The Sermon on the Mount and the Cave Octad Discourse
In this nineteenth installment of Buddhist Revolution, I read a passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in order to understand the latter half of the first verse of the Cave Octad Discourse. Some people may get angry and ask why I place the words of Jesus and the Buddha together. But as I see it, they point to the same place. If we stop clinging to the names of different religions and follow what the words are asking us to see, their meaning becomes easier to understand.
Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth. There, insects and rust destroy them, and thieves break in and steal. But if you store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, insects do not infest them, rust does not destroy them, and thieves neither break in nor steal. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Treasure Is What My Heart Is Drawn To
The final sentence tells us what “treasure” means here. If we reverse the statement “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,” whatever my heart is drawn to is my treasure. What I desire, what I want to do, what I think absolutely must be done—my desires, greed, and wishes—are all my treasures. This is therefore not merely a lesson about where to keep gold and jewels. It asks me to see what has taken hold of my heart.
Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit makes this easy to see. His heart is always bound to the One Ring. After losing it, he stakes everything on getting it back, and in the end he falls into the lava with it. Even the Ring, thought to possess absolute power, is taken away and ultimately destroyed. The story, too, is about human desire. It shows how the place toward which the heart is drawn becomes its treasure, and how far a heart bound to that treasure can be dragged.
Why Earthly Treasure Is Not Mine
Then where are earth and heaven? I do not read them as geography of an afterlife. We should first look at the qualities of earth. On earth, insects consume things, rust forms, and time breaks things apart. Thieves can take them. If what I call mine can be carried away by someone else or disappear through time and circumstance, it is not truly something I can control as mine. I merely mistake it for mine. That is earthly treasure, and wherever such treasure is placed is earth.
Even the One Ring is stolen and destroyed. We therefore have to go deeper into why we are told not to place our hearts there and not to seize it as something we absolutely must obtain.
Treasures Hidden by Their Very Ordinariness
In the previous installment, I said that what is taken for granted becomes invisible. I already have my health, fingers, eyes, ears, nose, stomach, whole body, legs, head, parents, surroundings, and air. Calling air a treasure may sound funny, but without air there can be no being called me. We take what we already have for granted and chase only what we lack. Gollum, having lost the Ring, was engulfed by greed and craving as he tried to recover it. Craving is the mind that yearns for and clings to something, insisting, “I absolutely must have that.” Most human lives are not very different.
A life content with what one has is an excellent life. I say that, in Buddhism, being content with what is present is the state of nirvana and genuine liberation. When I awaken from delusion and see things as they are, I recognize that being alive itself is a miracle. I cannot exist alone; I must eat and breathe. My father has died and my mother will also die one day, yet she is beside me now. Even if I have only one son rather than two, that one son is here. My wife is not healthy, yet she is still alive. My back hurts, but only a little—not so much that I cannot record this video—so I can even be grateful that it hurts only a little.
People, however, wish never to grow old. They want to be healthier and more masculine, to have a prettier and younger woman, more money, a finer house, and something they can show off to others. They place their hearts on what is absent rather than what is already here. That very mind keeps them from seeing the treasure of this moment.
Seek, but Do Not Imagine That You Are Guaranteed to Obtain
This does not mean that we should do nothing while society is in turmoil and vulnerable people suffer. Is it wrong to want to help them and change society? No. We may do so. It is natural for human beings to seek what they do not have. But while being content with what is present, we must seek what is absent without clinging to the seeking itself. We must not imagine that merely because we seek, we are guaranteed to obtain.
We can engage in social action, protest, and criticize wrongdoing in order to change the world. But if I devote my whole life to it and despair because the world still does not change, does that despair come only from the unchanged world? Or does it come from my attachment to the belief that the world absolutely had to change according to my will? As the saying goes, “Man proposes, Heaven disposes.” Human beings devise a task, but whether it is accomplished depends on heaven. Here, heaven does not mean an omnipotent god making arbitrary decisions. It means that nature, human affairs, and world history move under the influence of timing, causes, effects, and circumstances.
Under Dependent Origination and Impermanence, We Cannot See Even One Step Ahead
I may pour everything into opening a billiard hall in the hope of making a fortune, only for COVID to strike suddenly. Should I curse the world and heaven, demanding why COVID came just when I opened my hall? That is delusion. The world is originally like this. Rain and sunlight do not discriminate between the good and the wicked. The world moves through causality, environmental influence, dependent origination, and interconnection, while human beings cannot know what will happen even one day ahead.
I could suffer a heart attack while recording a video, or a nuclear bomb could fall from the sky. We cannot say such things never happen. In Hiroshima, an aircraft arrived and a nuclear bomb exploded; countless people died and many lived with lasting disabilities. Who could have known in advance that a nuclear plant in the Soviet Union would explode that day? Could people in Ukraine have known that missiles would fall upon them?
This is impermanence. My youth, life, fingers, mind and body, the society around me, people, and objects all change. I am affected by torrential rain and typhoons, and I am affected when rain fails to come. Everything changes through mutual influence. If I believed that opening a billiard hall guaranteed success, that was my delusion. There is no reason to blame misfortune on wrongdoing in a previous life. The world is impermanent and dependently arisen in the first place.
Act Without Being Bound to the Result
Does that mean luck and timing are all that matter and we need make no effort? That, too, contradicts dependent origination. A door opens only when we knock. My effort is one among the countless conditions that produce a result. Yet I must abandon the belief that my effort is absolutely owed a reward. That attachment is an error and a delusion.
If vulnerable people suffer and South Korea’s suicide rate is high, we should speak, participate, and engage in politics to change society. Yet the suicide rate may change or may not. If things do not go my way and I collapse into despair and alcohol, I move even farther from the path of changing society. If I judge that the monks of the Jogye Order are corrupt and teach a distorted Buddhism, I may call for reform of the order, but whether reform succeeds depends on innumerable causes and conditions. Attachment to the belief that it must succeed prevents me from seeing the world as it is and ultimately eats away at me. I suffer not only because the world has failed to change according to my will, but because my own deluded mind insists that it absolutely must.
That is why we must practice action in non-action: action without attachment to its outcome. As the Diamond Sutra says, bring forth the mind without relying on anything. Do not bind the heart to the single point that something absolutely must be accomplished.
When Desire Is Released, the Present Becomes Visible
A person who believes, “I will be happy only if I have that,” cannot be content or happy now. I could rejoice that I already have as many as 980 subscribers; if instead I complain that I have not even reached one thousand, I fail to appreciate what exists and desire only what is absent. The teaching to escape desire and greed and see the world as it is is ultimately about escaping suffering. When I stop the mind that says, “This absolutely must be done,” and “I need that in order to be happy,” and step free of it, peace finally comes.
Place Your Mind on the Work Before You Now
Imagine a billiards final with a prize of fifty million or one hundred million won. If every nerve is bound to the thought that I absolutely must win and take the prize, my hands tense, sweat runs, and even my arms stiffen. I should be focused on the ball and the game, yet captivity to the result makes me play worse. What I must do is see the shot I am taking now. I let go of the conviction that I must obtain the result, remain content with what I have, and still do the task that must be done.
When I record a video, I may hope that these words become known to many people. But that is only a thought that it would be good. If I cling to it, I fall into resentment, asking why people fail to recognize me. When people believe that their desires and wishes absolutely must be fulfilled, the world feels unjust and absurd.
Awakening, Too, Occurs Through Causes and Conditions
The world turns according to dependent origination. The sun rises when it rises, a typhoon strikes when it strikes, and even a nuclear plant explodes through causes and effects. Microplastics are in my blood because human beings produced so much plastic and threw it into the sea. Causality does not move according to my will. I, too, am one part of that web of connection, and my effort works only as one force among many that may change society.
Even if I want to transmit a renewed Dharma suited to the twenty-first century, whether it spreads depends on causes, conditions, and causal law. It will not spread if the world is not ready to receive it; it will spread when people ready to receive it are present. Nor do I awaken because I am extraordinary. Past spiritual friends and sages, Jesus and the Buddha, philosophers and scientists, parents and friends, society, and all my experiences come together to make awakening possible. When a certain word meets the latch in my mind like the right key, it naturally opens.
To recognize that the world I took for granted is a miracle, and that every moment is miraculous, I cannot remain bound to what I seek. I must first stop and step free. Only then can I see the treasure here and now and take the next step.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.