Related Links: 1. What's the Big Deal About Buddhism? (http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/forum/for_19980322.shtml) 2. Dalai Lama, My Uncle (http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/interviews/int_20000525.shtml)
One of America's most respected Buddhist teachers distills a lifetime of practice and teaching in this groundbreaking exploration of the new Buddhist tradition taking root on American soil. ...... Sometime in the early 1970s, two Buddhist masters met in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of them, Kalu Rinpoche, was a renowned Tibetan meditation master who had spent many years in solitary retreat in the remote mountain caves of Tibet. The other was Seung Sahn, a Korean Zen master who had recently come to the United States and was supporting himself by working in a Providence, Rhode Island, Laundromat, slowly planting the seeds of Zen in the minds of those coming to wash their clothes. At this now famous meeting of enlightened minds, Seung Sahn held up an orange and, in classic Zen dharma combat fashion, demanded, "What is this?" ...... The book explores the answer to this question. It is neither a scholarly examination of comparative Buddhism nor an exhaustive study of particular traditions; rather, it is an inquiry born from my own meditation practice and from a compelling interest in understanding and realizing the essence of freedom. The exploration leads to some fundamental and thorny issues: What is the ultimate nature of the liberated mind? Is it something already here that we need to recognize, as some of the traditions suggest? Or does it have a transcendent nature quite apart from our ordinary experience? Is it the total absence of any nature at all? Is it all of these? Do different methods of meditation practice in fact lead to different ends? Or, on the path of One Dharma, is there a way of holding even opposing perspectives in a greater unity?
The investigation of these questions requires great humility. When we step outside the safe bounds of the various individual traditions, each consistent within itself, we need to acknowledge the exploratory nature of a unified theory of Dharma, continually testing it against both our experience and the teachings as they have been passed down over thousands of years. In Buddhism there are many names for ultimate freedom: Buddha-Nature, the Unconditioned, Dharmakaya, the Unborn, the Pure Heart, Mind Essence, Nature of Mind, Ultimate Bodhicitta, Nirvana. Various Buddhist traditions give it different names, each emphasizing certain aspects of this absolute nature. Although philosophical disputes often arise because of these different perspectives. Some of these issues have been debated for thousands of years. A harmonizing understanding comes when we move away from the confines of metaphysical systems or statements and enter into the world of direct experience.
