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Preface
Like many students of the Dharma, I’ve noticed from time to time in my life of practice that certain sutras and their related teachings and practices will speak very strongly to me. If I try to ignore their call, it will seem as if their lessons are being placed right in front of me every time I turn around! Over the years, I’ve learned to be attentive and listen, not only with my ears, but with my whole body and mind to the Dharma that wants to come forth and be heard. I’ve learned to honor what’s arising rather than dismiss it, since often the inspirations that I’m quick to dismiss end up being the most transformative and important at that point in my life.
When I’m struck by a sutra, a teaching, or a practice, I sit, eat, walk, and breathe with it as if it were a friend on the path. I do this for a period of time—sometimes days or years—allowing it to sink deeply into my mind-stream, using the lens of insight and the perspective that it provides as a framework to reflect on my own life and the world around me. In the Plum Village tradition founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh—the tradition to which I belong—we emphasize practicing with the teachings in each moment of our daily lives, as well as during formal meditation sessions. Mindful of my teacher’s guidance that every hour of study needs to be balanced with at least seven hours of practice, I begin my research.
Dear friend, every single time I’ve allowed myself to practice with a sutra in this way, I have been profoundly surprised by the discoveries that have emerged.
About six years ago, I found my attention being strongly drawn toward the Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings. To date, it has been published in English by Parallax Press three times: in a small pamphlet by my teacher called The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings, in the Plum Village chanting and recitation book Chanting from the Heart, and with commentary in the book Two Treasures. My teacher, Thay—the Vietnamese word for “teacher” and the term that all of Thich Nhat Hanh students use to address him—valued this sutra greatly. However, I didn’t share his feeling at first.
To say that my attraction to this sutra surprised me is the understatement of the century, since for many years of my monastic life, I didn’t understand its appeal at all. None of the aspects of sacred texts that I usually enjoy were present in it. There’s no poetry, no great narrative to hook me in, and certainly no grand visions of celestial bodhisattvas offering to help the Buddha transmit the Dharma!
Truthfully, I would have to say that in my early years of monastic training, I found the Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings boring and pedestrian, almost like a shopping list. I remember stoically enduring its recitation many, many times. I would close my eyes and zone out whenever I heard the first line, “Wholeheartedly day and night …” and then breathe a big sigh of relief when I heard the final words, “… dwelling forever in peace.”
Now, I’ll be the first to say that I may not be the sharpest student. But for many years I was absolutely mystified as to why this particular sutra—out of all the other great candidates—was praised by great Buddhist masters throughout history. The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings was so important to Thay that he offered it to the boat people whom he rescued while working on the ship Roland in the South China Sea in the 1970s. In Plum Village, while training us, Thay would remind us again and again to “Please treasure this sutra.”
With this background you’ll understand why I was initially unenthusiastic when the Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings kept popping up on my radar! But over the years I’ve learned to trust these inspirations, so I began reading one insight from the sutra each morning and practicing with it throughout the day. After some time, I noticed that each realization was incredibly condensed, and that I would discover something new each time I practiced with and reflected upon it. To give each realization more time to unfold in my mind and life, I then decided to practice one per week, and had a similar experience. Later on, I found that what worked best for me was to sit, walk, breathe, and eat with each realization for about a month at a time.
After some time, it seemed as if it might be useful to offer some of my journey with this ancient text to friends who were coming to Deer Park Monastery for Days of Mindfulness in the hope that it might spark a love of and appreciation for the sutras in general, and the Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings in particular. So, over the course of a couple of years, whenever the community invited me to offer a teaching, I continued to share my reflections on this sutra. A number of friends wrote to the monastery saying that they had found these talks very useful in their practice, so eventually I thought it might be useful to offer this humble book with the hope that it would inspire you to discover for yourself, and more importantly, apply the riches contained in this text.
I recommend that you read this book slowly, perhaps a chapter a month. Then you might like to start over again, because I think you’ll find—just as I did—that the teachings contained in this sutra are profound and they’ll keep revealing themselves to you just like a rose that slowly opens its petals to reveal layer upon layer of beauty. In this simple book I’m merely bringing forth a few of the treasures already present in this pithy sutra. My commentary is by no means complete, and that’s intentional. The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings is part of a lifelong process of discovery for me, and I hope it will be for you too. I hope that you’ll savor these eight realizations, letting them sink deeply into your body and mind until you experience them welling up from within yourself. In this way, you may go deeper and further than I have.
So, with this in mind, it bears repeating: please don’t approach the sutra or this book like a novel, rushing through it in order to reach the “big reveal” in the final pages, where all the plot points come together. In Buddhist practice, as in life itself, the big reveal is in each and every moment. The advanced practices are the most basic, and the deepest insight is often the simplest—the kind of insight that will bring you back to what part of you has known all along.
As you’ll discover, the Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings is not an analytical text or a theoretical treatise; it is a practical and down-to-earth meditation manual which provides a very structured and concrete exposition of the steps we can take to realize the entirety of the Buddhist Path for ourselves. In fact, in this concise sutra we’re offered a complete overview of the Path in seed form, from the simplest understanding to the most profound. The great masters have said that if all the Buddhist sutras, texts, and commentaries were suddenly lost, the entirety of the Buddhist Path of practice and insight could be recreated from this one sutra.
Have you ever thought about what your “desert island sutra” might be—the text that you would take with you on a journey if you could take only one? Mine would certainly be the Sutra on the Eight Realizations since it contains within it the distilled essence of all aspects of the Buddhist Path. In this deceptively simple text, we’re presented with the fruit of the essential insight of the Buddha in concentrated form. He’s saying to us, “This is what I’ve awakened to. Here, I’m sharing my Dharma body with you. If you’d like to have a similar awakening, then please take on these subjects for meditation and apply them in your daily lives. Then you’ll realize the path for yourselves.”
I love the fact that in this sutra there’s a strong emphasis on practicing Buddhism right in the heart of our daily lives. The subjects of meditation presented here are not only intended to be contemplated on the meditation cushion, but all throughout the day. Even more importantly, the insights gained are to be applied in our everyday lives.
In the Korean language there’s a beautiful phrase to describe a Dharma teacher—지도법사, ji do boep sa—which means “they who point the way.” The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings does just this—it’s a kind spiritual friend, a great teacher offering “pointing out” instructions for us to walk the way for ourselves, starting right where we are.
I’ve noticed that when people come to me for a consultation, there is a tendency in me to want to present them with the insights they’re looking for all gift-wrapped and ready to digest. Within my own very limited capacity, I did that for many years. But after a while, I began to notice that this didn’t lead to lasting transformation. Students just kept coming back with the same issues over and over. So, for the last few years, I’ve chosen a more challenging path: to follow the example offered in this sutra and simply point out a way.
Please notice that I say “a way” and not the way.
There are a thousand pathways up a mountain, and all of them have the potential to reach the summit. I feel that the role of a good spiritual friend is to help create an environment in which the other person can discover ways to transform their situation for themselves. This is empowerment, and a kind spiritual friend, just like this sutra, will point us in the right direction to discover our own path of transformation, which has been right under our feet all along.
I am reminded of the old Zen story of a student who came to her teacher and asked, “Please show me where my true path is!” The master looked at her for a moment, then used her walking stick to draw a line in the dirt starting right at the student’s feet. Then she responded, “Your true path begins right here.”
“Path” is a word often used as a metaphor for the spiritual journey. In the Nagara Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya 12.65) the Buddha described the path as an ancient overgrown forest trail leading to a long-forgotten, ancient city. A person needs to look very carefully to find its traces. This is a helpful metaphor, since we have a tendency to approach our meditation practice as a technique or a checklist, rather than as a path—an unfolding, spiral journey. One of the many surprising things about it is that it will bring you back to your point of departure again and again, and yet each time, something will have changed. The moment we think we’ve completed our work on a particular area, we realize that there’s a whole new level of understanding that begins to open up to us. With a shift in perspective, everything changes.
My teacher Thay once said to me, “Brother Phap Hai, if you’re doing the same thing in twenty years, then you’ve failed.” What do you think he meant by that? Did he mean that I should change all of the outer forms of my practice? Change the times of my daily sitting meditation and chanting? Have a day off—what we in Plum Village call “a lazy day”—on a Tuesday instead of a Monday?
There is the old adage, “There are two certain things in life: death and taxes.” Well, for monastics, the two certain things are morning meditation and oatmeal for breakfast! It would have been so easy for me to misunderstand Thay and to think that he was only speaking about changing the outer form of my practice. This is our usual tendency: to get bored or jaded and then blame the outer situation, thinking that if just one condition would change, then everything would be perfect.
The Buddha’s insight was that we can change as many of the outer conditions as we like, but we’ll most likely still suffer deeply, since wherever we go, we bring our own mind and, more importantly, our habitual tendencies. In his deceptively simple statement, Brother Phap Hai, if you’re doing the same thing in twenty years, then you will have failed, Thay invited me to show up fully for each moment, to be willing to embrace my life’s ordinary, often unglamorous routine, and to approach practices in which I’ve perhaps become a little too comfortable with a fresh mind and heart.
Mindfulness and the Eight Realizations
Mindfulness, the natural capacity to be present and direct our attention, is always mindfulness of something: our breath, our steps, our feelings, our motivations, and so on. When applied correctly, mindfulness is not a passive process, but rather an active and engaged awareness. Mindfulness gives rise to the energy of “investigation”—in Pali, dhammaviccaya—which encourages us to become curious about the object of our attention, noticing aspects we hadn’t noticed before. In this natural and easeful way, if we apply mindfulness correctly, we’ll gradually travel the entire path of practice, since the Dharma has an inherent quality of leading onward. This means that if we apply one practice correctly, then very naturally it will lead us forward on our path of transformation.
Let us take the sixteen exercises of mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati) as an example. These are the common foundation of practice in several Buddhist traditions in Asia and the world. In the beginning, we simply train ourselves to recognize and dwell with our in- and outbreath. That’s it. Let’s face it, for many of us, that one exercise can be a big accomplishment in itself! Then, over time, as our attention settles and we rest with the awareness of our inbreath and outbreath without so much effort, our attention is naturally drawn into noticing the unique texture of each breath: long, short, and so on. From there, we naturally become more aware of and sensitive to the way that breath is experienced throughout the whole body, noticing that respiration doesn’t take place just in our lungs but throughout our entire body. Next, we become aware of various aspects of feeling and sensation, in an ever-unfolding journey of discovery.
I often share with my friends that our practice lives don’t need to be too complicated. It seems to me that one simple practice applied correctly and wholeheartedly—mindfulness of breathing, stopping with the sound of the bell, walking meditation, and so on—can be enough to transform a whole life, since each practice when applied correctly, will naturally contain all the others.
The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings offers us eleven essential subjects for mindful contemplation with the intention that we apply the transformational insights gained to our daily lives: impermanence, suffering, non-self/emptiness/interbeing, impurity, the nature of desire, contentment, diligence, understanding, generosity, sameness, and compassion. Each of these subjects is a starting point for a journey that will transform our entire consciousness. They are not end-points, but rather doorways through which we are invited to walk. As we move through this text together, we’ll explore each of these topics.
In my reflections on each realization, I’ve tried to maintain the same invitational spirit as the original sutra and not get too technical. My reflections are exactly that: reflections. As you invite these realizations into your being, you’ll have your own insights and discoveries, and that’s as it should be.
I hope you’ll allow this sutra to be a companion on your own journey, and an inspiration as you travel your own path of awakening to who you really are. As Thay reminds us in his beautiful introduction to the meditation manual The Sun My Heart: “Meditators since the beginning of time have known that they need to use their own eyes to encounter reality. Wisdom is a flowing stream and not an icon to be enshrined in a museum.”
Brother Phap Hai
Mountain Spring Monastery, Australia
April 2021
