The Three Gems
In this post I would like to discuss what it means to take refuge in Buddha.
A lot of people have this misunderstanding that to take refuge in Buddha is to convert ones religion into Buddhism and to pray daily and light incense sticks and worship the giant Siddharta Gautama’s statue. Hoping that one day when you are in deep trouble Gautama will swish down from the clouds and solve your problems. This is terribly wrong. Gautama the Buddha Himself was never for religion or any sectarian movement, he believed in a universal movement.
To understand what it means, we need first to understand what is the meaning of Buddha? A lot of people have the impression that Buddha is Gautama’s surname or last name. But this is not so. Buddha was a title given to him after attaining enlightenment. Buddha is a Pali language, it means the enlightened one.
Therefore to take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in the enlightened one, which is different from taking refuge in Gautama, because Gautama was not the only enlightened being in this planet, there has been thousands of enlightened people before Gautama’s time, contemporary to Gautama’s time, and after Gautama’s time. Enlightened beings are every where around us, we just don’t notice them. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was right when he said that a mundane human being cannot see God even if He was standing right before him (the mundane fellow) in all His glory and might.
To take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in the quality of enlightenment. This quality of enlightenment is supported by three important factors, factors that have to be scrupulously paid attention to. The three factors, as taught by Gautama the Buddha, are: Sila (Morality), Samma Samadhi (right concentration), and Punya (wisdom).
Over here I would like to discuss the third factor, punya or wisdom, not that the other two are less important, they are all equally important in their own respective ways, they are like the legs of a tripod, if one is missing, the other two will not be able to support the balance.
In Gautama’s teachings he divided Punya into 3 different stages.
1.Sut Maya Punya
2. Chinta Maya Punya
3. Bhavna Maya Punya.
Sut Maya Punya is the wisdom you get from reading spiritual books or listening to spiritual tapes attending satsangs held by sages and philosophers. This is the first stage and the easiest to attain, it is also the easiest to loose (let me see if you remember the point written on page 162 of any self help book when you are in deep trouble and going through emotional upheaval; the last thing you want to think about is what is written in any particular book). An easy way to understand this is when you enter a restaurant and read the menu and attain the knowledge of the food served there.
Chinta Maya Punya is the second stage, this is a wisdom you get from your own intellectual, for example when you are attending a funeral of someone close to you and your intellectual starts thinking, “nothing in this world lasts forever.” This is a wisdom attained by your own intellect (after the funeral you go outside find that your car is stolen and then you go “my car is stolen! Iam finished!” and there goes your wisdom.). This can be compared to when after reading the menu in the restaurant you start seeing the people around you enjoying the food and you say to yourself, “hmm..the food looks very delicious in this restaurant.” To attain this wisdom one must have some degree or knowing of wisdom.
The third stage which is the Bhavna Maya Punya, is very hard to attain, very hard to comprehend and conceive by us everyday folks, this is a wisdom you experience. Not to be mistaken as the wisdom you get from experience, which will be Chinta maya punya again. But to experience wisdom, it is quite unheard of since a lot of us perceive wisdom as a set of wise words said by some sages and philosophers and some intellectual genius, but wisdom does not end there. This wisdom, can only be experienced when you are pure, when you have performed a deep rooted surgical operation of your subconscious mind.
Gautama started to have an inkling feeling of this when he started his meditation under the banyan tree. After going everywhere listening to talks by saints and sages, he thought to himself, “This is not enough, even after being taught all this wisdom and after reading all the holy scriptures I keep doing the same mistake, I am still miserable, there needs to be something more powerful.”
No matter how many books or how many talks and satsangs we listen to, we are most likely to make the same mistakes, because by reading this books and listening to these talks we are only attaining knowledge at a conscious level, only the surface level gets cleansed but it does not do anything about the roots, where as the real problem lies within the roots. Not that it is bad to read books and listening to talks, they are good of course, they give you knowledge, and they give you some degree of awareness. But after that we go back to being slaves of our mental volition. This mental volition can only be changed if we stop reacting by craving when something good happens, and stop reacting with aversion when something bad happens. The Buddha always teaches us to take the middle path; to just accept and move one, to take action but not to react.
This my dear friends, is how you shall attain that highest form of wisdom which is buried deep in your subconscious and will only surface itself in all its glory after your subconscious is purified from all the bad mental volitions and eventually be fully conscious, and this is exactly where Sila and Samma Samadhi comes to help.
A lot of people have this misunderstanding that to take refuge in Buddha is to convert ones religion into Buddhism and to pray daily and light incense sticks and worship the giant Siddharta Gautama’s statue. Hoping that one day when you are in deep trouble Gautama will swish down from the clouds and solve your problems. This is terribly wrong. Gautama the Buddha Himself was never for religion or any sectarian movement, he believed in a universal movement.
To understand what it means, we need first to understand what is the meaning of Buddha? A lot of people have the impression that Buddha is Gautama’s surname or last name. But this is not so. Buddha was a title given to him after attaining enlightenment. Buddha is a Pali language, it means the enlightened one.
Therefore to take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in the enlightened one, which is different from taking refuge in Gautama, because Gautama was not the only enlightened being in this planet, there has been thousands of enlightened people before Gautama’s time, contemporary to Gautama’s time, and after Gautama’s time. Enlightened beings are every where around us, we just don’t notice them. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was right when he said that a mundane human being cannot see God even if He was standing right before him (the mundane fellow) in all His glory and might.
To take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in the quality of enlightenment. This quality of enlightenment is supported by three important factors, factors that have to be scrupulously paid attention to. The three factors, as taught by Gautama the Buddha, are: Sila (Morality), Samma Samadhi (right concentration), and Punya (wisdom).
Over here I would like to discuss the third factor, punya or wisdom, not that the other two are less important, they are all equally important in their own respective ways, they are like the legs of a tripod, if one is missing, the other two will not be able to support the balance.
In Gautama’s teachings he divided Punya into 3 different stages.
1.Sut Maya Punya
2. Chinta Maya Punya
3. Bhavna Maya Punya.
Sut Maya Punya is the wisdom you get from reading spiritual books or listening to spiritual tapes attending satsangs held by sages and philosophers. This is the first stage and the easiest to attain, it is also the easiest to loose (let me see if you remember the point written on page 162 of any self help book when you are in deep trouble and going through emotional upheaval; the last thing you want to think about is what is written in any particular book). An easy way to understand this is when you enter a restaurant and read the menu and attain the knowledge of the food served there.
Chinta Maya Punya is the second stage, this is a wisdom you get from your own intellectual, for example when you are attending a funeral of someone close to you and your intellectual starts thinking, “nothing in this world lasts forever.” This is a wisdom attained by your own intellect (after the funeral you go outside find that your car is stolen and then you go “my car is stolen! Iam finished!” and there goes your wisdom.). This can be compared to when after reading the menu in the restaurant you start seeing the people around you enjoying the food and you say to yourself, “hmm..the food looks very delicious in this restaurant.” To attain this wisdom one must have some degree or knowing of wisdom.
The third stage which is the Bhavna Maya Punya, is very hard to attain, very hard to comprehend and conceive by us everyday folks, this is a wisdom you experience. Not to be mistaken as the wisdom you get from experience, which will be Chinta maya punya again. But to experience wisdom, it is quite unheard of since a lot of us perceive wisdom as a set of wise words said by some sages and philosophers and some intellectual genius, but wisdom does not end there. This wisdom, can only be experienced when you are pure, when you have performed a deep rooted surgical operation of your subconscious mind.
Gautama started to have an inkling feeling of this when he started his meditation under the banyan tree. After going everywhere listening to talks by saints and sages, he thought to himself, “This is not enough, even after being taught all this wisdom and after reading all the holy scriptures I keep doing the same mistake, I am still miserable, there needs to be something more powerful.”
No matter how many books or how many talks and satsangs we listen to, we are most likely to make the same mistakes, because by reading this books and listening to these talks we are only attaining knowledge at a conscious level, only the surface level gets cleansed but it does not do anything about the roots, where as the real problem lies within the roots. Not that it is bad to read books and listening to talks, they are good of course, they give you knowledge, and they give you some degree of awareness. But after that we go back to being slaves of our mental volition. This mental volition can only be changed if we stop reacting by craving when something good happens, and stop reacting with aversion when something bad happens. The Buddha always teaches us to take the middle path; to just accept and move one, to take action but not to react.
This my dear friends, is how you shall attain that highest form of wisdom which is buried deep in your subconscious and will only surface itself in all its glory after your subconscious is purified from all the bad mental volitions and eventually be fully conscious, and this is exactly where Sila and Samma Samadhi comes to help.
posted by suraj at 5:15 AM
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