Chapter One verse Four: ‘The Way of the Bodhisattva’

Chapter One verse Four: ‘The Way of the Bodhisattva’

“So hard to find the ease and wealth
whereby the aims of beings may be gained.
If now i fail to turn it to my profit,
How could such a chance be mine again?”

Have you ever thought, “Wow, I’m lucky to be human!” No, well, meneither. I guess we take being human for granted. It’s all (most of us)know. I mean, i don’t remember being a dog or a rat, but that doesn’tmean that i wasn’t.

A Buddhist saying is, “Only once in a hundred lifetimes do we get the chance to hear the Dharma and practice it.”

Actually, it is very, very rare to be born a human. To be able to look around and ponder, “What’s really going on here?”

You could have been born-again as an animal, an insect, a bird, a fish.Not only that, but you could have been born in a place where the Dharmaisn’t allowed to be taught. You may have been born severly mentallyhandicapped, or in a mind-set that became offended at the Buddha’steachings.

Think about this. To be able to practice Buddhism,you must first be born in a time when a Buddha has arisen. 2,501 yearsago, or so, the teachings of the last Buddha had died out, andShakamuni Buddha had no yet become enlightened. So if you were bornaround that time, you had no hope of hearing the Dharma.

Ilove the Buddhist measurement of Time. They say that there was a BigBang! In fact, there have been hundreds of thousands of them.

And after these Big Bangs, the universe expands in every direction.(Science finally caught up with the Buddha) But after a time, theuniverse expands as far as it’s going to, and then it starts toretract, or come back on itself.

Well, you can imagine the whole universe imploding on it’s self, and then exploding again…an infinite amount of times.

The Time it takes from The Big Bang, to the expansion, to the retraction, to the next Big Bang, is called a ‘Kalpa.’

One thousand Buddhas are supposed to arise per Kalpa.

Shakymuni Being the last, and Maitreya being the next. But there is aneternity between these Buddhas. So if you are born in a time when theteachings have died out, and no Buddha has arisen to bring theteachings back, you are very much out of luck.

So, everybody shout ‘Yayyyyyyyyy for us!’

Trulywe are so very fortunate indeed, to be born at this time and thisplace, where we are ready, willing, and able…to not only hear theDharma, but also have opportunity to practice It !