The True Understanding of the World by Those Whose Practice Has Borne Fruit

He Qianxing: Our Sahā world is a burning house and a dung pit; the body, too, is foul and impure, like a beggar's garment—nothing but garbage all over the body, stench unbearable. Whether male or female, young or old, whether handsome men or beautiful women, all are piled full of excrement and urine, wrapped in a layer of skin on the outside, yet people cling to it with passionate love. When this garment rots and breaks, they think it is death and are terrified beyond measure. To take off this tattered garment of the ordinary person and put on the silks and satins of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas—is that not something especially joyful?

Men display their careers, money, strength, and imposing physique; women posture and preen, displaying their beauty—just like holding up a vase filled with excrement and urine, exerting themselves to show it off, hoping to gain the approval of the opposite sex and satisfy their lustful minds and vanity. Is that not a ridiculous thing? Someone who knows the vase is filled with excrement and urine would dread even going near it—could they still have the impulse to fight over it?

In the cultivation and realization of the Buddha's Dharma, whether it is the foundational teachings or more profound ones, true understanding and comprehension must be accompanied by great changes in body and mind; it cannot be bland as water, painless and itchless. Because the manas is tightly connected to the physical body, and the physical body is regulated by the manas, when the manas truly unties a knot in the mind, there will be a tremendous change in body and mind—only those who genuinely practice can have personal experience of this. Because nowadays the Buddha's Dharma is obtained too easily and answers come too readily, people may think that knowing the answer is their own wisdom, equivalent to having realized it. In fact, having actually been to Beijing and merely having read a travel guide to Beijing are two entirely different things. If you believe you understand the Dharma but it is not accompanied by great changes in body and mind, then you must reflect: is your understanding from personal experience, or is it an understanding of the Dharma-meaning taught by others? Understanding from personal experience is your own true understanding; only then can your words and deeds be consistent.

 When a knot in the mind opens, there is a feeling of lightness, of a lock being broken, like a tightly compressed ball of cotton having its bindings loosened. As you continually reflect and introspect on your own body-mind world, you will become aware of the arising and ceasing of your greed, hatred, delusion, arrogance, and doubt. Each time you observe a change within your mind, you will feel the afflictions grow a little thinner, and the body will correspondingly become ever more relaxed and at ease (praśrabdhi). As thoughts of greed, hatred, and delusion grow fewer and fewer, until one day those afflictive thoughts basically no longer arise, body and mind will feel a radiance—of course not a physical light, but the light of the mind, which only you yourself can feel. With each change in body and mind, you will also notice your faith in the Buddha's Dharma continually strengthening, because it is realization through experience, not imagination of the brain; body and mind genuinely feel that change, and that growth of faith is tangibly visible. From letting go with half-belief and half-doubt to consciously and proactively letting go of worldly things—all of this is because faith is growing and doubt is diminishing. Looking back on the past, the state of living amid greed, hatred, and delusion was as uncomfortable as soaking in poisoned water, so one proactively distances oneself from those things, because they are all suffering feelings. Very many principles of the Dharma must be realized through your own experience; only when you truly face yourself will you discover that you were previously nothing short of a beast in human clothing. Now, through cultivating contemplation of the mind and introspecting on one's own body-mind world, virtue has been greatly elevated—from a beast in human clothing to having somewhat the semblance of a human being. I myself still fall far short; I have only just begun.