A Pebble for Your Pocket by Thich Nhat Hanh

Author:Thich Nhat Hanh [Hanh, Thich Nhat]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-937006-06-8
Publisher: Parallax Press
Published: 2006-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

If you had been there with Ananda, and if you had been very mindful, you might have felt that Buddha and Mara were friends. They meet each other like day and night, like flower and garbage coming together. This is a very deep teaching of the Buddha.

Now you have an idea of what kind of relationship exists between Buddha and Mara. Buddha is like a flower, very fresh and beautiful. Mara is like garbage, smelly, covered with flies, and unpleasant to touch. Mara is not at all pleasant, but if you know how to help transform Mara, Mara will become Buddha. And if you don’t know how to take care of the Buddha, Buddha will become Mara.

Looking at things in this way, we know that the non-rose elements, including the garbage, have come together in order to make the rose possible. So the Buddha is something like a rose. But if you look deeply into the Buddha, you see Mara; Buddha is made of Mara elements. And when you understand this Buddhist teaching, you see the emptiness of everything, because nothing has its own absolute existence. A rose is made of non-rose elements, so it has no separate existence; that is why it is called “empty.” A rose is empty of a separate self, because it is always made of non-rose elements.

Interbeing includes everything, not only Buddha and Mara, roses and garbage, but also suffering and happiness, good and evil. Take suffering, for instance. Suffering is made of happiness, and happiness is made of suffering. Good is made of evil, and evil is made of good. Right is made of left, and left is made of right. This needs that in order to be. Removing this, that will disappear. The Buddha said, “This is, because that is.” This is a very special and important teaching of Buddhism.

So the practice of Buddhist meditation begins with the acceptance of the rose and the garbage in us. When we see the rose in us, we’re happy, but we are aware that if we don’t take good care of it, it will quickly become a piece of garbage. Therefore, we learn how to take care of the rose so that it will stay with us longer. When it begins to deteriorate into garbage, we are not afraid, because we know how to transform the garbage into the rose again. So when you witness a feeling of distress, if you look deeply into that feeling, you will see a tiny seed of happiness and liberation in it. That is how transformation takes place.

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