The Magical Effect of Samadhi Dharma

The Magical Effect of Samadhi Dharma
Apr /29/ 2023—Apr / 30/ 2023

Hello everyone, welcome to our Dharma talk at Great Thunder Meditation Center.

2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama, the prince of Magadha empire, tried to explore the truth of the universe and rescue all living beings’ sufferings. At the age of 29, he resolutely gave up his throne and left his wife and son to pursue his spiritual life. He spent six years on the snow-capped mountains for ascetic practice; he worked so hard on samadhi cultivation. After that, he meditated for forty-nine days under the Bodhi tree and finally attained the enlightenment when he watched the morning star. He became Buddha, whose name is Shakyamuni and founded Buddhism to teach all beings.

As we all know, Buddha Shakyamuni was an ancient Buddha who came back with an extraordinary foundation. Why did he have to spend six years to practice assiduously for samadhi? What kind of magical use is there for samadhi?

According to the Mahayana Ksitigarbharaja Ten Dharma-cakra Sutra, after the Kṣitigarbha’s merits were praised by the Buddha, a Bodhisattva asked the Buddha: “Where is the virtuous men come from? The Buddha Pure land he lives is far away from here? What kind of merits and extol someone like this before, please show us mercy and tell us his merit and extraordinary Dharma.”?

The Buddha said: “Listen! Listen to your heart and think about it! I should say a few for you. The great being who achieved acquire immeasurable merits can stay at Lankāvatāra samadhi, can realize the realm of the Tathagata, he attained anutpattika-dharma-kṣānti, he is unrestrained with different Dharmas, he has been able to withstand all wisdom position, he has been able to release souls from purgatory by wisdom sea, he has been able to live in the lion rapid samadhi, he is good to climb all the wisdom mountain, has been able to destroy the heretics of evil theory. He intends to lead all sentient being to be maturity for the Buddha’s Dharma; all beings in his pure land are stays in the samadhi with him.”
The great being lives in a different pure land and stays in different samadhi by he wishes, he acquired immeasurable merits, helps immeasurable sentient beings.

The great being lives in a different pure land and stays in different samadhi by he wishes; if you can attain the wisdom samadhi, you can show all sentient beings in your Buddha land the same samadhi realm as you attained by your samadhi power.”

The great being lives in a different pure land and stays in different samadhi by he wishes, if you can attain the wisdom samadhi, you can teach all sentient beings in your Buddha-land to worship and offer Buddhas with the incredible sacrificial vessel by your samadhi power.”

In this way, the Buddha said altogether about 30 merits and demerits of the Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha’s due to his great samadhi. It is incredible. According to the Flower Adornment Sutra, the Bodhisattva from 6th rank can attain nirodha-samāpatti, the Bodhisattva from 7th rank can keep their mind in nirodha-samāpatti all the time so that they can use their heart in samadhi, make the magical effect of heart and self-nature, to exert its natural magical effect and benefit all sentient beings.

Maybe you will say, I know this is incredible, but the realm of Buddha and Bodhisattva is too far away from me. How can I imagine that? Then let’s go back to Zen, pure land and secret Dharma, to see the magical effect from our familiar point.

Zen practice often emphasizes insight clear your heart, find one’s true self-nature. The so-called clear heart is to find your self-nature, anutpada-anirodha and could produce all kinds of Dharma from our five skandhas body—seeing the self-nature means to see the true nature of Buddhahood from the whole world. To realize the truth and see the Buddha’s nature, we must go through the process of Zen practice. Except for the virtue to attain Bodhisattva, the most important thing is samadhi power.

The Zen patriarchs set up three levels of Zen practice: clearing the heart, seeing nature, and keeping samadhi. Correspondingly, Zen practice can also be divided into three stages. When we talk about clearing heart, the method of studying is to use the ability of the concept of thinking to find out what it really is like to hide in your own five skandhas body. Because the true heart is not from the form realm, it cannot be seen, and its behavior is extremely subtle, it runs with five abundance skandhas in every second, if the Zen participant does not have a right understanding and extremely subtle observation ability, it is impossible to identify the true heart from the five skandhas and the eight Consciousness. The ability to observe and think is not our ability to analyze, judge, and reason in the language, but it is a state of delusion in the heart. Without improper thoughts, it is the situation of leaving the language and logic to think about “Who is chanting the name of Buddha?”. At right timing, you will correspond with Buddha; you know where the true heart is. This ability to continuously carry out the concept of thinking is exercised and requires a relatively good samadhi power. Without samadhi power, we can’t see the beginning of words, and you will stay in the analyzing and language, which does not help to find the truth.

For pure land cultivation, samadhi power also plays a very important role. The Pure Land’s essence is to reborn to the pure western land of ultimate bliss or the Oriental Glass pure land or other Buddha pure lands. No matter which Pure Lands of the Buddha you want to born, at the end of this life you have to keep your heart clear, recite Buddha’s name by your heart then you may able to reborn to the Buddha pure land.

In the Buddha Speaks Infinite Life Sutra, Amitabha said: “If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten quarters who sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and call my name, even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain perfect enlightenment. Excluded, however, are those who commit the five gravest offences and abuse the right Dharma”.

In the Buddha Expounding Amitabha Sutra, Buddha said: “Sariputra, if there is a good man or woman who hears about Amitabha Buddha and keeps chanting His holy name for one day, two days, three days, four days, five days, six days or seven days with one mind free from distractions, then such a person, upon the end of his life, will see Amitabha Buddha and His holy assembly appear before him. At the time of death, this person’s mind will not be perturbed and will take rebirth in the Utmost Joy Land of Amitabha Buddha. Sariputra, I see such an advantage; hence， I say such words. Whosoever hears this should develop the vow to be born in that land.”

Suppose you want to reborn to the Buddha pure land. In that case, you must be “sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to the Buddha”, then “at the time of death this person’s mind will not be perturbed and will take rebirth in the Utmost Joy Land of Amitabha Buddha”. However, sentient beings from our world have too many desires and improper thoughts. Plus at the end of life, there is so much suffering for us. How can we make “the mind will not be angry “? If we can’t attain it, how can we ensure that we can be reborn to the Utmost Joy Land of Amitabha Buddha? Therefore, the pure land cultivation emphasis reciting Buddha’s name to cultivate samadhi power. When you can keep a continually clear mind in your daily life, you may be able to keep it when you are dying. We can see how important the samadhi cultivation in the pure land cultivation.

As for the secret Dharma, the effect of samadhi seems more important. As we all know, the principle of secret Dharma practice is to make good use of Buddha and Bodhisattvas’ blessings and make the practice more efficient. The most important part of cultivation is to correspond to the Buddha and Bodhisattvas, without the samadhi power, one cannot place a heart in correspondence with the Buddha and Bodhisattvas, at this situation, even if you try your best to chant to meditate, it won’t work; also, the practice of secret Dharma brings some states, such as supernatural power, induction, etc. which need enough samadhi to control your heart. Otherwise, it is easy to go wrong and even break into the devil.

Well, after all those theories, I want to read a Zen poem for you. It was a Zen poem written by Zhang Jian in the Tang Dynasty: Where to cut the Zen wall, the peak of the southwest river. The sun left its shadow from far away from water, and the fallen leaves are full of bells. The world is empty, and issues are gone when you be still, meet your cultivation heart far away from the dust of this world. How do you know my heart still? There was a tiger trace under my bed while I never realize it. In the first half of the story, it was the scenery of the Wuru peaks and Nine years of wall-gazing of Bodhidharma. The latter half of the poem wrote practitioner’s effort was deep and indifferent; even the tiger visited him; he stayed in samadhi and did not find it. The most important thing was that the tiger did not harm him at all. Interesting, isn’t it? Like a vivid picture, now we can see the magical effect of samadhi from another angle.

Wish you can stay in the samadhhi and could not even notice a tiger’s claw print in your bed.

Thank you for the listening!