Nagarjuna’s
Golden Bowl
July 9, 2016 Endless Further
Evidently,
there was a Tibetan guru, an alchemist and tantric master, named
Nagarjuna who lived during the 7th century. This Nagarjuna
and the legends surrounding him were mixed up with the earlier
Nagarjuna (c. 250), known as the “second Buddha,” the founder of
the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) philosophy.
There is a story about how one of these
two Nagarjunas, who was also a metallurgist, turned an iron begging
bowl into gold bowl.
One day, as he was taking a meal,
Nagarjuna saw a thief passing by his open door. The thief
noticed the golden bowl and wanted to steal it.
But Nagarjuna saw into the thief’s
heart, and to save time, he went outside and gave him the bowl,
encouraging the man to go ahead and take it.
The next day, the thief returned and
handed the bowl back to Nagarjuna, saying, “Great teacher! When you
gave away this bowl so freely, I felt very poor and desolate.
Show me the way to acquire the wealth that makes this kind of
untroubled detachment possible.”
The short tale empathizes an aspect of
non-attachment that we probably don’t appreciate enough, which is,
that letting go of attachments to material things is actually a way
to realize great wealth and abundance.
A key element in cultivating
non-attachment is said to be renunciation, a word that means to
reject something, e.g. a belief, claim, or course of action.
It also coveys sacrifice, giving up. Naturally, in the
context of Buddha-dharma and Taoism, there is more to it. The
Dalai Lama says, “True renunciation is a state of mind. It
does not necessarily mean that someone has to give up
something.”
In his version of the
Tao Te Ching, the
late Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii,
Chung-yuan Chang translated chapter 59 this way:
In guiding people and working
according to nature,
It is best to follow
renunciation.
Following renunciation means returning
soon.
Returning soon means accumulating attainment.
He goes on to write, “The key word in
this chapter is se, or renunciation, which means
returning soon to one’s original nature . . . Thus [Te-Ching’s
commentary says]: What Lao Tzu means ‘in guiding people and working
according to nature, it is best to follow renunciation,’ is that
nothing is better than the cultivation of returning to one’s
original nature.”
I did an internet search for
se and found it
defined as “stingy, mean.” But as the story of Nagarjuna’s
golden bowl suggests that non-attachment requires
generosity.
Atisha, in Kadamthorbu or “Precepts collected
from Here and There”, is quoted as saying,
The greatest generosity is
non-attachment.”
And in Nagarjuna’s Guidelines for Social Action, Robert Thurman writes,
Those who . . . simply consume and
hoard, soon lose their wealth, just as Nagarjuna states. It
is a fact of economics that the basis of wealth is
generosity.”
For us, a key aspect of non-attachment
means to go beyond the mere rejection of materialism. Go beyond
‘giving up.’ Spread out into giving. Non-attachment is
a state or quality of mind that helps us develop openness,
spaciousness of being.