Cultivating a strong mind focused on proper meditation and mindfulness is fundamental and should be a constant endeavor whether in good or poor health.
These are the ways in which disease become a cause for producing the conditions for the three evil realms of Hell, Animality, and Hunger. This is why we should not fall into the traps and take seriously the cautions of avoiding the harmful thoughts above.
If however, you are aware that we are personally responsible for our destiny and that disease does cause suffering brought about by a lack of good deeds in the past and then are truly contrite about our behaviors, reflecting upon the nature of our actions in the past and without recrimination determine to change our patterns of behavior even in the face of the disease we can then transform the sufferings of disease into the cause for producing the three god destinies of pretas, humans, and divine beings.
When I give instructions prior to performing the Hokke Senbo ceremony, the ceremony traditionally translated as repentance, I expand upon the translated title. I teach that it is not enough to say only repentance. In fact we should reflect upon our behavior, our actions and our thoughts. It is necessary to do this so that we can in clear light examine the nature of our cause, the cause for the cause and understand how we might respond differently in the future if the same opportunity were to happen again. Further it is not enough to repent and reflect because that in a way leave a vacuum and it lacks and action to fill the void made by repenting and reflecting. Once we repent and then reflect I believe it is further necessary to makes some action to ensure a different result in the future.
This is not simply doing a good deed, although it never hurts to engage in abundantly doing good deeds. Rather is what sort of deed will begin to altar the pattern of behavior. Karma is after all an action word, it is the action we take in response to an affect we experience. Our present is the accumulation of all of our past actions, our karma. To change our karma begins by acting differently in the present. So from the effort of repenting and reflecting what new pattern of behavior will emerge.
If we think of repenting and reflecting as tearing down the rough and bumpy road of our life we must also think about creation. What new road of life will we create? This is how disease can be a cause for elevating one’s life from the three lower evil realms.
If becoming ill, encountering disease brings about fear of death or of the cycle of birth and death then it is crucial that you understand fully that birth leads to sickness and death. Avoiding this truth only leads to future lifetimes of continued suffering from sickness and death. Suffering makes you weak and this weakness puts you in peril of forgetting this truth thereby ensuring its continuation. In these moments of thought Chih-I admonishes us to seek the quiet of extinction and nirvana, thus disease becomes the cause for entering the realm of sravaks.
How disease is the cause for Pratyekabuddha is the longest section within this portion of Cessation. Basically it begins with a firm understanding of the Twelve Link Chain of Causation and the awareness that nothing arrises independently of anything else. I often think sometimes as Buddhist we focus so much on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path that we don’t emphasize as much the concept of dependent origination as revealed in the Twelve Link Chain.
I won’t go into the entire theory, primarily because it is easy enough to research it via the internet and even with in the Lotus Sutra itself. Basically this teaching informs us that birth comes about because of past existences which have lead to grasping, passion, contact, six senses, name and form of four elements and five sense organs and name refers to the sense organ of mental, leading eventually to ignorance and rebirth.
In this portion of Cessation Chih-I advises us to focus on where our illness arises from, this is not the same as understanding the medical cause of the particular disease, rather it is the complete awareness that life is the condition for disease. It is important to stress this is not simply a mental exercise and theoretical awareness or knowledge alone of the nature of dependent origination is not what is to be sought. The goal is a deep abiding full heart embraced truth awareness. Simply knowing the Twelve Links is not the same and embracing them. I can’t stress this enough. Because you can recite the various causes of arising does not indicate a true life awareness or deep heart connection to the fundamental truth. This is why ignorance is said to be the key to breaking the cycle of the Twelve Link Chain. It is not ignorance of the causes from a mental or mind standpoint, it is ignorance of thinking without truly understanding from within ones life.
Knowledge can lead to full understanding but knowledge alone is not itself true understanding. Knowledge helps to break down the logic of the teaching but it is not the same as embracing the teaching as a core life value.
For this section contemplating the various origins of various qualities and parts of our life is the first step it is the tool for beginning to become fully aware. This is how disease can cause pratyekabuddhahood.
Here is one exercise presented in this section. Contemplate that the color blue-green arises from wood. The color yellow arises from earth, red from fire, white from wind, black from water. Contemplate them not as the simple series I just typed but as progressive steps. Contemplate the arising of each color from its corresponding element.
Next contemplate the arising of wood from water, water from wind, wind from earth the positive chi energy or the yang, earth from fire, fire from wood and back again to wood from water. Once again do not simply contemplate is a the series I abbreviated but as individual distinct arisings. This cultivates and awareness of the cycle of arisings, that one leads to another to another and finally back again to the origin. Nothing arises alone or from itself.
On to the organs from the above external things. The liver arises from blue-green chi-energy. The heart arises from red-chi energy. The lungs from white chi-energy. The kidneys arise from black chi-energy. The spleen from yellow chi-energy.
We know that none of these organs arise from itself independent of the other organs and life does not arise without all of the organs. The liver arises from kidneys, which arise from the lungs, which arises from spleen, which arises from the heart, which arises from the liver, and we are back again with the awareness that the liver does not arise from itself but from the kidneys. This is the understanding and teaching of Chih-I.
If by doing this we and seeking full awareness and understanding about the nature of internal matters of our body of the four elements and five organs we can see they are without substantive essence. There is no essential kidney that arises or exists beyond its relationship to the other organs. There is no essential element of wood that exists beyond its relationship to the other elements of water, wind, and fire. You are not simply a kidney a tree or wood is not simply wood. Everything exists in relation to and in connection with other things.
Because there is no essential kidney rather a kidney in relation with other organs it has not essential substance. Because it has no essential substance it is indestructible. It is the mind that maintains their existence.
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