This weekend is the Lotus Lantern Festival, marking the beginning of the weeklong celebration of the birth of Siddartha Guatama, the man who would come to be known as the Buddha. At Pohwa-seunim’s temple of Yeonpyeongsa & temples across South Korea, colorful lanterns are being constructed & displayed. In Seoul, a huge street festival is taking place, with dancing, music, and a parade of colorful lantern floats.
The lotus flower has been regarded as a symbol of enlightenment in Buddhism for centuries. Its beautiful blossom grows best in the murkiest, muddiest pools. So it is only natural that its shape has been used as inspiration for lanterns in Buddhist temples around the world. Just as a lantern brings light to darkness, so too do we practice to bring light to our lives & world.
In Seon, there are three pillars, or energies, necessary for practice. The first is great doubt. We continue introspect on our gongan, we continue to take nothing for granted in each & every moment of our lives. However, great doubt by itself leads to nihilism, a fanatical obsession with emptiness.
So we also need great faith, faith in the Dharma, faith in Buddha, faith in ourselves. Before we practice, we affirm our faith, saying “I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.” Faith balances our introspective doubt, keeping us from the depths of nihilism, and our introspection balances our faith, keeping us from fanatical blindness.
Both of these however, can wax and wane. The struggles of day to day life can snuff out our desire to practice. We may say that we’re going to sit in meditation in the morning, but when that alarm clock sounds, it’s so much easier to roll over & sleep for another half hour. Our gongan may frustrate us & so we decide to watch TV instead of spending time introverting on the hwadu. A coworker may anger us, & we decide that we’ll give in to our anger, just this once…
So we have the third pillar of our practice, great perseverance.
If a lantern is not fed fresh oil, it will not stay lit.
In the 6th century, two young warriors came to the monk Wongwang and asked him how they could practice Seon while fulfilling their duties to their kingdom. He gave them five precepts that have been handed down as a guiding ethos for those who involved in Seon martial art practice. Those two warriors went on to teach those precepts to the military, & defended their kingdom, leading to centuries of peace & unity. Of these precepts, the fourth is “Im Jeon Mu Toe”, meaning “In Battle, Never Fall Back”. So in our practice, when we feel our faith falter, when we feel it is easier to rollover & go back to sleep, we must have the perseverance of a warrior, rise up, and keep moving forward, never falling back, never giving any ground.
In our daily practice, we chant the Heart Sutra. According to legend, the sutra was written when the monk Shariputra asked the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, Gwanseum, how we can practice like the bodhisattvas. Gwanseum answers, laying out a short overview of the basics of Seon practice, finishing with the Wisdom Perfection Darani, Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.
However, if we look at the Heart Sutra as a gongan, the Darani is the hwadu, the response to Shariputra’s question, “How can we practice like the bodhisattvas?”
Gate gate paragate parasamgate Bodhi svaha can be translated from Sanskrit as “Going, going, going further, going even furth, the great Awakening!” We never accept that we have reached the other side because of our great doubt, we have faith that we keep moving, and we persevere, as we move forward one step at a time, never falling back.
So, during the Lotus Lantern Festival, we light our lamps, we keep them well-oiled, and we move forward, never ceasing.