Words from the Heart of Wisdom By Khai Thien Dear Friends in Dharma, The following words stem from the deeply esteemed respect  of the author as he knelt in front of the miracle sublime of the Prajñāpāramitā Hrdaya Sūtra.                                                                    Los Angeles August, 2007   Your true life of happiness does not actually need a “self” to exist. The individual self is that which variously separates you into different modes: gain, loss, success, failure, love, hatred, fame, and shame. You are able to live freely and peacefully in the rise and fall of life whenever all notions of self are given up. The concept of “self” is but an illusion. The individual self is always the greatest obstruction causing all kinds of anxiety and suffering in your life. The truth is, the more you immerse yourself in discrimination, the more selfish your life will be. From the discriminations of self, doubt, judgment, and imagination constantly spurt out in your mind, covering all sources of light energy in your life. Immersed in the unceasing thinking of indefinite subjects, you become a crazy person who speaks nonsense all day long without knowing what he is saying. The more you base your lifestyle on discriminations, the more stressful and uncomfortable you will to be. It is really foolish to trade your happiness for suffering by trying too hard just to embrace the notions of the unreal things: “I,” “mine,” and “my self”! The concept of “non-discrimination” in Buddhist thought of course does not mean “not knowing what is good or what is bad,” but in stead it is a “challenge” to the attachment to the independent self of each individual—or simply, the egocentric view. The only point that makes waves different from water is the waves’ manifestation. Discrimination emerging from the self-view is the very way leading to stubborn attachment, which eventually ruins your ability of living peacefully and free of all delusions. The more you observe the water and waves, the more you understand the effectiveness and danger of the dualistic discrimination, particularly when this discrimination arises in the thirst of your crazy attachment to the “I,” “mine,” and “my self”. If we look at the phenomena, suffering and happiness are quite different from one another, like pleasure and sadness. However, if we look deeply into their nature, we can see that both suffering and happiness arise from the same foundation: the mind. Indeed, pleasure arises from the mind, as does sadness. Suffering and happiness are all manifestations from the mind. Your real life does not need a name; your real happiness does not need a name either. Be nameless once to enjoy your real life! The Heart Sutra would like to share an idea with you: “what you are” is just a dream! In the reality of a dream you feel that everything is true, but it is true in the dream only; once you wake up, all that has happened in your dream no longer exists. The same can be said of our life. The more we practice non-attachment, the happier we will be. Whenever all the burdens of attachment to gain, loss, win, failure, fame, power, etc., are released in our minds, we are then truly free and able to enjoy true happiness right here and now. The happiest moments in life come when the individual self goes. The discovery that our real lives do not actually need a “self” to exist is enchanting—just as in the case of a rose, you may call it by any other name, but its sweet essence remains the same. To be awake, you don’t have to do anything extra at all, only practice looking deeply and durably into what is rising and falling around you as well as inside your body (your breath, for instance. It is important to note that, although you age, your mind doesn’t. Until you have truly lived in equanimity and non-attachment, your capacity of enlightenment cannot become true. A true awaking appears in our minds on the way to enlightenment, like an old man suddenly transformed into a little kid when he himself places down all burdens of attachment in his mind to play with the children. In the reality of mind-stream, age or agedness has no special meaning. In the world of confusion and imagination, agedness is quite impressive because of its connection linking all rising and falling events in one’s life. You should not become attached to the concept of age too much because the nature of age is nothing more than the accumulation of pleasure and sadness in life. As long as you are able to keep your childish mind, or take the childish mind as the foundation of your life, you remain the authentic merry child living in a beautiful and peaceful world. Your auditory ability may change over the course of time, but your auditory sense—like the original source of mind that goes beyond all notions of birth or death—never changes. You may enjoy the non-self happiness only when you are alive as such. It is important to note that, when you are immersed in the world of dreams and imagination, you lose your real life. You may able to obtain the realm of true happiness not at the end of your life, but right in this moment, in the here and now, within this body and this mundane world. Just ask yourself what, until this very moment, have you grasped firmly in your hand during a short and ever-changing life of humanity? Instead of someday leaving the world with your uncompleted desires full of gains, losses, successes, failures, why don’t you here and now live a peaceful life with the present happiness—a happiness without self? Like a swan leaving the lakes, you certainly are able to live a peaceful life free from all delusions and worldly bondage right in this body and this world. You don’t have to wait until completing all desires in this human world and ascending to heaven because such a journey will never happen. To truly perceive the truth, you must let your eyes return to their original state—that is, no longer limit your eyes by “what you are”! Actually, fear and hope are the two permanent factors in our minds; they exist in every moment, even in our dreams. Only the pure eyes are able to observe existence as it is. To step onto the planet of happiness is not, in principle, a difficult or serious task; to get there, you need not to do any extra work, but cut short your attachment. If you are able to welcome both the good and the bad together, you become a great person. Whenever you are able to control yourself, you are able to control the world around you. Happiness and truth, to a certain extent, are the same; when you discover truth, you simultaneously achieve happiness. What will happen to your life if you give up all the complexity of discriminations? Won’t the world be empty? Ruined? No, it is not like that. When all the complexities of discrimination are set down, you will truly put yourself in the reality-stream of happiness while your heart of great compassion will simultaneously be awaked. In our habitual thinking and intellect, happiness and truth conventionally differ; in the ultimate truth, however, they are not at all different from one another. On the path to happiness and truth, the more you want to choose, the more confused you will become. Overcoming sufferings in the sense of “living free” from all delusions is a practical way of wisdom, capable of leading to the present happiness, here and now. The heart of great compassion is the very source of life. Compassion is that which nurtures your sainted mind and, like a guardian boat, saves the lives of others as well. The great compassion and perfect wisdom, the Prajñāpāramitā, are always the career of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. Living with the great compassion, you never feel fatigued or bored in helping and benefiting others, even when your forehead is full of sweat. Streams of tears may sometimes flow down your cheeks in harmony with the sufferings of others or of those who are wandering the streets with hunger and sickness. The great compassion is an immortal flower. Indeed, you cannot live a life of true happiness without the heart of great compassion.