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Sutra on the Enjoyment of the Ultimate Dimension 4
The sound of the bell is a signal that helps us to stop all thinking, speech, and action, so that we can return fully to the present moment, following our breath to bring body and mind together as one. Each sound of the bell gives us the opportunity to practice three in-breaths and three out-breaths, generating five subtle sources of energy that cannot be bought outside:
- mindfulness
- concentration
- insight
- joy
- happiness
The sound of the bell blends with the air, mindfulness, and concentration permeating every cell, creating deep joy and peace. When many practitioners listen to the bell and practice together, the powerful collective energy penetrates deeply into each person, like the boat of the Sangha carrying us across the river of life.
Walking meditation is similar to mindful breathing; each step carries our ancestors, our parents, and future generations in the presence of stopping, generating mindfulness, concentration, insight, joy, and happiness. Mindfulness helps us recognize the habit of running and choose to stop, to live slowly, freely, like the Buddha. Nirvana is present right in this very moment with two aspects:
- the cessation of afflictions such as craving, hatred, and ignorance
- the transcendence of all dualities of self/other, being/non-being
When we step through the threshold of duality, notions of being, non-being, birth, and death fall away, the reality of no birth and no death reveals itself, and the mind becomes as vast as the great earth, patient as the earth, transforming all suffering.