Date: 08/10/2024 08/11/2024
Location: Star Lake Meditation Center
Teacher: Otto Huang
Dharma Talk
The Unremarkable that Does Not Lead to Nirvana
A Parable of Treating an Arrow Wound
During a period when the Buddha was visiting the city of Shravasti in the kingdom of Kosala, staying at Jetavana, the park of Anathapindika, the elder Moggallana had a thought while meditating alone:
“The Blessed One does not express his views on whether ‘the world is eternal or not, finite or infinite, the soul is the same as or different from the body, there is life after death or not.’ Even when asked, he sets aside these questions or refuses to answer. I really do not agree with or accept this approach of the Blessed One. If he does not tell me the correct answers to these topics, then I will challenge him and leave him.”
So, Elder Moggallana went to see the Buddha and demanded clear answers to these ten topics, admitting if he did not know them, or else he would leave him.
The Buddha responded:
“Moggallana, have I ever told you, ‘Come, Moggallana! Come and practice the holy life with me, and I will answer these questions about whether the world is eternal, finite, or infinite… etc.?’
‘No, Blessed One!’
‘Or when you came to be ordained, did you ask me to resolve these issues as a condition of your following the holy life with me?’
‘No, Blessed One!’
‘If that is so, you misguided man, whom do you think you are abandoning? What exactly are you abandoning?
If someone wishes to practice the holy life only after getting these answers, he may die before ever finding them. It’s like a man who has been shot with a poisoned arrow and, while his relatives and friends quickly seek a doctor to treat him, insists on knowing the caste, name, height, complexion, and residence of the person who shot him, as well as the type of bow, the kind of string, the makeup of the arrow, and the type of feather used, before he allows them to remove the arrow. By the time all these details are known, he would have died.
Moggallana, whether the world is eternal or not, the problems of aging, sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair exist, and I teach how to understand and end these. The questions of whether the world has limits, or whether there is life after death, are not things I speak about.
Why don’t I discuss these? Because discussing them is not beneficial, does not lead to enlightenment or dispassion, does not lead to cessation, to peace, or to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, or to Nirvana.
What do I discuss? I speak about suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
Why do I speak about these? Because understanding them is beneficial, leads to detachment, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, enlightenment, and Nirvana.”
