During the recent pilgrimage to Greece, 80 members of the Compassionate Service Society (CSS), visited The Parthenon, a famous temple atop the Acropolis of Athens. This is the greatest architectural achievement of ancient Greece, built between 447 and 432 B.C.
Many tourists have visited and continue to visit this place, with many harboring the hope of witnessing a marvelous work from thousands of years ago, wondering if anything as beautiful as this could ever be built again, now or in the future. I was among those who felt this way.
But this is a 2,500-year-old story that we now only see for a brief moment, like a single frame of a long film reel. The long reel can be compared to a 30-second timeline. We cut out a segment and place it into a frame that lasts only 1 second, imagining: “Oh, I know this place, I’ve visited this place.” But in reality, it isn’t so, because all we see is a solitary frame, with nothing much more beyond it!
Three thousand years ago, there was no such desolation as this. There wasn’t! But we tend to think: “Oh! Now I’m visiting the Acropolis, visiting this place and that place, hearing about it, imagining it to be so grand, but in reality, what do we actually see? We’re only seeing a single frame, but its history is so much more!” We marvel: “Oh, it’s so beautiful,” and offer all sorts of praise, but it’s just a frame. We have no idea what it was like 3,000 years ago or what it will be like 3,000 years from now. We don’t know! Therefore, we are completely caught in an illusion, thinking that we have visited this place and understood everything, but in fact, we understand nothing.
Let’s try to apply that story to our lives. For example, we see an elderly person sitting in meditation but periodically opening their bag to take something out, putting another thing back in, with belongings scattered around. When walking, she hold tightly onto her bag, afraid of losing things, but if someone opens it, there are only plastic bags, not money. We’re only seeing the frame—a snapshot of this person in the present—but we don’t understand what she did before, what she’ll do in the future, or what her life was like hundreds of years ago or will be like hundreds of years from now. We don’t understand; we only know this person as they are today.
Therefore, the Bodhisattva path in the Avatamsaka Sutra says: We must see people in the context of their long, drawn-out story, seeing all aspects, seeing causes, effects, conditions, and everything. But this way of thinking has been erased by the philosophy of New Age scholars, who say: “Live in the present moment, live in this very moment and only know this moment.” This idea of ‘living in the moment and only knowing this moment’ has shattered the complete picture of the universe. In other words: We can’t see the universe in its entirety because we’re only focused on the present frame alone.
Meanwhile, what is Samadhi? It means living in the present moment while simultaneously living beyond the confines of time. Living in two places: right in the present and beyond space and time. Only then can one be said to live fully and know fully. In contrast, the New Age philosophy only reaches one place: “Oh, just live in the present moment.” Living like that is easy because it focuses solely on the present, but how can one transcend the present to see the entirety of the universe? That is true Buddhism.
Thus, when we come here, at best, we are only seeing a very short frame—a fraction of a second in the infinite life span of the Acropolis. We don’t know how people climbed to the top of the mountain in the past, how battles were fought, how blood was shed, how people lived, how they planted these trees, or how they transported things up and down. We don’t know any of that. We come, we see, and then we leave. Visiting a place in that way is like “riding a horse to look at flowers” (glancing at things quickly without really understanding them)—you see it, but you don’t really know or understand much. Therefore, we must remain humble, knowing that countless people before us have built what we see, and many more will continue to build after us.
Why build? Because there are those who destroy. Life and death continue in an endless cycle, and that is why whenever we go somewhere, we should try to fully experience the entire process. The Parthenon has existed for nearly 3,000 years, and though it no longer retains its original architectural form, in another 3,000 years it will likely only encounter us this one time. Yet we look at it like a “faceless lover” because we are indifferent, not paying it any real attention. So, when we visit such places, we should chant a mantra or recite a verse. Sometimes, the trees and the land themselves need our love and attention.
In the end, our CSS group recited the Great Compassion Mantra, sending love to the trees and beings before bidding farewell to this place.
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