Contributed by the Buddhas’ Practice Incorporated, Australia
Mentor: Bennie Spirit
Editor: Yinyue(Ivy)
With gratitude to Google AI Gemini
With gratitude to Gemini NotebookLM
Draft Date: July 30, 2026
Location: BPI office
Attendees at the Dharma assembly: Bennie, Ivy, Bonnie, (Ellie, Grace, Enid, Dawn)
I. Origination (Background)
The Buddha told Maitreya Bodhisattva: “Regarding the questions you asked before and the questions you are asking now, you may ask them. I know that you do not need to ask questions, as you have basically mastered everything, because you are a Bodhisattva of Equal Enlightenment (Virtual Enlightenment) and are about to become a Buddha very soon.”
The Buddha also knew that the questions Maitreya Bodhisattva asked perfectly matched the capacities and dispositions of sentient beings, so He allowed him to ask.
II. Verification (Experiential Proof)
The first issue is the phenomenon regarding the previous five hundred Bodhisattvas; Maitreya Bodhisattva brought them here precisely to allow these Bodhisattvas to perfectly accomplish every part of their awakening. To achieve awakening, one must enter into the realistic environment of awakening.
The second issue is, how does one utilize afflictions (kleshas) to perform beneficial deeds within these environments of birth and death (samsara)? For example, how does one use greed (raga) to perform beneficial deeds? The beneficial deed mentioned here refers to benefiting your awakening. For instance, you could be intensely greedy, being greedy to the point where an illness arises; you can personally use facts to verify to what extent of greed a certain illness will appear, repeatedly verifying it to solidify your awakening. What is the suffering brought about by this greed, and what is the weight of each type of suffering? Through repeated experience, practice, and verification, your Bodhi (awakening) regarding this aspect will gradually approach perfection. Without repeated personal experience and verification, you cannot thoroughly know what it is. You may say you know it superficially, but you do not possess the true experiential feeling of it.
Without true experiential feeling—for example, if you haven’t experienced unforgettable suffering—there is absolutely no fear. We must hold absolute reverence and awe toward anything that violates the rules, and experiential trials can help us achieve this awe. For example, if you use the wrong methods—methods that violate natural laws—see how much suffering you will endure? In every little detail, as long as you violate its natural laws, the very minimum you will face is the suffering of unfulfilled desires (the suffering of not getting what you seek). Whatever you want, you will never attain it, which is the suffering of unfulfilled desires.
Verification means proving that greed is a disaster and a suffering, and determining exactly what the taste of that suffering is and how massive its magnitude is. It must undergo absolute examination to be proven for what it is; it cannot be known merely by looking at texts or listening to sounds. Language, texts, and the suffering you imagine yourself are not the same as the suffering you personally experience on the scene. Only when you personally experience it can you specifically know what the feeling is, because when someone truly feels absolute suffering, they could not possibly still yearn for or cling to suffering.
Using these afflictions to accomplish beneficial deeds means truly learning, comprehending, and verifying from them, thereby generating genuine benefit. Afterwards, no matter what you say, you cannot change his experience and verification; it is simply suffering.
Question: Must one necessarily experience these sufferings to attain awakening?
Answer: Some people must experience them. Because what they consider happiness is the happiness they have examined, but they haven’t examined suffering, so they do not know it. True awakening must come from the results of practice.
Question: Can’t the Buddha directly give me awakening?
Answer: The Buddha can directly give you awakening, but you still wouldn’t know it.
For example, sentient beings are all greedy; the Buddha says greed is bad, but sentient beings cannot understand this. The key is that, from your perspective, you have not formally examined it, so you have no way of knowing that it is harmful and devoid of benefit. Therefore, you must truthfully experience it through formal channels, procedures, and methods. Only by experiencing it without any defining labels or self-righteousness can you discover what it actually is. Looking back at your past definitions and labels, they were all either your own definitions or definitions told to you by others, and those are not real. True awakening puts you personally on the scene, giving you solid experience (experience means having lived through it and verified it). Disobedient people have to go experience it and feel it unforgettably in their bones to remember it.
Obedient people do not need to go experience it. The obedient disciples in the *Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment* who meet those conditions are capable of this. In their hearts, whatever the spiritual friend (kalyanamitra) says is good and right, and must be executed absolutely. The Buddha can just directly copy the awakening to them.
Question: Speaking of experience, in the book *The Revelation of Life*, when the female protagonist is under deep hypnosis, she recalls past life events, many of which involve extremely painful ways of dying. Are those just like dreams, or just like reality, where one feels intense suffering? Does being hypnotized however many times mean experiencing that kind of suffering that many times?
Answer: Generally, yes. For example, whenever you think about any matter now, you are feeling it. The depth of your feeling corresponds to the depth of your thoughts. In other words, when you are feeling it, the more interference you receive, the shallower your feeling will be. If you go deeper and are more pure, your feeling will be more comprehensive. As long as you apply your mind, you can feel as much as the effort you put in.
How can you keep your thoughts out of the realm of suffering? That is, to think according to rules and laws.
For example, in your work, if you do not follow the laws and rules, and just act on whatever whims come to mind, that is unacceptable. Your delusions (vikalpa / vain thoughts) cannot be used at all; simply act according to the laws and rules, and your work will yield performance results. If you mess around following your delusions, what you produce will be a failure, and there will be no performance results.
Every matter is the same; doing things purely according to laws and rules without mixing in delusions is called wisdom (prajna). What Buddhism applies is pure wisdom; everything is simply done using wisdom. One must not incorporate delusion, which is erroneous, illusory, and inconsistent with the laws.
Following your own feelings, interests, and hobbies, coupled with afflictions—if it suits your greed, you like it; if it doesn’t, you hate it, seek revenge, and suspiciously wonder what others mean…. As long as afflictions and delusions are mixed in, it will definitely affect your work, because your work does not inherently contain these things. Once these things are brought into work, it will definitely become chaotic, and ultimately you won’t even have the mood to work or be able to continue doing it. Eventually, you might just withdraw from work completely, suffering on your own, even suffering to the point of losing the job. Some people are slightly better off if they jump out of it in time, but some suffer until they die without ever jumping out. That is a disastrous swamp; jumping out of it in time, or even better, never entering it at all, is what a superior person does.
Why is the Buddha the Knower of All (Sarvajna)? He has mastered all laws and rules, and no matter what He does, He relies on laws and rules to accomplish His deeds, so the Buddha achieves everything as He wishes. Because He absolutely never violates the laws and rules, perfectly upholding them and acting according to His laws and rules, naturally He accomplishes whatever He wishes to accomplish.
Why do sentient beings always experience outcomes contrary to their wishes? Because they rely entirely on delusions and feelings, doing whatever out of impulse, and ultimately can only fail. In the end, the results of their affairs can never align with their wishes.
Think carefully and apply this formula to every matter. The Buddha is the Knower of All, so naturally, He is entirely free and unhindered. You are entirely full of afflictions, mixing afflictions into everything you do; you do not follow SOPs for anything, disregarding whether it aligns with the laws or not, just recklessly doing it anyway—the result will inevitably be a failure and contrary to your wishes. If you carefully apply this to every single matter, it can definitely be verified.
III. Realization and Attainment
Therefore, Buddhism frequently speaks of “realization and attainment”. To see things as they truly are (yathabhuta-darshana, seeing them comprehensively) is called “Realization” (證). Having a thorough understanding of wisdom is called “Attainment” (得). In other words, knowing “what it is” is Realization. Knowing “why it is so” is Attainment.
For example, software engineers accurately know why these corresponding laws and generated rules are needed in the program. Every set of laws they establish is different, producing different results. For instance, among office software, some are good for writing speeches, while others are in spreadsheet format. If you insist on using a spreadsheet format to write a book, you will find it awkward at every turn. Both are office software and both have corresponding effects and functions, but it’s just awkward. This goes without saying for other software. For example, if it’s merely a media player software and you insist on typing text in it or using it as a spreadsheet, you will find it simply impossible. First, you must know what it is; this is called Realization. Applying it freely is called Attainment. Being able to design whatever I want to design, matching it with the industry, and doing as I please, is called Attainment. When you can freely control what you have obtained as you wish, it is called Attainment. Performing freely as one wishes is called Attainment.
Are you doing things that correspond to your own interests and the interests of sentient beings, or even bringing out afflictions to do things corresponding to these interests, or bringing out afflictions to do things not corresponding to interests? Are you relying on afflictions to correspond to the interests of yourself and others, or not? Does the affliction correspond to the Dharma, or does it correspond to non-Dharma? This must be clarified.
For example, if someone eats excessively, you can observe from his point of greed and verify the result of his greed; you can see to what extent his body is gradually devastated by his dietary habits. Looking at it with scientific knowledge, whether it’s sentient beings or yourself, you serve as a very good test subject. This test subject is gradually proving that, as science says, you will eat yourself sick, and the final result will cause all your organs to fail and ultimately lead to death. This verifies the Buddhist teaching that one should not be greedy, and that the result of greed is suffering. In other words, relying on the example of this living person to verify that what science says is not wrong, and what Buddhism says is not wrong. Using his vivid experience to verify this is called “experience”. Furthermore, you thoroughly research all of this—because of a preference for sweet, high-sugar, high-fat, and savory foods, under such conditions, the combined effect of these substances entering the body gradually pushes you toward diabetes and the death of all organs. You can then know that it is like bait on a fishhook; no matter how delicious it is, it will definitely cost the fish its life. If it’s delicious, you take the bait, and once you take the bait, your life is gone—it’s that simple. Therefore, by utilizing others’ afflictions of greed to accomplish your beneficial deeds and awakening from it, you truly prove that it is indeed bad. When you study it thoroughly and carefully, it is called Attainment. You can even freely make it well when you want it to be well, and make it unwell when you want it to be unwell—this is called Realization and Attainment. Only through this kind of practice can one truly know what it is and why it is so. When you thoroughly understand it, it becomes a benefit, which is using an affliction to become a beneficial deed, relying on the affliction to accomplish your awakening. Therefore, in the Buddhist sutras, you will occasionally see the phrase “Affliction is Bodhi” (only those who have attained realization are qualified to say this sentence). Those who do not understand it and interpret it as “greed is awakening” are mistaken.
People with wisdom can generate awakening by relying on these afflictions.
If there were no greed demonstrated by others, or if you didn’t personally engage in greed to see the changes occurring in your own body, you wouldn’t be able to verify the results of greed through personal changes, nor the results of non-greed. Through repeated verification, it finally becomes fixed. This kind of awakening, this Bodhi, becomes fixed. That is to say, this affliction is Bodhi; it is verifiable and can make you awaken.
Once you possess the ability of Realization and Attainment, you do not need to think; everything is clear at a glance. To see things as they truly are (yathabhuta-darshana) and to thoroughly understand wisdom. Seeing things as they truly are is the key point. It cannot be “knowing by labels” or “knowing by definitions”; that is called defilement (sasrava / klesha). To know truly and realistically is to do so without any defilement; it is not a definition, not a label, and not being defiled.
For example, if someone is truly being greedy, and what you see is their greed, that is not wrong. However, if someone else is conducting an experiment and you label them as being greedy, you are wrong; that is not seeing things as they truly are, it is an erroneous view. Your very act of seeing carries many of your own filters, distorting the view. Not only has the color changed, but it is like a funhouse mirror—not only is the color altered, but the shape is distorted too. Because your eyes are influenced by past karma, judging others through your own karma is not called seeing things as they truly are; it is a perception “manifested according to karma”.
In the *Maharatnakuta Sutra*, at the Assembly on the Development of the Bodhisattvas’ Aspiration, five hundred Bodhisattvas made mistakes at that time precisely because they didn’t know that their filters not only had color problems but also caused distortion. They committed so much karma against other Dharma Masters and ultimately suffered so much evil retribution.
Therefore, in the end, the Buddha told these people who had mended their ways: “You must be careful! Some Bodhisattvas exclusively cultivate wisdom. Without that wisdom, you have no way to judge others. Some Bodhisattvas deliberately use these afflictions to accomplish their awakening. Because they want to verify the entire process from beginning to end—how affliction devastates a person from a state of peace and happiness to a state of suffering, how it destroys a person’s life, and how it destroys a person’s intellect; they must go and verify this. They must go through these things to examine this matter.”
Some people verify it by seeing others go through these things. Some people verify it by going through these things themselves. The final result of the examination proves what they have examined.
When this person is examining it, whatever you judge him to be is wrong.
IV. Conclusion
When a person has thoroughly understood wisdom, they can see everything clearly at a glance; they even clearly know what sufferings you have already generated—that is called Attainment. The higher their cultivation, the higher their ability to see things as they truly are, and the purer the things they realize.
Smart people do not need to personally suffer losses. Only fools easily do things that cause them to suffer losses.
For disobedient people, what the Buddha gives you, you cannot attain.
For a smart person, you filter it yourself. If it can shock or scare you, you will know, “When others suffer losses, I cannot suffer such a loss; when others have bad luck, I cannot have such bad luck; when others endure suffering, I will not go and endure such suffering.”
Fools, after going through it once, never go to temper themselves again.
There is also another type of person, soaked in suffering, who cannot remember even after suffering losses ten thousand times; they just don’t know what it is.
ENDING
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