Byron Katie and The Diamond Sutra

Hello family,
There is much to share with you in this newsletter, dears. I do hope that you enjoy and find comfort in what we have to share with you. The following comes from a series of discussions I had with Stephen. He translated a Buddhist text called the Diamond Sutra, which in the Zen tradition was considered the most profound of the Buddha’s words. Then he read a number of chapters to me and wrote down my reactions. I had no idea what some of the terms meant: sutra (scripture), for example, or Nirvana (the extinction or all thoughts and perceptions). He explained them to me as we went along.
So here is chapter 3 of the Diamond Sutra. I hope that our combined gift will be, in some way, a support to your inner peace and a connection to your inner wisdom, and understanding. So, for wonderful you, enjoy.
I and your BKI family at thework.com hope that you enjoy this May newsletter and find it valuable.
I adore you, as I know you to be.
Love without choice,
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Diamond Sutra

Chapter 3

The Buddha said, “All bodhisattvas who are sincerely seeking the truth should control their minds by focusing on one thought only: ‘When I attain enlightenment, I will liberate all sentient beings in every realm of the universe, and allow them to pass into the eternal peace of Nirvana. And yet, when vast, uncountable, unthinkable myriads of beings have been liberated, in reality no being has been liberated.’ And here is why: No one who is a true bodhisattva entertains such concepts as self or other. Thus, in reality there are no sentient beings to be liberated and no self to attain enlightenment.”

Commentary

The Buddha said, “All bodhisattvas who are sincerely seeking the truth should control their minds by focusing on one thought only: When I attain enlightenment, I will liberate all sentient beings in every realm of the universe, and allow them to pass into the eternal peace of Nirvana.” In The Work, we support ourselves to notice all judgments about all beings and to question what we believe about them, judgment by judgment, until they are allowed to pass into the eternal state of our minds in peace. That leaves peace of mind. “And yet, when vast, uncountable, unthinkable myriads of beings have been liberated, in reality no being has been liberated.” All beings are a state of the Buddha’s mind, that is, your own mind. Why? No true bodhisattva is able to entertain such concepts as self or other. Each self or other is found purely to be a state of mind evaporating in the face of inquiry. Self, no self. Other, no other. “Thus, in reality there are no sentient beings to be liberated and no self to attain enlightenment.” No sentient beings here or there or anywhere. All imagined. All that appear to exist are gone. “He was the one who broke my heart; I was the one who broke my heart.” His identity is no more, and neither is mine. His is this, mine is that, and both evaporate in the face of inquiry.

More Commentary

In this chapter the Buddha talks about bodhisattvas. Stephen says that a bodhisattva is someone who wishes to attain enlightenment for the sake of all beings. According to some accounts, he says, the bodhisattva vows not to enter Nirvana until all other beings have entered it first. But if you believe that you must postpone freedom for any reason, or that you even have the power to postpone it, that’s not freedom. Postponement is nothing that someone does out of a generous heart. It assumes that your peace isn’t the greatest help you can offer all beings. It assumes that because of your generosity and compassion you need to keep suffering. But how can your suffering ever help anyone? The kindest thing that you can give all sentient beings is to end your own suffering. This leaves no teacher of misery in the world.
The concept of a bodhisattva also assumes that sentient beings need to suffer until some sort of wiser, higher being or consciousness comes to save them. That isn’t necessary, nor is it possible, other than from within. The reality is that some well-intentioned and a bit confused person imagines all the apparently terrible things that happen in the world and all the apparent beings that are suffering, and if he believes that any of those images in his head are real, as though they really existed on the outside, in his own lack of freedom the freedom of all these beings is postponed, and they keep suffering along with him. But once he realizes the truth of it, all these imagined beings are set free in an instant, and in that the bodhisattva is enlightened, and the enlightenment is sealed by its own selfless inner laughter. Sentient beings are here to serve the enlightenment of the bodhisattva, not the other way around. All beings are within the bodhisattva, not outside him. They are consistently and without interruption here to enlighten him, as love would have it. And they are here to enlighten you.
It’s painful to believe that you can actually save anyone other than yourself. Even if I had a young child who stood at the edge of a cliff, out of arm’s length, tottering, I would know that she was safe. Of course I would try to catch her, but as I was running toward her, I wouldn’t be slowed down by the concept that she needed to be saved. She might be leaning toward the edge, innocent, laughing, reaching out for me, and what could be more beautiful than a laughing child, connected, joyous, beautiful, complete, overflowing with life? Images with thoughts attached to them, of a future even a nanosecond ahead, would obliterate the reality of that perfect moment. The mind might override reality and show you images of the child slipping and falling off the cliff to her death or smashed on the rocks below, images of yourself finding the child and sobbing and bereft when the child is dead. And all the while, in that obliteration of reality, you would be missing the gift of the moment, and the simplicity, clarity, and ease of taking ten more steps to the child without panic, without frightening her with your own confusion and fear, completely free for whatever happens, gracefully moving in the reality of the uninterruptedly beautiful. The young child doesn’t know danger. That’s liberation: loving the dream. I do everything I can to help, but I know that the child falling is as beautiful as the child caught. The Buddha speaks of enlightenment. But he knows that enlightenment is nothing. When you wake up from the dream of self and other, you realize that it was never real. You’ve been asleep because you have been believing stories that were so compelling that they created even the storyteller.
All sentient beings exist inside your own mind. They’re all thought-forms, and they pass into Nirvana whether you allow them to or not. They all go back to where they came from: nowhere. And since time is not real, they have already passed into Nirvana. There is no “then” or “now.” Their passage isn’t even necessary. All sentient beings are liberated through the enlightenment of the one who created them in the first place. And that one is no more and no less than what just appeared to pass into Nirvana. It includes both the Buddha and the sentient being, both the dreamer and the dreamed.
The Buddha suggests that bodhisattvas should focus on one thought: “When I attain enlightenment, I will liberate all sentient beings.” But then he undercuts that thought with the next one, when he rightly says that when all is said and done, no being has been liberated. The vow “When I attain enlightenment…” is a noble trick of the ego. It’s noble because it points to generosity and compassion. But it assumes a future, and any future is a delusion. Nothing ever happens in a future. Whatever happens (if anything happens) can happen only now.
If someone says, “Katie, are you enlightened?” I answer, “How would I know? I know freedom. I know the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t hurt, and that’s enough.” Separation hurts. Any identity, no matter how enticing it may be—for example, bodhisattva, Buddha—understates the truth, since it adds a name to what is complete and nameless. All names create distance; they require an identity and lead us to assume that there are separate beings, and thus they point away from reality. And the name “enlightenment” leaves you with something to attain. It’s a word full of effort. It leaves you as the one who is seeking an authentic identification, and on the other end of it “I am the one who has found it” is just as limited as “I am the one who is seeking it.” No home, no home, home, homelessly home.
We don’t need to know about enlightenment, because we can’t know. The only important thing to know is this: If a thought hurts, question it. Enlightenment is just a spiritual concept. It’s just one more thing to seek in a future that never comes. Even the highest truth is just one more concept to question. For me, the experience is everything, and that’s what inquiry reveals. Everything painful is undone—now, now, now. If you think you’re enlightened, you’ll love having your car towed away. How do you react when your child is sick? How do you react when your teenager is lying to you, won’t admit it, and continues to argue that his unhappiness is your fault? If you don’t love it yet, what thoughts are standing between you and peace of mind? Whatever these thoughts are, meditate on that moment in time and write them down on a Worksheet, then question them one by one. No stressful thought, no separation, can withstand the power of inquiry. All the enlightenment you’ll ever need is waiting for you to tap into it right now. Please don’t believe me. Test it for yourself.