DEW DROPS TO TURN INTO TEARS
Hạnh Chi


In the Amitayus Sutra, that described Sukhavati, the Amitabha’s Realm, there is a passage: “That Buddha’s Realm, when the wind blows, the precious trees, and precious fences move turning into wonderful sounds, as hundred thousands of music performing at the same time.”

This passage is one of many great paintings of the Amitayus sutra which people enjoy not just the colors, but the vibration along with harmonious sounds, from that view arising.

This morning, when doing the walking meditation along a small street near my place, suddenly I see a little bit of that realm.

In the early morning, it’s the blurry view, perhaps it’s not for appropriate time to do the walking meditation for many people, but to me, a person who use to live with the sixth sense, is often to do what I alternatively feel likely to do, or should do, without being fear, or comparing anything. Luckily, this sense has often given me the reality, though sometimes it’s some really grief.

This morning, although knowing it’s early, a thought has just arisen, a wish to go meditation when the town’s still been deserted, so that I wear socks, sweater, warm hat, and open the door, and step out of the house.

The street is so quiet that my slippers make a lot of noise though they are very soft. I breathe in, and think under my breath: “Amitabha”, breathe out: “Buddha”; breathe in: “I have arrived”, breathe out: “I’m home”; breathe in: “In the here”, and breathe out: “In the now”… Although I keep my mind along with my breath, I still feel somewhere near here the sound of fragrant wind blowing across the rows of precious trees. It’s right. Through the coconut row on side walk, the dawn winds are blowing, whistling up and down like my master chanting Śūraṃgama mantra. And up on the fences of rosa (hoa tường vi) having many sparkle heaven jade pieces clinging on green leaves are as same as the precious nets in the Lord Amitabha Buddha’ s Pure-land!


Hoa Tường Vi / Rosa /



I stop at a rosa fence, look on sparkle crystal fragile dew drops which twist their bodies on the leaves as I have never seen light and peaceful dew drops like these. Although diamonds have been obeisant as the most beautiful things along the precious stones, but they have not been as gorgeous as the dew drops that I have been gazing with veneration, because if diamonds were here they would not be disengaged and free; they would be the purpose of disputing and plundering that leading to hatred and bad karma! The dew drops on the fences are as beautiful as diamonds but they don’t worry about any one disputing or plundering or destroying. Dew drops have appeared here when enough conditions and they will have disappeared when conditions ending. And any time they exist they carry the message of the Diamond sutra of Mahayana, wordless but endless.

I press my finger lightly on a young leave. A dew drop following the press plows carelessly, and then stops at my palm center, perfectly, not misses even a bit of it! To me, in a purify minute of a early morning, the sparkle dew drop on my palm is showing the solemn view when everybody listening to the Dharma in the Jeta and Anathapindika’s Garden:

“Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream”. (1)

I stunned for emotion, it seems that I was listening to Buddha teaching to Subhuti, in the 28th passage, Diamond sutra that, supposing that there is a Bodhisatva who gives alms seven kinds of precious things that fulfill the whole universe, and it’s not more than a person’s merits who suddenly understands that all the phenomena are selfless (dharma-nairatmya), chiefly, that person excepts this true freely and joyfully.

When I left that rosa fence, and continued on my walking meditation, the sun has just appeared. On the way back to my hermitage, I have known that the dew drops on the leaves being melted down under the sunshine. Dew drops though turn into tears, but they are the tears that watering the fertile soil to help the trees and leaves being fresher.

Such heaven given precious jade however the mundane jade gifts given to each others in order to decorate for events that they thought would be faithful, immortal, often being broken down under the prism of jealousy, selfishness, anger, and deceitful. Those jades when they turn into tears are really chronic and tragical; and it’s not just this life, they continue through the endless of the circle of existence (samsara) to find each other in order going on their revenges and tears would be pour out as the Liang-Wu-Ti’s ritual confessional of for his wife said about.

Why do people often hard live to the end of life by the beginning love and sweet heart of first sight? Perhaps mankind is not brave enough to face and observe the impermanence of phenomena. What we think we are possessing, grasping, in fact, only are “water bubbles, shadows, dew drops, and flashing lights.” If we can observe and except such true things, and then our relatives’ remaining or lost, our lovers’ faithfulness or betrayal, our friends’ warmness or frostiness and so on…will be passed over our lives as the breeze.

We couldn’t catch up anything, why do we have to set tears for lost or remaining?
Try to catch up a dew drop in the early morning. Catching up by all our heart in the middle of our palm, what do we see in front of the glory sunshine from the east?

We see the transformation.

The sparkle dew drop is transforming. This beauty is going to transform as we are.

Dew drops will turn into tears, and we will turn into dust.

To a relative ration, perhaps time exists of the dew drop as short as an human life, as we use to believe that hundred years in this mundane world being as short as a day in heaven; porcelain flowers (hoa đại) exist longer than roses; but roses pity to ayahuascas (hoa quỳnh) which bring all of their fragrant and beauty giving to the world only in one brilliant moon night!

All phenomena are silent, but still show up their perfect generosity (dana paramita), giving with all their hearts without expecting others’ paying back.

Similarly, only a ksana (2) staying on a leave, dew drops have demonstrated their most purity the perfect beauty as a whole in present moment.

Whereas in our life expend maximum one hundred years, blinked of eyes, what we do to sublimate our life?

Alas! We use to wander in our dreams, to see what in our dreams being real. It’s right, everything is REAL IN DREAMS, but when we have just awake even the dream disappearing, much less what being in the dreams!

Perhaps we all know that. Knowing but not excepting because of our desire minds which have always drawn a lot of views in our dreams so that this mundane world frees difficulty from the invisible attachment, that wraps up us being bewitched through many short and long dreams of our human life, that pushes and pulls us between three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance and the endless circle of gratitude and resentment or revenge and render thanks.

Once a disciple disclosed Patriarch Seng-Ts’an (3):

- I am so suffering! Please, master teach me a free method.

Master looked at his disciple, and asked pityingly and seriously:

- Who bound you?

The question, but it also is a penetrable answer that worthy for us to think about.

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(1) THE DIAMOND SUTRA - Translated by A.F.Price and Wong Mou-Lam
http://quangduc.com/English/Maha/08diamond.html

(2) Sát Na: Ksana (skt)—Một khoảnh khắc được xem như một đơn vị đo lường thời gian—An instance as a measure of time. 90 ksanas are equal to a thought.

(3) Tăng Xán: Seng-Ts’an (?-606)—Vị Tổ thứ ba của Thiền Tông Trung Hoa—The Third Patriarch of the Chinese Zen Sect.

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SƯƠNG TAN THÀNH LỆ
Hư Trúc translated – 18/05/2010
http://www.phapvucenter.com/Tho%20Van/Suong%20tan%20thanh%20le%20(Hanh%20Chi).htm