IS IT TRUE OR ILLUSIONARY?
YATHĀBHŪTA, or NOT YATHĀBHŪTA?
The reflection of the Buddhist teaching trip to Toronto last year has still been lingering in my mind till now. It is just the story of some propellers of a plane disappearing and that of Toronto city moving closer to me.
To other people, it might be trivial, not new and strange. When driving to work every day, the scenery on both side of the road rush rapidly backward as if it were not us who are dashing forward. Or when we park our car in the parking lot, the car next to us is carefully backing up. Then, we suddenly feel our car is slowly moving onward. This happens every day, but we do not take any account of it.
I wonder why, at least in the recent 15 years, I have been frequently flying, but I have never seen a propeller evaporate. I knew it for the first time; and it was also the first time I ever saw the entire splendid city, sparkling and glittering above the ocean, was moving towards me. I immediately apprehended the “being” at that instant of time was the very “illusion.” The “what-is” results from our six senses while the “what-illusory” from our insight. The former itself is the very latter and vice-versa. In other words, the latter is also the former.
The “what-is” is a phenomenon. The “what-illusory” is the nature. From the Nature come out the Forms. The Forms originate from the essence of the Nature. Nature and Forms are neither the two nor the one. However, they are not different from each other. But they both cannot be incorporated and separated.
In human beings’ world of phenomena, what is seen or felt via their senses are usually relative and comparative. They are similar to delusions or hallucination from perception. So, what identified by senses merely looks like the real one. That is why the word “Yathābhūta” comes into being. “Yathā” means “as, like” and “Bhūta” refers to “real, true”.
Nature has never changed. But Forms always do. Life around us is the subject of changefulness. The mundane world consists of Form and Material. They are the worldly phenomena discerned by human senses. They are everywhere with various shades, colors and tastes… Each of them is unique and never alike others. So is every human being. How come? It is just because the materialistic world generated by the “collective and integrating conditions.”
And what about the Nature? How is it? Where is it? It is the Emptiness. It is the Bareness. It is non-persistence. Only empty and bare. Then, phenomena and humankind are not fabricated until favorable conditions gather and coordinate with one another.
Emptiness is infinitive with nothing inside. It is unchangeable. Then, it is pure, immobile, tranquil and transparent. That is the temporary explanation because how purity, serenity or immobility could be over there, couldn’t they? It is a mere provisional comparison to this noisily moving, and back-and-forth changing world that brings too many sorrows and sufferings to people. I know when using descriptive language, we stray from the truth. But without words, how could we express what we have acquired to the others?
Nature has never been changed. It is formless, colorless, soundless without contents and quality. What make it suddenly transform into shapes, colors and sounds that when end, we cannot see them anymore. Where are they? The Buddha said “A phenomenon exists due to a collection of conditions. When some or all of those withers, it returns to its own essence which is vacant, shapeless and invisible.”
What make Nature switch into phenomena? The Buddha temporarily said it is the rules of transformation or the laws of impermanence that can be viewed as magic tricks in their natural changing process. The science of physics now calls them the energies that always move and change to turn into the materialistic world. Innumerable tiny particles in over speeding movement have manufactured materials that we assume solid and durable. With those, sciences do advocate the world is illusionary whereas human beings think they are real and lasting.
Therefore, with our senses, we feel the “what-is.” It is the “As-Is Truth,” “Yathābhūta,” which is akin to the Truth, but it is not truly stable and permanent. It is also the “As-Is Delusion,” akin to a dream. I can repeat again that the former, the “As-Is Truth,” is the phenomena perceived by human senses and the latter, the “As-Is Delusion,” the Nature recognized by the Prajña Wisdom.
Bhikkhuni Thích Nữ Triệt Như
Śūnyatā Monastery, Friday, March 29, 2024
English version by Ngọc Huyền
Seclusion of NonSpeech, Early Spring, 2024
Link to Vietnamese article: https://tanhkhong.org/p105a4113/triet-nhu-tieng-hat-giua-troi-bai-48-la-that-hay-la-huyen-
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