29/07/2025
Bound Camel Pose with Half Bhekasana Leg (a variation of Camel Pose) — Practicing yoga while listening to Buddhist scriptures has gradually become one of the most fulfilling things in my life.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the insights gained through chanting and reading sutras. Blessings (or merit) are not something you obtain just by going to temples and praying to deities. Rather, they are the result of the good deeds and spiritual cultivation you've done in the past and are doing in the present.
Why is this so? In the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra), the Buddha, the World-Honored One, gave this teaching to his disciples:
“If one sees me in form, or seeks me through sound, that person treads the wrong path and cannot see the Tathagata.”
What does this mean?
It means that if someone tries to perceive the Buddha through physical form (such as statues, paintings, or images), or seeks the Buddha through voice and sound (chants, mantras, spoken words), thinking that these alone will bring them what they desire — that is a mistaken and misguided approach. Such a person will not truly see the Buddha.
If you believe that merely seeing a Buddha statue means you have seen the Buddha, or that hearing chanting means you’ve found the Buddha, you are walking a deluded path. The true Buddha cannot be found in forms or sounds, but rather within the awakened awareness of your own heart and mind.
To follow the Buddha’s path, one must not cling to appearances (“forms”). “Form” and “sound” are external phenomena — things that belong to the world of appearances. The Buddha teaches emptiness (śūnyatā) — the true Buddha-nature, or Tathagata, transcends all material phenomena. It is formless, invisible, beyond words and concepts.
So then, how can we truly see the Buddha?
The Diamond Sutra also provides the answer. The Buddha said:
“All appearances are illusory. If one sees that all appearances are not appearances, then one sees the Tathagata.”
This means that everything in the world — all that has form and appearance, including people, objects, sounds, thoughts, and emotions — is fundamentally illusory and unreal. They arise through conditions and causes, and when those conditions fade, they vanish. Their nature is impermanent, without a fixed self, and inherently empty.
If you are deluded or attached to these appearances — such as beauty or ugliness, gain or loss, success or failure, wealth, fame, or even birth, aging, illness, and death — you will not be able to perceive their true nature.
But when you come to realize that all appearances are indeed empty and illusory, and you no longer cling to their coming and going, you enter into a state of true wisdom.
This wisdom is called prajñā in Sanskrit — the profound insight into the true nature of all things. It is a high-level wisdom that transcends the material world and even transcends life and death. It is not the worldly "cleverness" of ordinary people, but the liberating clarity of enlightened understanding.
And in that state of prajñā, you see the essence of the Buddha — that is, the Tathagata. As the Diamond Sutra teaches:
“To be free from all appearances — that is what it means to be a Buddha.”
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Asana : Bound with Half leg / / / /
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#瑜伽 #开胸 #开肩 #后弯 #骆驼式 #骆驼式变体
