The History of Buddhist Thought c26.11

c26.11

The whole scene then reappeared to Rāvaṇa in all its glory, and Buddha laughed. The whole assembly laughed, but Buddha laughed loudest. The reason was, as Buddha explained, that Rāvaṇa wanted to ask a twofold question. He had already asked it of Buddhas in the past, and he will ask it of the Buddhas to come. Rāvaṇa was then allowed to put his question on the duality of things. It is said that things and non-things are to be abandoned. How can they be abandoned if they do not exist? The answer is that duality is due only to the wrong imagination of the ignorant. Such people look upon the manifestations of mind as external things. They should be looked upon, like the horns of a hare, as belonging neither to reality nor non-reality, and in that consists their abandonment. " He who thus sees, sees rightly. They who see otherwise move in false imagination,¹ and grasp things as twofold, like a reflection of oneself in a mirror or in water, or one's shadow by the light of the moon or in a house, or like hearing an echo. Thus by grasping at their own false imagination they imagine things and non-things; they go on imagining, and never attain tranquillity. The word tranquillity means "having one point" (ekāgra). It is the entrance into the Tathāgatagarbha, the realm of the noble knowledge of the inner self, whereby arises the highest concentration." ²