The Dhamma Goes Westward

Question: A friend of mine went to practice with a Zen teacher. He asked him, ''When the Buddha was sitting beneath the Bodhi tree, what was he doing?'' The Zen master answered, ''He was practicing zazen!'' My friend said, ''I don't believe it.'' The Zen master asked him, ''What do you mean, you don't believe it?'' My friend said, ''I asked Goenka the same question and he said, 'When the Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi tree, he was practicing vipassanā!' So everybody says the Buddha was doing whatever they do.''

Ajahn Chah: When the Buddha sat out in the open, he was sitting beneath the Bodhi tree. Isn't that so? When he sat under some other kind of tree, he was sitting beneath the Bodhi tree. There's nothing wrong with those explanations. 'Bodhi' means the Buddha himself, the one who knows. It's OK to talk about sitting beneath the Bodhi tree, but lots of birds sit beneath the Bodhi tree. Lots of people sit beneath the Bodhi tree. But they are far from such knowledge, from such truth. Yes, we can say, ''beneath the Bodhi tree.'' Monkeys play in the Bodhi tree. People sit there beneath the Bodhi tree. But this doesn't mean they have any profound understanding. Those who have deeper understanding realize that the true meaning of the 'Bodhi tree' is the absolute Dhamma.

So in this way it's certainly good for us to try to sit beneath the Bodhi tree. Then we can be Buddha. But we don't need to argue with others over this question. When one person says the Buddha was doing one kind of practice beneath the Bodhi tree and another person disputes that, we needn't get involved. We should be looking at it from the viewpoint of the ultimate, meaning realizing the truth. There is also the conventional idea of 'Bodhi tree,' which is what most people talk about, but when there are two kinds of Bodhi tree, people can end up arguing and having the most contentious disputes - and then there is no Bodhi tree at all.

It's talking about paramatthadhamma, the level of ultimate truth. So in that case, we can also try to get underneath the Bodhi tree. That's pretty good - then we'll be Buddha. It's not something to be arguing over. When someone says the Buddha was practicing a certain kind of meditation beneath the Bodhi tree and someone else says, ''No, that's not right'', we needn't get involved. We're aiming at paramatthadhamma, meaning dwelling in full awareness. This ultimate truth pervades everything. Whether the Buddha was sitting beneath the Bodhi tree or performing other activities in other postures, never mind. That's just the intellectual analysis people have developed. One person has one view of the matter, another person has another idea; we don't have to get involved in disputes over it.

Where did the Buddha enter Nibbāna? Nibbāna means extinguished without remainder, finished. Being finished comes from knowledge, knowledge of the way things really are. That's how things get finished, and that is the paramatthadhamma. There are explanations according to the levels of convention and liberation. They are both true, but their truths are different. For example, we say that you are a person. But the Buddha will say, ''That's not so. There's no such thing as a person.'' So we have to summarize the various ways of speaking and explanation into convention and liberation.

We can explain it like this: previously you were a child. Now you are grown up. Are you a new person or the same person as before? If you are the same as the old person, how did you become an adult? If you are a new person, where did you come from? But talking about an old person and a new person doesn't really get to the point. This question illustrates the limitations of conventional language and understanding. If there is something called 'big,' then there is 'small.' If there is small there is big. We can talk about small and large, young and old, but there are really no such things in any absolute sense. You can't really say somebody or something is big. The wise do not accept such designations as real, but when ordinary people hear about this, that 'big' is not really true and 'small' is not really true, they are confused because they are attached to concepts of big and small.

You plant a sapling and watch it grow. After a year it is one meter high. After another year it is two meters tall. Is it the same tree or a different tree? If it's the same tree, how did it become bigger? If it's a different tree, how did it grow from the small tree? From the viewpoint of someone who is enlightened to the Dhamma and sees correctly, there is no new or old tree, no big or small tree. One person looks at a tree and thinks it is tall. Another person will say it's not tall. But there is no 'tall' that really exists independently. You can't say someone is big and someone is small, someone is grown up and someone else is young. Things end here and problems are finished with. We don't need to get tied up in knots over these conventional distinctions and we won't have doubts about practice.