When You Abandon the Mind of Seeking Gain, the Supreme Treasury of Jewels Is Opened
Right then, after Mahakashyapa had laid out a parable in prose, he turned to verse to make the same point: "Today, we have heard the Buddha's teaching." What does "today" point to? The Lotus Sutra assembly. Before the Lotus Sutra, the Bu...
At that time, Mahakashyapa, wishing to restate this meaning, spoke in verse: "Today, having heard the Buddha's teaching, we rejoice and leap with joy as we have never done before. The Buddha says that sravakas shall become Buddhas; the supreme treasury of jewels is obtained without seeking."
Right then, after Mahakashyapa had laid out a parable in prose, he turned to verse to make the same point: "Today, we have heard the Buddha's teaching." What does "today" point to? The Lotus Sutra assembly. Before the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha taught the Three Vehicles to help beings build merit. Widen the lens a little and include the human and heavenly realms, and you have the Five Vehicles—expedient teachings all of them.
His thinking ran something like this: since you've been wandering abroad, you might as well come back to this vast Buddhist household and "work here." As the saying goes, "My house is vast; it has everything." Inside the great Buddhist family, you can practice charity, cultivate insight into emptiness, or train in the six paramitas. In short, the Buddha set up many expedient teachings so that you'd settle in and steadily increase your merit.
At the Lotus Sutra assembly, the Buddha began to reveal what those expedient teachings actually meant. Listen—when you give, who is the one giving? When you chant the Buddha's name, who is the one chanting? He wanted us to turn the light around, to look back from our practice of dharma-power and notice that the "mind that chants" is itself inconceivable. That is the real home. The earlier settling through dharma-power was only a provisional home. So at the Lotus Sutra assembly, "opening the provisional to reveal the real," he unveiled the true face of the Five Vehicle teachings and let us trust and awaken to the one thought of mind-nature that all beings possess.
What was Mahakashyapa's state at this point? "He leapt with joy as he had never done before." Before the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha had never spoken of the inconceivable power of mind. He had stressed the inconceivable power of dharma within the Five Vehicles—practice the five precepts and ten good deeds, attain the fruit of the human and heavenly realms; practice the Four Noble Truths and the twelve links of dependent origination, realize nirvana; practice the six paramitas and perfect the six perfections. He had never asked, "Who is giving?" "Who is practicing the Four Noble Truths?" "Who is practicing the six paramitas?" Only the Lotus Sutra actually names who it is that practices all these dharma gates.
So: "The Buddha says that sravakas shall become Buddhas; the supreme treasury of jewels is obtained without seeking." At the Lotus Sutra assembly, the Buddha laid open the true face of all Five Vehicle teachings and wove them together with the one thought of mind-nature that every being possesses. This lets us, while practicing the Five Vehicle teachings, "look inward to true suchness" and so "attain the supreme treasury without seeking." That phrase—the supreme treasury obtained without seeking—is the core teaching of the entire Lotus Sutra.
Consider the parable again: the poor son went to work for the wealthy elder. Why? To earn money and improve his life. At first it was precisely his "mind of seeking gain" that drove his diligent practice, letting his wholesome roots slowly grow. Later, refined by the Vaipulya and Prajna teachings, that "mind of seeking gain" gradually thinned, until at the Lotus Sutra assembly he was acknowledged as the elder's son and inherited the estate. He had to settle into the "pure mind of no attainment," the self-nature itself, before he could enter the Buddha-realm and inherit the Buddha's family business.
A practitioner once asked a Chan master, "A vast clear sky, a single bright moon—how is it?" He explained, "I've practiced a dharma gate and brought my mind to the state of a vast clear sky. The clouds of affliction in my heart have all dissolved. Please, wise one, confirm whether my practice has reached this 'vast clear sky, single bright moon.'"
The master replied, "You are still a man standing at the foot of the steps." His practice hadn't arrived yet. He still lived within the expedient teachings of the Three Vehicles, still leaning on "the inconceivable power of dharma." The old practitioner, being humble, immediately bowed and said, "Please, master, lead me up to the next level. Teach me how to break through." The master said only this: "Come see me again after the moon has set." When will your merit be complete? Find a way to make that "moon" disappear. Of course, he didn't mean the literal moon—he meant, don't cling to that "moon."
His point: it's fine to rely on Buddhist practice to settle in at first—chanting the Buddha's name, reciting mantras, drawing on all kinds of dharma-power to steady the mind. But if you want true completion, you have to turn the light inward and rest in true suchness. You can't keep looking outward. When you let go of the pursuit of dharma-power, your inherent one thought of mind-nature arises, and you truly share a home with the Buddha.
This is what it means when the poor son works in the house but no longer relies on a mind of seeking gain to collect his wages. Then he's qualified to inherit. That is the supreme treasury obtained without seeking. This is the general framing: sravakas begin by seeking the nirvana of emptiness, seeking solid ground, but in the end they seek nothing. Let go of the nirvana of emptiness, and the door to true suchness opens.
Friends, there are two kinds of people who practice the dharma in this world. The first seeks immediate return, and so the door of cause and effect opens—cause and effect will repay you. But I should tell you: when cause and effect rewards you, afflictions and karmic obstacles come along too. The cause and effect set in motion by the ordinary person's "mind of seeking gain" is one of "having afflictions, having karmic obstacles, having aging, sickness, and death."
If you say, "I give without seeking immediate return—my only aim is to reveal the merit of my self-nature," then you reject the immediate return of cause and effect, the door to true suchness opens, and the power of inherent self-nature repays you. You can only have one or the other; you can't have both "cause and effect" and "true suchness." If you insist on seeking gain, that's fine—keep working forever, but the door to true suchness stays shut.
So there it is: "the supreme treasury of jewels is obtained without seeking" is the practice teaching of the entire Lotus Sutra. When you abandon the mind of seeking gain, the true supreme treasury of jewels opens. This is the brief overview.