Tagged: Nagarjuna
January 29, 2012 by phong • mahayana • permalink | Comments Off

Nagarjuna’s Guide to The Bodhisattva Path // Nagarjuna Buddhism

Excerpts from ( 120-168 )

120
One’s mind should be like vajra,
Able to penetrate all dharmas.
One’s mind should also be like a mountain,
Remaining unmoved in any circumstance.

121
Delight in world-transcending discourse
And do not take pleasure in worldly words.
Personally adopt all manner of meritorious qualities.
One should then influence others to adopt them as well.

122
Cultivate the five bases of liberation.
Cultivate the ten reflections on impurity.
The eight realizations of great men
Should also be the focus of analytic contemplation and cultivation.

123
The heavenly ear, the heavenly eye,
The bases of spiritual powers, the cognition of others’ thoughts,
And the cognition of past lives and abodes—
One should cultivate purification of these five spiritual abilities.

124
The four bases of spiritual powers comprise their root.
They are zeal, vigor, mental focus, and contemplative reflection.
The four immeasurables govern them.
They are kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

125
The four elements are like poisonous serpents.
The six sense faculties are like an empty village.
The five aggregates are like assassins.
One should contemplate them in this way.

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January 28, 2012 by phong • mahayana • permalink | Comments Off

It is as if bodhi lay in the palm of one’s own right hand.

From the Bodhisambhara Sastra
By Nagarjuna

046
Where, to benefit beings and make them happy,
One would endure even the sufferings of the great hells,
How much the more the other lesser sufferings,
It is as if bodhi lay in the palm of one’s own right hand.

047
Where whatever one does, it is not for one’s self,
But solely to benefit beings and make them happy—
Because this all arises from the great compassion,
It is as if bodhi lay in the palm of one’s own right hand.

048
Where wisdom is such that one abandons frivolous discourse,
Where vigor is such that one abandons indolence,
And where giving is such that one abandons miserliness,
It is as if bodhi lay in the palm of one’s own right hand.

049
Where meditation is such that one is free of reliances or ideation,
Where morality is such that its practice is perfect and unmixed,
And where patience is such that one realizes non-production,
It is as if bodhi lay in the palm of one’s own right hand.

~

SOURCE : Guide to The Bodhisattva Path

January 26, 2012 by phong • mahayana • permalink | Comments Off

On Generating the Resolve To Become a Buddha

Arya Nagarjuna’s Ten Grounds Vibhasa
( Chapter. 6 Excerpt )

I.    The Seven Bases for Generating the Bodhi Mind


Question: The initial generation of the resolve [to realize buddhahood] is the root of all vows. What then is meant by this “initial generation of resolve”?

Response:
The initial resolve to realize bodhi May involve three or four types of causes and conditions.
When beings initially generate the resolve to realize bodhi, it may find its origin in a set of three causal bases or else in a set of four causal bases. Thus, when one combines them, one has a total of seven causes and conditions associated with generating the resolve to gain anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi.
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June 24, 2004 by phong • mahayana • permalink | Comments Off

The Precious Garland v.148-165

Nagarjuna (150–250 CE)

Lust for a woman mostly comes
From thinking that her body is clean,
But there is nothing clean
In a woman’s body.

The mouth is a vessel filled with foul
Saliva and filth between the teeth,
The nose with fluids, snot and mucus,
The eyes with their own filth and tears.

The body is a vessel filled
With excrement, urine, lungs and liver;
He whose vision is obscured and does not see
A woman thus, and so lusts for her body.

Just as some fools desire
An ornimental pot of filth,
So the ignorant and obscured
And the worldly desire women.

If the world is greatly attached
To the nauseous stinking body
Which should cause loss of attachment,
How can it be lead free from desire?

Just as pigs yearn greatly for
A source of excrement, urine and vomit,
So some lustful ones desire
A source of excrement, urine and vomit.

This filthy city of a body,
With protruding holes for the elements
Is called by stupid beings
An object of pleasure.

Once you have seen for yourself the filth
Of excrement, urine and so forth,
How could you be attracted
To a body so composed?

Why should you lust desirously for this
While recognising it as a filthy form
Produced by a seed whose essence is filth,
A mixture of blood and semen?

He who lies on a filthy mass
Covered by skin moisened with
Those fluids, merely lies
On top of a woman’s bladder.

If whether beautiful or
Ugly, whether old or young,
All the bodies of women are filthy
From what attributes does your lust arise?

Just as it is not fit to desire filth
Although it have good color
and shape in it’s very freshness,
so is it with a woman’s body.

How could the nature of this putrid corpse,
A rotten mass covered outside by skin,
Not be seen when it looks
So very horrible?

‘The skin is not foul,
It is like a cloak.’
Over a mass of filth
How could it be clean?

A pot although beautiful outside
Is reviled when filled with filth.
Why is the body, when so filled
And foul by nature, not reviled?

If against filth you revile,
Why not against this body
Which befouls clean scents,
Garlands, food and drink?

Just as one’s own or others’
Filthiness is reviled,
Why not revile against one’s own
And others’ filthy bodies?

Since your own body is
As filthy as a woman’s,
Should not you abandon
Desire for self and other?