In this chapter we will reflect on what the Buddha's wisdom is, his enlightenment, by comparing it to our own wisdom as ordinary men and women.

In the 2^nd chapter, The Means, of the Lotus Sutra, we read:

"The world's Revered Awakened Ones appear to the world only because of a single great work (...) It is because the world's Revered Awakened Ones want to open beings to the wisdom and vision of Awakened Ones that they appear to the world. It is because they want to show beings the wisdom and the vision of Awakened that they appear to the world. It is because they want to make beings understand the wisdom and the vision of Awakened that they appear to the world. It is because they want to make the beings penetrate in the wisdom and the vision of Awakened that they appear to the world ".

A little earlier, in the same chapter, it is said:

"That which the Awakened One has led to fulfillment is the Law, primordial and rare, difficult to understand; only an Awakened One can with another Awakened One scrutinize to the end the true aspect of the dharmas."

We also see the expression "unprecedented Law".

In short, a Buddha is a Buddha because he has awakened to a Law (Dharma) that is unprecedented and difficult to understand, and the one and only purpose for which he appears in the world is to make us ordinary beings penetrate this wisdom, in other words, to make us become Buddhas too.

It is necessary here to specify an important point. Some "pseudo-Buddhists" think that the Law (the Dharma) to which the Buddha awakened exists outside the Buddha, independently of the Buddha, prior to the Buddha. However, this is a serious error, because this notion is exclusively the expression of the outer way and is only a reformulation of the notion of God.

Unlike the universal law of gravitation developed by Isaac Newton, which existed before him, in reality the "unprecedented" Law (Dharma) to which the Buddha awakened exists only in the Buddha's body, within the Buddha's wisdom, of which it is the content. There is oneness of the Person (the Buddha) and of the Law (what he awakened to). There is Simultaneity of the cause (Gautama the ordinary man) and of the effect (Shakyamuni the Awakened One).

The chapter on Virtuous Practices in the Infinite Senses Sutra describes the Buddha's body, or in other words, what the true aspect of the dharmas is, as follows:

"(...) His mind is extinguished, his consciousness annihilated, and his thought is also appeased;

He has forever cut off erratic reasoning like dreaming

and will not know any more the elements, the aggregates, the fields and the sensory activities.

His body is neither existent nor non-existent,

it is neither caused nor conditioned, neither in itself nor for others,

neither square nor round, neither short nor long;

it neither emerges nor sinks, neither is born nor disappears;

it does not create, it does not cause, it does not act or operate;

it neither sits nor lies, neither walks nor stays,

does not move or turn, does not remain idle;

it neither moves forward nor backward, it is neither firm nor frail,

it is neither is nor is not, it neither gains nor loses,

it is neither this nor that, it neither leaves nor comes;

it is neither blue nor yellow, neither red nor white

nor purple nor violet, nor of any color.

It is born of precepts, concentration, wisdom, deliverance, knowledge and vision.

In other words, the true aspect of things, the Buddha's awakening, "is not to be defined in terms of being, nor in terms of non-being. The two words 'being' and 'non-being' cannot designate it, nor can the two concepts of being and non-being. (...) It is not a question of being or non-being, but of that which includes both the one and the other".

In other words, the Buddha's awakening is completely outside of our conceptual field, outside of all notions of being or non-being, of good or evil, of matter or mind, of everything we can imagine.

What about us?

What does it mean to "see the true aspect of things"?

When we observe the world around us, we see that there are mountains, rivers, animals and also houses, people, a multitude of phenomena that appear to us as external, objective. And then, when we close our eyes, our inner world opens up, even if it is not as distinct as the phenomenal world, with its feelings, its emotions. The French mathematician, physicist and philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) affirmed that everything that exists is divided into two categories: matter and spirit, two perfectly dualistic elements. Conversely, the Buddha taught the non-duality of matter and spirit.

In other words, there are two ways of considering the world around us. The first is to apprehend all phenomena as external to ourselves, existing independently of us, whether we are present or not, dead or alive. This is called "the outer way" (gedō).

In contrast, Buddhism teaches that all these phenomena, mountains, rivers, and the like, are only the product of our mind and exist only because we have become aware of them. This is called "the inner way" (naidō), which the Buddha awakened to and taught throughout his life.

In the Flowery Ornament Sutra, he says:

"The mind never stops, Manifesting all forms, Innumerable, inconceivably numerous, Unknown to each other. Just as a painter cannot know his own mind, but paints through the mind, So is the nature of all things.

The mind is like a skilled painter, able to paint the worlds:

The five aggregates are all born of him; There is nothing that he does not make.

(...)

Know that Buddha and the mind are in essence inexhaustible.

If people know that the actions of the mind create all worlds, they will see the Buddha and understand the true nature of the Buddha.

This indicates that the phenomenal world is the product of our mind. The five aggregates, remember, are the five elements that constitute us: the shapes, sounds, smells, and so on that we perceive, the way we interpret them, our reactions to them, and the awareness that we derive from them. They are called the five shadows (jp. Go-on - 五陰) because they conceal from us the true aspect of things, or the five accumulations (jp. Go-un -五蘊), because their accumulation produces suffering.

Thus, the outer path asserts that things exist outside of us, while conversely, the inner path, Buddhism, asserts that the dharmas (phenomena) and we are one.

You don't have to be a philosopher or practice any religion to think that the Eiffel Tower, Mount Fuji and everything else existed before us and will exist after us, independently of us. A three-year-old child already understands this. Yet, people have asked "who created all this"? So man created God in his own image to give an answer to a question that was not a question. On the other hand, to understand that the Eiffel Tower, Mount Fuji exist only because we are aware of their existence and, even more, not only to understand it but to live it, requires a serious Buddhist asceticism.

The practice of Buddhism thus has a twofold purpose: to awaken to the fact that objective phenomena do not exist outside the realm of the mind and, in so doing, to destroy the misperceptions of the subjectivity that considers things in the external world to be real and to dissipate the various sufferings (evil passions) associated with these perceptions and, in so doing, to become Buddha.

We will stop here for today. In the next chapters we will see the path of our perception through the principle of the nine consciousnesses, the path of the Buddha's teaching through the five periods and the eight teachings, the principle of One Thought Three Thousand, and how we can become Buddha without having to undergo the mortifications that Shakyamuni Buddha did.