillness, completely without self. In the Essence there is no longer anyone's subjective wish. Spiritual space is each person's own because attachment to self has not yet ended. But the Essence is no longer separate because attachment to self has ended. Whoever attains meditative concentration enters this Essence that is already there. At that time that person becomes the whole universe, responsive to everyone.

The Essence holds the law of karmic consequences, which quietly governs all things. When people create karmic causes, the Essence automatically forms the karmic results ready and stores them for the future. At the right time the result appears in physical space. When beings create countless causes, the Essence automatically forms countless results. And the Essence remains still and without self. No one's wish intrudes to arrange anything in it.