Talking About Four-fold Stage Of Mindfulness In Sibu
■Book 104 - A Plethora Of Scenic Splendours
■Written by GrandMaster Sheng-yen Lu
At 6:30 p.m. on January 2nd, 1993 I gave a sermon on the four-fold stage of mindfulness in Sibu, a town beside Terang River. Sibu has slightly more than one hundred thousand inhabitants, its town centre appears to be prosperous, tranquil and peaceful.
The ritual was held at Catholic High School. Five thousand participants jammed the whole hall, with people overflowing outside. Even the school field was full, as close-circuited TV was set up for the function. Nothing like this happened before.
The Four-fold Stage Of Mindfulness is also known as the Four-fold Stage Of Thought or Meditation. Most Hinayana practitioners will cultivate this dharma after they have mastered the five-fold procedure for quieting the mind.
The five-fold procedure are:
1. Vileness of all things
2. Pity for all
3. Causality
4. Right discrimination
5. Breathing
The four-fold stage of mindfulness consists of contemplating:
1. The body as impure and utterly filthy
2. Sensation or consciousness, as always resulting in suffering
3. Mind as impermanent, merely one sensation after another
4. Things in general as being dependent and without a nature of their own.
Wisdom is derived from following the four-fold stage of mindfulness.
The four regulators to cause the mind to be in tranquillity, I mentioned in Sibu are:
1. Cutting off method - Once the thought is formed, it will be cut off immediately.
2. Free flowing method - Once the thought is formed, one must be calm and let it develop freely.
3. Watching picture method - Behave like a child, watch the pictures and not be perturbed.
4. The combination use of the last three methods.
I firmly believe, cultivating Tantra by meditation is nothing more than self-control, self-purification and self-salvation.
For instance, observing precepts is a self-control measure. Meditation is indulging in self-purification, and obtaining wisdom is considered a self-salvation.
From the stand point of noble eight-fold path, self-control can be achieved by correct speech, correct livelihood, and correct conduct. Self-purification is a result of correct remembrance and correct meditation, while self-salvation is obtained by correct views, correct thought and purpose and correct zeal.
Then I gave a sermon on “Wu Shi” at Miao Li Chapter, Sibu.
Wu-non is the key to enlightenment.
Wu Shi means everything is non existent.
A monk from Zhao province ever said the following, “To learn Zen Buddhism, one must comprehend the meaning of “Grandmaster's barrier” thoroughly. To be enlightened as a Buddha, one must be absolute. Without these two conditions, one will only be learning from the spirit of trees. But what is Grandmaster's barrier, it is non-existence. It is the essence of Zen School, which is also known as a school without a door.”
“Believing everything is non-existent, one will be able to extricate oneself from a predicament”. I concede this doctrine is the most inconceivable. It is precisely how an enlightened person feels. This is the supreme mystic enlightenment, it is almost equivalent to Nirvana itself.
To me, everything is non-existent, no matter what happened. Non-existence is the truth, the nirvana. There is non-birth, non-destruction.
To tell the truth, if a cultivator is not bothered by “birth”, and “destruction”, and is able to be in tranquillity, he has attained the fundamental law of immortality.
A treatise of Prajna mentioned, “Believe in immortality, and know the nature of non-birth and non-destruction, one will be able to flow freely, and overcome all the hindrance. That is why the law is called the wisdom of non-birth.”
It also mentioned ,”Wu Sheng Ren”-the wisdom of non-birth, i.e. simply put is an understanding that there is non-birth for anything big or small. He who comprehends this doctrine will not create any more karma, and will become a Bodhisattva who in his progress towards Buddhahood, will never retrograde to a lower state than to which he has attained, a Bodhisattva known as Aparivartya.
