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.