After Fifth Patriarch Hongren passed on the robe and alms bowl to Huineng, he knew that for awhile no one in the monastic community would understand why he suddenly made Huineng his successor, nor would they be able to accept him. So he had Huineng leave the monastery in the middle of the night. Hongren escorted Huineng to a dock at Jiujiang and offered to row Huineng across the river. As Hongren was manning the oars, Huineng said, “Venerable Master, please be seated. Your disciple should row.”

Hongren replied by saying, “It is only fitting that I ferry you across.”

In Chinese the word du (渡) means both “ferry” as well as “liberate.” Hongren’s words meant that, since he was Huineng’s teacher, he saw it as his responsibility to be the one to “ferry” him to liberation.

Huineng replied, “When I was deluded, my teacher ferried me across. Upon awakening, I ferry myself.”

What Huineng means by “ferrying himself” or “liberating himself” is that it is up to us to accumulate merit, make positive karmic connections, and cultivate wisdom. In Buddhism it is commonly said that we should “cultivate both merit and wisdom,” as well as “emphasize both practice and understanding.” This is precisely the process of self-liberation. Helping others is the root of happiness, and in accumulating merit we should serve others as we are inclined and as our circumstances allow. Examples include building bridges, paving roads, aiding in disaster relief, and assisting the poor.

To truly learn Buddhism, we must connect with others. Spiritual practice cannot be an excuse for selfishness or indolence, nor can it be an excuse to escape or distance oneself from the community. Our practice should create broad karmic connections that can help to build a positive future and to foster limitless merit and virtue. The meaning of a human life comes from the karmic seeds we are able to plant and witness them bear fruit in our field of merit before our lives come to an end.

We gain merit from joyfully giving out of kindness. During his many lifetimes of practice, the Buddha once cut off a piece of his own flesh to feed an eagle, and in another lifetime sacrificed his body to provide food for a tiger, as well as being born as the king of deer and the king of fish. The Buddha was able to broadly and universally give aid without distinguishing between friend or foe, self or other, whenever living beings were in need or facing difficulty. This did not happen on just one or two occasions, for the Buddha spent three great kalpas perfecting his virtue and wisdom such to become a Buddha, and one hundred small kalpas perfecting the major and minor physical characteristics of a Buddha.

If a person spends his entire life in this world only concerned with himself, with the “I,” and working and toiling just to feed that one mouth and belly, that is a meaningless, wasted life. A person who does not understand  prajna wisdom will desperately try to seek knowledge outside of himself, or he may parade around with his knowledge and abilities trying to show off how smart he is. Such a person may come to feel superior, like he is somehow more intelligent or handsome than most other people. The “I” appears to rise above the mass of common people to be in a class by itself. He becomes convinced that this “I” is not like all the others; it is the most beautiful lotus growing out of the mud. When someone thinks this way he has become attached to the notion of self.

Physically a human body is nothing more than a smelly bag of skin, something that has arisen from a combination of causes and conditions. All day long people only think about how they can dress themselves in fine clothes and eat good food, or how they can rise to some new and better position of power. But people who only live for themselves will find that, when their lives draw to a close and it’s time to go, everything is merely a dream, an illusion, a bubble, or a shadow. It does not matter how they dressed themselves in elegant, name-brand finery, what positions of power they enjoyed, or how refined their meals were—it all vanishes into thin air.

Everybody has Buddha nature. It is just ignorance that makes one a sentient being and enlightenment that makes one a Buddha. And the difference between ignorance and enlightenment can lie in a single thought.

With all the hustle and bustle of human life, we should ensure that the mind and body have a place where they can find safety and security, and then allow others to find security as well. Some ways we can find security are:

1. Find security in the four immeasurables: loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
2. Find security by generating the aspiration for enlightenment and making a vow to liberate all living beings.
3. Find security in prajna wisdom.
4. Find security in meditative concentration and morality.
5. Find security in pure thoughts and reverence.
6. Find security in simplicity and humility.
7. Find security in letting go and being carefree.
8. Find security in learning and contentment.

Source: Hsing Yun. Four Insights for Finding Fulfillment: A Practical Guide to the Buddha’s Diamond Sutra. Los Angeles: Buddhas Light Publishing, 2012.